The Story of MooT
MooT is a board game containing 1008 difficult questions about the English language;
here are some examples:
According to the Ontario Department of Education, how does a sexist say "synthetic?"
(man-made)
Which word entered English first: "socialist" or "capitalist"?
(capitalist)
I read a lot, and when I read I both look up the words I don't know and look up the
words I think I do know. In doing this over the years, I made two discoveries:
(1) I was looking up the same words over and over again (e.g., indolent) and
(2) many words that I was sure I understood -- you know, words we learn
from context and never bother to look up (e.g., "prose") -- I actually misunderstood.
So, I decided to improve my vocabulary. Instead of buying one of those
increase-your-word-power books, which make you memorize words that
the author feels are important, I decided to create a method that
would allow me to improve my vocabulary while reading what I wanted
to read.
My solution was a mnemonic device: When reading, if I ran into a word I either didn't understand or didn't
completely understand in its context, I would look it up in the dictionary and transform the definition into a question. For
example:
In Latin dolere means "pain"; describe someone who avoids the pain of exertion?
(indolent)
Do cons speak prose?
(Yes. Non-metrical spoken or written language is prose.)
The first
question uses the word's Latin root as a mnemonic, whereas the second
fashions a mnemonic out of a pun.
The method
worked. I found that question-making made it easier to remember a
word's meaning, thereby expanding my vocabulary's size and depth --
i.e., I both understood more words and had a more profound
understanding of the words I already used. It was also
fun.
Eventually, I
had a cigar box full of questions, so I began posing them to friends.
Doing this, I discovered that my semantic handicap was widespread:
many other people had also looked up indolent
many times and still couldn't remember what it meant.
I also
discovered that people enjoyed answering my questions, so much so
that one person suggested I compile them into a game, "a sort of a
Trivial Pursuit for pedants."
I liked the
idea, so I pursued it; however, I wanted my game to differ from
Trivial Pursuit by having it stress problem solving and discussion,
rather than memory recall. To get a feel for the difference, compare
the following questions:
How much wood did American woodchucks chuck in 1968?
(Lots)
Does antiquity include the year 1 AD?
(Yes. The
time before the Middle Ages -- i.e., before 600 AD -- is
antiquity.)
With the
first (Trivial-Pursuit-like) question, either you know the answer or
you guess; with the second (MooT-like) question, you think you know
the answer, you talk it over with others, you experience doubt ("When
exactly is antiquity?"), then you guess.
With this
approach in mind, I got out my trusty Trivial-Pursuit board and,
using their rules, started testing my questions on friends. I did
this for a year: writing and posing hundreds of questions to friends
who mercilessly tore them apart.
The goal was
to discover what constituted a good MooT question -- i.e., one that
was informative and tricky and, most important, had an authoritative
and indisputable answer.
(1) The
questions had to be authoritative, because I was an amateur
language buff who was going to be telling other people whether or
not their diction was correct.
(2) The
questions had to be indisputable, because the people who played my
game were going to spend long periods of time discussing these
questions, and if they came up with an answer that was correct,
but was different from the one I gave, they would experience anger
and frustration -- and they would hate my game.
I solved the
first problem by basing all my answers and interpretations on the
information contained in the Concise
Oxford Dictionary.
Hence, if players disagreed with an answer, they could look it up in
the COD. If they disagreed with the lexicographers, they could write
them, not me.
I solved the
problem of indisputability by testing my questions repeatedly on
friends until we either had spotted and removed most of the duds or
had made disputable questions indisputable.
For example:
(disputable) Is George Bush, Jr. an invertebrate?
(indisputable) Is George Bush, Jr. literally an invertebrate?
(No. Bush is a mammal; mammals have backbones.)
Eventually, I came up with 1008 questions.
In addition to criticizing questions, my friends also suggested rules; soon the
Trivial-Pursuit board was abandoned in favour of a crib board and a
new game was born.
I won't list
the game's rules ;
however, I will say that a MooT game consists of teams discussing and
solving language-oriented questions of varying difficulty.
For
example:
(Easy) Is the Pope a primate?
(Yes. We are all primates, the Pope doubly so.)
(Harder) Its name means "opposite bear" in Greek. Which large landmass is it?
(The Antarctic. In Greek "anti arkitos" means "opposite bear." )
(Damn hard) Gays call them "seafood". What do heteros call them?
(Sailors. Source: "The Political Vocabulary of Homosexuality")
While I was
developing MooT, many people asked me if they could buy a copy. This
eventually caused me to:
(1) Type 1008 questions into my computer.
(2) Edit,
format, print, and photocopy them onto coloured card-stock
(3) Cut the card-stock into cards (by hand); and
(4) Sell the result in cigar boxes scavenged from tobacco stores and flea
markets.
Each game was
numbered and every time I made a new game I tried to eliminate errors
and improve the packaging. After several months' work, I had made and
sold 60 games, most of them to relatives and friends. In addition, I
had contrived packaging that was sophisticated enough to sell over
the counter at a local used-bookstore.
Nowadays, I
am often asked if I expect to make big bucks from MooT -- i.e., will
I cash in by selling it to a large game-manufacturer. Of course, I
want to do that but, for several reasons, I doubt that it is
possible.
First, MooT
has a market-niche problem: it is a game that should be sold in book
stores. Unfortunately, most book stores don't sell games and don't
want to start selling them.
One time, a major
Canadian book publisher became quite interested in MooT, but the
owner, who was initially quite enthusiastic about the game --
especially with the possibility of Trivial-Pursuit-like profits --
eventually backed off because he didn't know much about the game
business and felt that it was too risky to spend a lot of time and
money trying to learn.
The second
problem is that game-industry types don't like MooT because:
(1) The name
is weird; they are more comfortable with cute, multisyllabic names
like HUMZINGER and BALDERDASH and
(2) the questions are strange, even offensive; for example:
Is urine pith?
(No. Pith
is essential; urine, a waste product, is not.)
One
interested venture-capitalist, before he had even played the game,
started suggesting improvements that I would have to make to entice
him to invest: change the name, make the questions easier, remove
offensive material, etc.
I have
nothing against selling out, but I balked because the result would
have been a watered-down version of MooT that, by trying to appeal to
everybody, would appeal to nobody. He disagreed with my reasoning and
moved on.
Finally,
contrary to popular myth, very few game-makers become millionaires.
In fact, very few of the thousands of games published annually in
North America make a profit. The standard scenario is:
(1) Person X develops a game; for example, one that combines bingo with charades.
(2) Everyone X knows plays it and loves it -- visions of immense wealth ensue.
(3) X's
infectious, tsunami-like enthusiasm entices family and friends to
invest -- $150,000 is raised.
(4) The local
game-manufacturing specialists (two guys with mustaches) are
hired to package it and print up 5000 copies ("You gotta get the
per-unit cost down to make any money.").
(5) X sells
500 copies of ChaBingo
in the first year. But, sad to say, he has spent all of his money,
so is forced to go out of business. The result: fewer friends,
tense family gatherings, and 4500 copies of ChaBingo in
storage.
I have seen
this occur in Vancouver several times. Still, the few successes
excite popular imagination and lead to the prevailing belief that
games are a gold mine.
They're not.
One local game distributor described it to me as a "rags to rags
business," and advised me to take any money I was willing to invest
in MooT, fly to Las Vegas, and bet it all on red; that way, I would
have at least some chance of making money and would save myself
several years of futile effort.
In addition,
a Vancouver game-store owner advised me not to mail MooT to any of
the big publishers: "They'll just send the package back unopened;
they're afraid that it will contain a game that resembles one they
are developing in-house" -- lawsuits resulting.
He added that
if my game was any good, a company would hear about it, and if it
showed a decent sales record ("about 20,000 units annually"), they
might be willing to risk promoting it. He wasn't impressed when I
told him that I had, at that time, sold 47 copies packaged in cigar
boxes.
The
conclusions I drew from all this were: don't quit your job and don't
spend your retirement savings. Instead, I will continue to print up
small batches of MooT (1000 per year), sell them by word of mouth,
and attempt to put out another set of 1008 questions before the
meteor arrives. If I can't develop a market, I will, instead, try to
develop an audience -- i.e., a group of people who enjoy what I do
and hope that I do more of it.
