h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ghost in the Machine gets its name from the fact that it is the game Ghost played on an email system. Where Ghost gets its name from is anyone's guess. It is a simple but highly addictive game ideal for whileing away long journeys, and is particularly recommended to anyone wishing to increase their word power. It doesn't require any props, just three or more players who can spell properly.

'Ghost In the Machine' does require some props, namely an email system and several handy computer workstations. The aim of the game is to be the 'last man standing' Each player has three lives, and as the game progresses, lives are lost and players are eliminated as they lose all of their lives.

Rules

Play would normally proceed in a clockwise direction, but over an email system the players go in alphabetical order of their surnames.

The first person to move chooses a letter and composes an email message with it in, say 'E', and sends it to everyone.
As play moves on to the second player, this player also chooses a letter, and either prepends or appends it to the previous letter to make a sequence which, although it must not *form* a word in itself, must be *part* of a word. So the second player might send a message with the sequence 'ET' or 'GE', neither of which form a meaningful word but could be part of 'GET', for example. The player keeps this word secret, but sends the sequence so far to everyone in the game.

Play proceeds in this fashion with the sequence of letters growing until:
* The current player has no choice but to add a letter which forms a complete word, or
* The current player challenges the last player to reveal which word their proffered sequence is part of. If the last player can't think of one (that is, they bluffed), they lose a life. If they can, the challenger loses a life.

When a player loses a life, the player who brought them to grief starts with a new starting letter.

If you want to make the game more difficult, don't send the whole sequence out, just the next letter and 'in front' or 'in back' as an additional instruction.
Ghost can be played by any number of people: this Researcher has heard of it being played by post across continents, or even by squads of soldiers to alleviate the boredom of route marches.