Mad Gab is a board game involving words. At least two teams of 2–12 players have two minutes to sound out three puzzles. The puzzles are known as
mondegreens and contain small words that, when put together, make a word or phrase. For example, "These If Hill Wore" when pronounced quickly sounds like "The Civil War". There are two levels, easy and hard. The faster the puzzles are answered, the more points the players score.
This game uses
phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
, which is a branch of
linguistics
Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...
. This game is a test for the human brain to process sounds based on simpler English-written sounds into a meaningful word or phrase. The game is designed where a person would not be able to decode the meaning of the phrase unless spoken out loud and listened; reading the phrase silently will not allow the player to decode the meaning because ''sounds'' would have to be encoded into meaningful English words.
Game versions
Bible Mad Gab, released in 2000, references the
NIV Niv may refer to:
* Niv, a personal name; for people with the name, see
* Niv Art Movies, a film production company of India
* Niv Art Centre, in New Delhi, India
NIV may refer to:
* The New International Version, a translation of the Bible into ...
, e.g. "know Ozark".
See also
*
Ambiguity
*
Amphibology
*
Double entendre
A double entendre (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, of which one is typically obvious, whereas the other often conveys a message that would be too socially ...
*
Eggcorn
*
Folk etymology
*
Holorime
Holorime (or holorhyme) is a form of rhyme where two very similar sequences of sounds can form phrases composed of different words and with different meanings. For example, the two lines of Miles Kington's poem "A Lowlands Holiday Ends in Enjoyab ...
*
Ladle Rat Rotten Hut
The Anguish Languish is an ersatz language constructed from similar-sounding English language words. It was created by Howard L. Chace circa 1940, and he later collected his stories and poems in the book ''Anguish Languish'' (Prentice-Hall, 1956). ...
*
Mairzy Doats
“Mairzy Doats” is a novelty song written and composed in 1943 by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston. It contains lyrics that make no sense as written, but are near homophones of meaningful phrases. The song's title, for example, i ...
*
Malapropism
A malapropism (also called a malaprop, acyrologia, or Dogberryism) is the mistaken use of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical, sometimes humorous utterance. An example is the statement attributed to ...
*
Mondegreen
*
Same-sounding phrases
A homophone () is a word that is Pronunciation, pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A ''homophone'' may also differ in spelling. The two words may be Spelling, spelled the same, for example ''rose'' ( ...
*
Phono-semantic matching
Phono-semantic matching (PSM) is the incorporation of a word into one language from another, often creating a neologism, where the word's non-native quality is hidden by replacing it with Phonetics, phonetically and semantically similar words o ...
*
Relaxed pronunciation Relaxation stands quite generally for a release of tension, a return to equilibrium.
In the sciences, the term is used in the following ways:
* Relaxation (physics), and more in particular:
** Relaxation (NMR), processes by which nuclear magnetiza ...
*
Soramimi
is a Japanese word that in the context of contemporary Japanese internet meme culture and its related slang is commonly used to refer to humorous homophonic reinterpretation, deliberately interpreting words as other similar-sounding words for co ...
External links
*
{{Mattel
Board games introduced in 1996
Mattel games
Word board games