by Lore Sjöberg

The Game the Whole Engineering Department Can Play

The problem with most chat rooms, of course, is that they're filled with people talking about things other than you and your personal interests. While we can't make everyone interesting, at least we can provide a way to add some challenge to your visit.

Welcome to what we are sure is going to become one of the most prestigious games of our era. We fully expect to see this in the '02 Olympics.

The rules are simple: Our script will generate for you a table of words arranged in the all-too-familiar 5x5 pattern of a Bingo board. These tables are generated randomly. Print out a different one for each person in the game. Then, all players should log into the same chat room (IRC, AOL, Web chat, whatever) from different computers.

The object is to get random chat-room bystanders to type the words on your board. Complete a row, column, or long diagonal, yell "BINGO" in the chat room, log off, and do a little victory dance.

The additional rules:

1. Only public messages count.
2. You can't say and of your words yourself. If you do, you have to "wipe out" the word, meaning you can't use it in any Bingo.
3. If a word comes out as a direct response to a question, command, or suggestion from you, you must wipe out that word. Questions, commands, and suggestions are not illegal in and of themselves, but you run the risk that the answer will contain one of your words.
4. If you get booted, banned, or otherwise removed from the group, you lose. If more than one person gets booted, the last to get booted wins.
5. If anyone asks if you're playing a game, nobody wins, but the last person to have typed something gets the title of "big ol' loser."

That's it. Random chaos combined with pointless competition. Fun for all.

[Props to Fade to Black for being the first (to my knowledge) to recognize the possibilites inherent in Web Bingo.]