Shelley Howells: Dropping in on the games that people - and cats - play

As a general rule, I don't "do" games. It's probably an only-child issue - not enough blood-stirring competition in my youth.

Maybe I've been put off games by playing too many childhood rounds of Monopoly against my (cheating) self.

Perhaps the turning point came during a particularly rugged game of Canasta in which I discovered that my then boyfriend was doing the dirty on me. Probably I'm just a sore loser.

But I will go a long way to avoid playing things. Any things - cards, charades, Trivial Pursuit, Twister or footsie.

So it's a big surprise to me to report that I have become hooked on an online game.

isketch is basically Pictionary online. The idea is to guess the word or phrase another player is drawing. The more quickly you guess, the more points you get.

The Shockwave game takes a wee while to load, but once up and going, things move fast. Simply choose a game room from a long list that goes from very easy British or American English words (choose with care - the difference is things like cookie vs biscuit, flashlight vs torch), to "expert" grade (where you'll find words like calliope and spellbound), as well as theme rooms (animal words, medical terms, movie titles) and foreign language rooms.

Once in your room, with a bunch of (mostly) friendly strangers from all over the world, you are greeted by a four-way split screen: a players and scores screen, one in which players' guesses appear, the space in which the drawing is done, and a general chat screen.

The system chooses whose turn is next, keeps score, provides clues if things are slowing down and gives the words to draw.

You use your mouse to draw the given word in about 150 seconds. There's a drawing toolbar with brush, eraser, shape tools and colour palette.

The downside is that it can occasionally take a while to find a like-minded room.

Some will tolerate using letters as clues, others will boot you off if you start that kind of carry-on. And there is always some jerk who'll draw a penis for every clue, but regular players soon gang up and ditch them.

Another wordy site I've taken to is Wordspy, a site all about new words and phrases, and old words being used in new ways.

Here you can look up definitions of some of those suddenly hot words and expressions you come across, such as meterosexual, nerdistan and jump-the-shark.

Better yet, they provide background info on where the word/saying came from, and a reference to its earliest use.

It's a treasure-trove of useful new phrases to trot out when conversation lags. Favourites of mine include "male answer syndrome" (the tendency for some men to answer a question even when they don't know the answer); "stealth parenting" (performing childcare duties while pretending to be at a business meeting or other work-related function), and "cat typing", which refers to that gobbledegook that appears on screen when the cat walks across your keyboard.

The last is a perennial problem in this house, with the mog frequently doing drastic damage to column inches. It's great to know there is a phrase for it.

Better still, there is software for it. PawSense aims to protect your work from marauding felines: "PawSense analyses keypress timings and combinations to distinguish cat typing from human typing and recognises a cat on the keyboard within one or two pawsteps."

It will block cat typing, and even train puss to stop it, by making nasty noises at him.

I'm working on similar software. ColumnSense will analyse word-combinations to distinguish decent columns from the lame ones.

It will block lame columns and train writers to stop by making nasty noises at her.

What's that sound?

* Email Shelley Howells

isketch

Wordspy

Pawsense