February 29, 2008

High school highs...2

There was this game in school that we were all very crazy about. We used to call it "Grandslam". Very similar to hangman. But every letter has a clue. And more points for guessing the entire word. And even after the word is guessed, sometimes we can continue to play for the each letter clue.( Except for the basic rules, the game had highly evolved thanks to our collective synergic enthu for the game). The whole class would be divided to two groups (usually two) and there were some occasional fights, as someone thought someone else was cheating! This added drama to the game. The best part of it was the entire class would be animatedly excited to play the game. Some of our friends used to prepare it at home for the rest of us to play. The game is in fact as simple as I have put it here, but it used to be real fun. If any teacher asked us a "tricky" question for which none of us had an answer we would all cheerfully suggest "grandslam"(ok make it shout - our history teacher called us "barbarics"!!). So the teacher had to write all the dashes and give us a clue or two for us to guess the answer (not many would let us play the entire game – so give us some easy clues and finish it off). Not many teachers liked the idea, as it would not only eat up some time, but also since it would also make us happy and noisy!! As far as I remember it was our English teacher, Jyothsna maam, who showed equal enthusiasm to play the game when there was a chance for one. During the "extra" hours, lunch breaks, "game" periods, after school, before the classes began in the morning...we were game for it anytime. We played grandslams in history, geography, literature, biology...you name it we had played a grandslam on it! It was pure pleasure!

3 comments:

Vinay said...

Hey!...Firstly Thanks a lot for bringing back all school days memories thr ths posts :)
Comin to Grandslam!!!...man those were amazing!
You remember...huge penalties in terms of negative scoring for guessing the entire word wrongly :D
And I believe couple of times we even prepared grandslam for mathematically significant numbers too!
I infact was so obsessed with that I even had introduced it in my Engg class :)

PS:I happen to meet Jyothsna Ma'm in B'lore couple of months back...thinking of visiting her. Interested to join? :)

Pratibha said...

Thanks Vinay :)
Sure can join you, would be nice meeting her again after so many years..

Aleph Null said...

yes, grandslams were great!! say hi to jyothsna ma'm from me, if u meet her. i wish i could see her too!

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