The name of the game

Posted by R. Berg on March 13, 2002

In Reply to: The Mysterious East posted by TheFallen on March 12, 2002

: : : Maybe. I hold open the possibility that it could be non-electronic, too. It's easy enough to see a loop in "HQ sends instuctions to field salespeople, who test out the approach, and send back suggested improvements which can be consolidated and re-submitted...." This kind of thing happens all the time in the management of hierarchical organizations. Acommunications loop. Pity the poor middle manager who isn't consulted ...

: : You know the game "Gossip" -- people sit in a circle and a message is whispered from person to person until it reaches the originator. The object is to see how the message changes while making the round. I've always pictured "the loop" like that -- people communicating. Minus the garbled message, I would hope.

: An idle point of minor interest - you call that game "Gossip", do you? Over here, it's known as "Chinese Whispers".

The game was called Gossip when I was introduced to it in fourth grade in the 1950s, in a school in California. (Fourth grade in the US is the class for nine-year-olds, more or less.) I imagine that calling it Chinese Whispers would have been hard to explain to the children of Asian descent.

Your point isn't so minor. The trans-Atlantic difference reflects a difference between the two societies. Over here we've been racially heterogeneous for a long, long time.