I'm a big fan of killing time on long drives with friendly word games. One of my favorites is a mix between rhyming and square theory. Here's how it works: one player picks two words that rhyme perfectly. Then, for each of those words, they choose a clue word, usually a synonym, but any kind of related word is fair game. They say those two clue words out loud, and the other players have to guess the original rhyming pair.
What makes it fun is trying to reverse-engineer the original rhyme from the clues. It's like solving a little logic puzzle. It's easy to come up with new puzzles, but cracking them can be surprisingly tricky. Still, the structure gives just enough to keep it solvable most of the time.
Our family plays "Match Three" during long drives where one person comes up with three words and whoever correctly answers with a word that can complete or precede any of them becomes "it" and chooses the next set.
Homophones and proper nouns are considered acceptable.
So for example: (Fox, Lone, Crossed)
The answer would be: Star
Star Fox - a well known rail shooter originally on the SNES
Lone Starr - the only man who would dare give a raspberry to Dark Helmet
Star Crossed - a Shakespearean reference to two people whose relationship is doomed
Thanks yeah it's a very fun game! When you're creating a new "match three" on the fly, I find it's easiest to start with a common word and work your way backwards until you've got three that fit.
There have been occasions where the answer was not the intended one, but it still fits all three and that's considered fair game!
Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyming_slang: “The construction of rhyming slang involves replacing a common word with a phrase of two or more words, the last of which rhymes with the original word; then, in almost all cases, omitting, from the end of the phrase, the secondary rhyming word (which is thereafter implied)”
My personal recommendation is this game1. Not for travel, but a very good in forcing interesting associations and making you mad at your partner, which is a certified sign of a good game.
If you like codenames, you might also enjoy decrypto [1], it scratches a very similar part of my brain. There's a set of secret words, and the codemaster needs to give clues that are specific enough that if you know the secret words, you can make the connection, but vague enough that you can't guess the secret words.
for the record, i can't find any combination of those words in my transcriptions of loveline shows, although i don't have them all, and it is possible there are up to 50% transcription errors. there is 1 reference to "Stinky Linky" but it appears unrelated, "what's the linky?" "freckles" - i got excited that i found it but looking at the context it was in vain.
i have five clean references to "as a mason jar" so my collection is fairly complete ;-)
Oh, then i concur with your prior statement that it "continues [...] today"; i define "LoveLine" differently. Someday i'll find the time to get "fills" - i only have 5.5 years fully transcribed.
Is the example meant to rhyme, or is it an example of a subtle category of "words that only rhyme in some English accents"? "Offle Woffle" is somewhat standard American English, while "Orful Warful" would be British English.
You could add the additional constraint that the words have to insult the guesser based on their unique psychological vulnerabilities. Hope that helps!
What makes it fun is trying to reverse-engineer the original rhyme from the clues. It's like solving a little logic puzzle. It's easy to come up with new puzzles, but cracking them can be surprisingly tricky. Still, the structure gives just enough to keep it solvable most of the time.
1. Somewhat described here https://bestlifeonline.com/jeopardy-rhyme-time-opera-version... It's actually quite difficult to find a description of the category many of us are already familiar with.