Contact

Title: Contact

General Information about Item:

Informant Data:

Allie Gerber is currently a senior at Dartmouth College. She was born in 1996 in Greenwich, Connecticut. She has one younger brother and one younger sister. At Dartmouth, she is a part of the Dream mentor program and a Global Health Fellow. She has hiked smaller portions of the Appalachian Trail. In addition to many day hikes, she did a 3 day hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail as part of Freshman Trip Orientation at Dartmouth College. She also did a 54 mile overnight hike from Mount Moosilauke back to Dartmouth College.

Contextual Data:

Social Context: The games are played as part of the way to pass time while they are hiking during the day before they set up camp for the night. One game that Allie explained was the game Contact, which she played with her group for much of the hiking trip. Contact does not require anything other than people in order to be played, so it is a great game to play while hiking. The game is explained below.

Cultural Context: The Freshman Trips hiking trips are three day trips on parts of the Appalachian Trail. The trips are usually around eight people in size, and they are composed of two upperclassmen leaders and the rest of the people are incoming freshman. These freshman do not know each other for the most part, and so in some sense, the games they play are a way of getting to know one another and to ease the awkwardness of meeting new people

Item:

Contact Game Rules:
Requires at least 3 people
The “word creator” thinks of a word and gives the first letter of that word
The guessers want to guess the next letter of the word or the word itself
The guessers come up with words that start with that letter and they say a clue that’s relevant to that word
The guesser wants the “word creator” to not be able to guess a word but the other guessers to be able to guess what they are referring to
When a guesser gives a clue and another guesser thinks they know the answer, they say “contact”, and then the “word creator” is forced to guess but if they can’t guess a word that fits the clue then guesser who gave the clue and the guesser who thinks they know the answer both say what they are thinking at the same time, and if it’s the same thing, then the “word creator” has to give another clue
This continues until someone guesses the word that the “word creator” is thinking of

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

How to Play:
(Paraphrased from Transcript)

“One of the most popular games that we play during Trips was contact. So in contact there is sort of a leader and the leader thinks of a clue and gives the first letter. Then all of the players try to guess what that word is. So they do that by thinking of other words that start with that letter. So, what happens is the players will give a clue maybe so if the letter was ‘d’ , they could say ‘oh, it’s a flower’ and the options could be daffidel or daisy and so if the others players realize what the other person is trying to say, then the leader has to guess what the player is thinking, and if the leader can’t think of a word that fits that description and also the letters, then the other players get a chance to guess the word that the player is thinking of. If two player say the same word at the same time, then the leader has to give another letter of the word that they are thinking of. So, this continues on until someone figures out what the leader is thinking.

Informant’s Comments:

Collector’s Comments:

Collector’s Name: Andrew Ogren

Tags/Keywords:

Dartmouth Folklore Archive