Squared Anagrams and Fuzzy Processes
/Last Friday I wrote about Squared Anagrams and how you can build your anagrams in such a way that you get more information with seemingly less guesses.
In that post I used a Ouija board as the divining instrument, but that’s not the only way to use it (it was just the easiest to illustrate).
Before I get to some alternative ideas, I want to emphasize why this works so well.
Let’s say you have a 16-item traditional anagram.
That means you need to have four letter guesses to sort out which one they picked (either four guesses on average, or four guesses exactly depending on how you build the anagram).
So you might have
Yes, No, Yes, No
Yes, No, No, No
No, Yes, Yes, No
And 13 other potential
With the squared anagram, and just two “volleys” you only have four potential outcomes:
Yes, Yes
Yes, No
No, Yes
No, No
Each of these outcomes has a simple “story” that goes along with it:
Yes, Yes = “This is working!”
No, No = “Ok, this isn’t working. Let’s try something else.”
Yes, No = “I thought it was working, but that must have been luck. Let’s try something else.”
No, Yes = “Something wasn’t right the first time. But now it’s working!”
Coming up with a “story” for four guesses can be a little wonky, depending on how they fall out.
Yes, No, Yes, No = “It’s working! No, it’s not. It’s working! Nope, it’s not”
No, No, No, Yes = “It’s not working. It’s not working. Seriously, this isn’t working at all but I’m still going to ask one more letter. As if getting a Yes on this last letter could possibly be meaningful in any way at all that would be discernible from dumb luck.”
It’s because of the potential for these up and down types of responses that I always felt it was better to use some kind of oracle or process (other than straight mind reading) to “receive” the letters. This way, if a letter is wrong, it can be the oracle/process that is wrong. Or the oracle/process that you misinterpreted. That makes a little more sense than, “I can read your mind, but for some reason I thought there was a B and an M in the word ‘little.’”
With “Squared Anagrams,” the idea is just to use an oracle/process that is fuzzy in some way in order to cut down your guesses dramatically. (A six-guess standard anagram would cover 64 outcomes. A six-guess squared anagram would cover 4096 outcomes.)
The Ouija board is a fuzzy oracle because you can’t always be certain which letter is being indicated.
Here is a more useful “fuzzy” process.
The Sweep
This is the method my friend uses for his Squared Anagram routine and it goes over very well. The spectator is thinking of a word. My friend takes his right hand so it’s across his body, palm out, at his left shoulder. “I’m going to go through the alphabet, from A-Z. When I say a letter that’s in your word, I want you to think ‘Yes.’ Just think it. Try not to move your mouth or anything else.” He now starts reciting the alphabet and sweeping his arm from left to right as if he’s spreading out the alphabet in the air in front of him.
“A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M- ooh… something around here,” he says, stopping his sweeping motion and going back just a bit, moving his hand in a circular motion in the air around where he stopped.
“An L?” he asks.
If he gets a Yes: “And an M?”
If he gets a No: “It must be an M then.”
Now he knows if it’s an L, M, Both, or Neither. Four options with just one “impulse” from the spectator. And it makes complete sense that this “impulse” might not be exact. The person isn’t mentally sending him a letter. She’s sending him the thought, “Yes.” But she’s sending out that thought as the alphabet is passing by. It would be like throwing a tennis ball at cars in a line of moving traffic. Did you intend to hit the one that just passed or the one that was coming?
If he gets a “Neither,” then he pauses here, and he repeats the process with a known word. The spectator’s name. “Okay, something’s not right here. I’m not picking up on the right thing. Let’s try this. I’m going to go through the alphabet again—forget the word you’re thinking, for now—instead, when I get to the letters in your name, Dana, I want you to think Yes. That should help calibrate things, if this is going to work at all.”
So he goes through the alphabet again, with them thinking Yes on the letters of their name.
Now that they’re properly “calibrated” he resets and goes through the process again. This time getting a hit somewhere between R and S.
Now, if we call a “hit” getting one or the other letter correct (or both), that means:
After two guesses, you’ll know the word and…
9/16ths of the time you’ll get two hits- “This is working!”
3/16ths of the time you’ll get a hit followed by a miss - “I thought it was working, but that must have been luck. Let’s try something else.”
3/16ths of the time you’ll get a miss followed by a hit - “Something wasn’t right at first. But now it’s working!”
1/16th of the time you’ll get two misses - “Ok, this isn’t working. Let’s try something else.”
To build this anagram, you just need two sets of adjacent letters anywhere in the alphabet, and then fill it out with words (or names) using that criteria.
What other types of fuzzy guesses could work?
Fuzzy Alphabet
Lowercase letters offer a number of 2-for-1 guesses like m and w.
Do these letters says buph? Or something much, much more wonderful?
If you had some homemade alphabet flash-cards—maybe something your kid drew, or you drew as a kid—you could have two “randomly” selected letters and from them you could unpack 16 potential possibilities.
Fuzzy Sounds
“Sound the letters out for me in your head, one-by-one. Let’s see… I’m getting a…hmm a muh or a nuh, I think. Are you thinking of an M or a N? Both?”
You can also use B and P, S and Z, and C and K.
Fuzzy Visuals
“Picture the letters in your head for me. Cycle through them for me one-by-one. Hmmm. Okay, I’m going to really need you to concentrate for me, if you can. I think I’m getting something but it’s out of focus. I think I’m getting a C or maybe an O? I can’t tell if it’s a closed circle or not. Were you thinking of one of those? Both?”
And, of course, you could (perhaps should) combine these ideas. Maybe at first you have them think of the way the letters look. But since that wasn’t very clear, you then go on to how the letters sound.
If you think guessing letters is boring, you’re right. But I still think this is a tool that can be used for some non-boring effects. I’ve watched my friend really fry people with his own routine (which he tells me he’ll let me share here next year at some point). And I’ve recently come up with my own routine that I’ve only performed a couple of times, but if the reactions continue to hold up, it’s going to be a “book worthy” effect, so supporters of the site will see it some day in the future.