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

Entry: Charades! - A574805
Author: Mr. Christopher, campaigning for <peacefingers> at A574805
Author: Mr. Christopher, campaigning for <peacefingers> at F79114?thread=Entry: Charades! - A574805
Author: Mr. Christopher, campaigning for <peacefingers> at U170904 This is an informative look at Cherades from the researcher who brought you Blind Man's Buff.

OK - call me Mr Sad.
I love charades, I used to play as a kid at 'grown-up' parties and it was great to see all the adults being silly.

It is also a great warmer upper at parties, providing everyone is a little bit friendly, yet strangely people call it "middle-class" (Which they consider an insult - never quite understood that one.) and "old-fashioned." (Which they also consider an insult.) Personally I consider it a far superior way to spend a Christmas evening than watching the 99th incarnation of some thriller movie.

You can also buy little boxes of subjects incidently, which means that nobody knows what the subject is except the holder of he card. This makes it possible for smaller groups to play.

Also surely you should mention 'Give Us A Clue?' The television quiz show with Una Stubbs and Lionel Blair - Who was the host ?

It wasn't Nicholas Parsons was it?

No, I just got a vision of Michael Aspel from "This Is Your Life"

Is that a big red book in your hands are you just pleased to see me ?

For any necesary give us a clue information:

http://www.ukgameshows.com/atoz/programmes/g/give_us_a_clue/

I was right, it *was* michael aspel.

I don't quite follow; was there a Cherades-themed TV show in the UK?

Yup. if you follow that link I posted before, it gives you the information.

It never ceases to amaze me the number of subjects we still don't have edited entries about in The Guide It never ceases to amaze me how hard it is to put a decent sentence together sometimes

This looks very well written There's only one grammatical problem I can see:

"...two teams, preferably of equal size." I think "equal numbers" would be better.

Problem fixed. Thanks!

I like this entry. Short, and to the point, and a good example to make it all clear.
I wonder if there have been any particularly famous examples from 'give us a clue'. Anyone?

-Lucinda

I think the TV show needs its own entry, then I would link to it. Right now, I would rather not because people in the US, like me, have no knowlege of the show.

I think this is a nice entry, there may be a few niggles, but I think that this should end up in the edited guide. So, on to the niggles...

Firstly, I'm not sure that it is the most loved of all party games. It could be said to be one of the most loved, or popular but isn't clear that this is the most loved. Also, I think best loved sounds better than most loved.

I am also not sure if the sentence 'The complete rules are as follows', is needed, as it should be clear that you are talking about the rules, when you are. If, however, you want a statement of intent (This entry aims to do ....), then perhaps something like 'This entry describes how you play this game', as that makes it clear you are talking about the entry as a whole, not in particular the next paragraph (Which is colon suggest you might be talking about), and is probably more accurate, as not all the rest of the entry is about rules, but includes examples, and the equipment, and such like.

In the first sentence of the section headed 'To play', you mention team A drawing a slip from team B's basket, but up to that point, you haven't mention that either team have put any slips in the baskets, only that the teams write their phrases on the slips.

You say the phrase can be a quotation, title of books, plays, etc, but not proverbs.

One other problem is that you seem to shift between two different styles of writing. One is the descriptive ('Each round of the game proceeds as follows','A player from Team B draws',etc), and prescriptive ('Divide the players into two teams..','Divide the slips of paper..',etc). Both of these approaches work well, but I think you should decide on one style, and stick to it.

You say at the end of the Preparation section, that the teams should come into the same room again, but you haven't said that they should go to seperate rooms in the first place.

Finally (for the moment), I notice that you are using a full stop, in bold as a bullet point, and have formatted each line of the bullet point lists as a seperate paragraph. There is a GuideML tag designed for bullet pointed lists, that I think would probably look better. Here is a page that explains how to use it:<./>GuideML-UL</.> Also, having each line as a paragraph means you get gaps, which I don't think look very nice.

Thanks! I made most of the changes, but I'm not sure how to correct the style differences.

I've had another think about the style differences and I think that they are probably justified, and changing them would end up with things being more confusing, and would spoil the flow.

My other comments seem to have been resolved by your changes, and the entry seems to be better than it was. There are only a few niggles left over, and that is about the the teams coming back into the room. Whilst you mention that going into seperate rooms is an option, this doesn't make sense if the teams went to different sides of the room to talk about their phrases. Perhaps you should be a bit more general, and have something like 'the teams should seperate, so they can't hear each other' and then 'the teams should then come back together again', although how you want to resolve this is up to you.

Also, I think putting the slips into the baskets should be in the preparation section, rather than the to play section, possibly before the teams come back together.

There are also some other things I've noticed.

You have linked to the entry on party games. I don't think the editors like links to unedited entries in the edited guide, so I think that should be removed. I'll ask about that, though.

There are a few typos as well, but these should get spotted by the editors. There is one that I think I should draw your attention to, though, as I suspect it isn't a typo. That is the use of the american spelling of theater, rather than the British english spelling theatre. British English is preferred in the edited guide.

I can't see any other probablems at the moment, so I'll leave it there.

I've checked about linking to unedited entries with the Italics, and it seems I'm right, they don't allow links to unedited entries in edited entries, so you'll have to remove the link I'm afraid.

But they allowed it for Blind Man's B(l)uff?

Well, I thought they had.

I think I know what happened. When your entry got picked, they made a copy, for editing, and removed the link from the edited version, and left your original, which still had the link. So, you could leave the link in if you want, and the editors will remove it from the edited version, but leave it in the unedited version.