saltwatersteve.com/travel

This should be a bit nostalgic for Anders. The Danish kids (Martin and Malene) taught us a fun game to take our minds off our sore feet while we were hiking from Campamento Guardas to Campamento Italiano in Parque Nacional Torres Del Paine. Spøgelse (SPOOHUL-SUH) is a word game, and having a large vocabulary helps (which is why we are scared to play this with Mrs. Snyder ). Object is to be the last player ‘alive’. Rules follow - read on.

REGULAR PLAY
Play is circular. After the last person’s turn, play returns to the first person. At the start of a round, the first person chooses a letter. Next person chooses another letter. Next person after that chooses another letter. Letters generally spell words. Choosing letters that make nonsense words may have consequences.

BLUFFING
The letter a player chooses to add to the existing letters may or may not make progress towards the spelling of a real word. The player may be trying to fool the others, for instance, because the player doesn’t want to complete a word, or may just want to bluff for fun.

CHALLENGING
If a player suspects that the previous player bluffed, they can challenge the previous player by asking to hear the word that begins with the chosen letters.

MISTAKES
Mistakes are any of the following: saying the last letter of a full word, bluffing and getting caught, challenging a bluffer but the bluffer produces a good word, or reacting to ghosts (see below). When a player makes mistakes, the other players sing:
‘En Tredjedel Spøgelse’ (AYNE TREY-UH-DEEL SPOOHUL-SUH) (1/3 of a ghost!),
‘To Tredjedels Spøgelse’ (TOE TREY-UH-DEEL SPOOHUL-SUH) (2/3 of a ghost!), or
‘Tre Tredjedels Spøgelse’ (TREY TREY-UH-DEEL SPOOHUL-SUH) (3/3 of a ghost!),
depending on the player-in-question’s accrual of mistakes.

GHOST STATUS
Once they are a full ghost, they are no longer players, but they can ask questions or goof off or pretend to play or whatever, and the remaining players must ignore them. If a player reacts to something a ghost does, they accrue another mistake and are therefore one step closer to becoming ghosts themselves.

DETAILS
If a player is given the letters L+I+V and they choose E (thinking LIVER), they actually made a mistake because they successfully spelled LIVE, a full word by itself. Strategy comes into play by approximately the third person to choose a letter because they can narrow the field to single words, thereby choosing the person they want to make a mistake.