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Christmas is coming and no doubt many will spend some time inbibing volumes of mulled wine and warming toddies, in good company of course. So why not try this armchair game that I can vouch helps pass a pleasant hour. It is brought to you care of the reknown Paddy Griffith and his colleagues at SMATS. I have found that enjoyment of the game increases in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream.
The Glossary Game
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A particularly troublesome aspect of military studies, especially if you are trying to write a
book about warfare since 1914, is the matter of compiling glossaries to explain all the arcane
and apparently gratuitous terms and acronyms. The acronyms themselves are usually
explicable insofar as they are taken directly from the initials of the words - e.g. the King's Royal
Rifle Corps is simply 'KRRC' - but the choice of the words themselves is often explicable only
to one who has the mindset of the military forces concerned (in this case the use of both
'King's' and 'Royal' would appear to be tautologous, the 'Rifle' often anachronistic [in the
desert war they used Bren gun carriers], and the very word 'Corps' is a notoriously ambiguous
& misleading term).
Hence in order to invent one of these acronyms one should display the
mental agility & imagination to think oneself into the military mind.
Another problem is the use of the same initials for several different things. Thus' SAR '
in the desert war represented the South African Rifles, while in Vietnam it meant Search and
Rescue (and doubtless at the battle of lsandhlwana it meant the vital Small Arms Reserve
wagons...). This flexibility is actually a help to inventing acronyms, although it can be very
confusing to anyone trying to decipher them.
Playing the Game
The Games Master ('GM' or 'Genetically Modified') goes round each player in turn, and
randomly deals them three Scrabble tiles in the order they come out of the bag. The player
must then attempt to explain the military acronym that they spell (e.g. the letters 'VBG' might
stand for a 'Very Big Gun '). A rapid and pertinent response wins the player two chips; but if
he asks the GM to 'twist' he gets a fourth tile and the chance to double his winnings if he can
still come up with a good reply. If he fails at either stage, it is thrown open to all the other
players. The first to reply wins one chip for a three-letter acronym and two chips for one of
four letters.
The game continues for as many rounds as are required, and the winner is the player with
the most chips at the end.
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