Google Snake Game

Here’s a party game which needs nothing but a working internet connection (say, a notebook or cell phone), and Google.com’s web search. The goal is to create the longest phrase that Google can find by alternately adding one word to the end of the other player’s search phrase.

Say, the first person starts with “Feelings”. Now the second person adds a word, “are”, so we get “Feelings are”... (Note the use of quotation marks in the search query.) Now every time a word is added, the phrase is searched for in Google, and the resulting page count is announced to the group. The one person who creates a sentence with zero results in Google loses and has
to do something silly (or if you want to play with points, he loses a point, and the last person who created a sentence with results in Google will win a point).

To prevent cheating, the one whose turn is next is not allowed to look at any search result snippet. Let’s take our sample, and see what we get:

• Peter: “Feelings” (53,200,000 results in Google)
• Mary: “Feelings are” (2,100,000 results)
• Jake: “Feelings are nothing” (1,090 results)
• Susan: “Feelings are nothing and” (19 results)
• Peter: “Feelings are nothing and we” (0 results)
• Susan gets 1 point, and Peter gets minus 1 points (or has to do something silly).
  

If you create too obscure a sentence there won’t be any results and you will lose, but if your sentence gets too many results, your opponent will also be able to create a sentence with results. The basic strategy is to try to create sentences so silly that there are only a few results, but not so silly there are no results…

Have fun!!

Egogoogling

Have you ever searched for your own name on Google, curious what the world has to say about you? Almost everyone of us did, one time or another. In fact, you should – maybe others search for you all the same, and you want to know what they will find.

The act of searching for yourself is also known as “egogoogling.” Here’s a variant of it which can be a fun game. Enter your first name followed by the word “is” into Google, and put the search in quotes. For example, if your name is Susan, the search would look like this:
“susan is” Now in the search result snippets, you will learn a lot of things about
you that you didn’t even know!

For the name “Susan,” we get the following:

• Susan is an amazing person to work with!
• Susan is an ethical woman and is refusing to cooperate
• Susan is a very attractive young lady (with a boyfriend) who for some reason is always late.
• Susan is a top Florida residential real estate agent.
• Susan is a top producer specializing in the ski resort town of Breckenridge, as well as the surrounding area.
  

Not only can you apply this approach to find out more about yourself (or just have a good laugh, actually, as the results are likely to be about another person), you can also use this to find out about celebrities. To do so, enter the full celebrity name followed by the word “is” into

Google, and put it in quotes again:
“arnold schwarzenegger is”

For action movie star Arnie, we get these results:

• Arnold Schwarzenegger is a very talented man who would make an excellent governor.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is falling into a similar spiral.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is looking out for voters’ best interests.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is a man more familiar with the red carpets of a movie premiere than a white collar business seminar.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is terrifying as the “killer cyborg” who “looks like Death rendered in steel.”
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is The Terminator (T-800).
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is quickly discovering that life in politics doesn’t always produce the happy endings so common in many of his Hollywood blockbusters.
  

Note that you can use “stars in,” “was born in” and similar glue words instead of “is” to find out almost anything about a celebrity. You can even expand the idea to include things, not people… try searching for “Nikon cameras are” and similar queries.