A Stupid Keyboard Game I Made Up

I am a person who has to do many boring things, more often than not in front of a keyboard of some sort. However, there’s only so much boringness one person can take before their mind starts to wander. They take inspiration from the sights around them, and let their imagination run wild with its most creative and off-the-wall ideas. For me that sight was a keyboard, and my imagination made a game about it. For years this game has been trying to burst out of my head, but I never knew how to. Recently I got the idea to make a blog about it, containing the rules of the game and how I came up with it. That's this blog. It's what you're reading right now. Or at least, it's what you will be reading after you finish reading the introduction paragraph.

As with any game, the most important part is the actual objective of the game itself. After all, without an objective, is there even really a game? The objective of this game is to spell words on a keyboard by drawing a line between the keys, while having as few intersections between lines as possible. Here’s an example:

As you can see, I’ve connected the B, L, O and G keys to create the word ‘blog’. Hopefully this should give you an idea of how the game is played. It’s pretty easy to understand, though it's not very interesting with short words like blog. Most of the time I play with longer and more complex words. They tend to be more difficult, but that’s where the fun of the game lies!

As with any game, the most important part is the rules. These create the confines from which the game is played and the challenges you must overcome. An unbreakable, binding restriction that allows you find fulfillment. My word spelling game has those too!

When connecting two letters together, the line created must be straight. It cannot curve, bend, or be anything that isn’t straight. It wouldn't be very challenging if we could just draw around everything with no limitations! To connect two letters together, pick where on the next key you want the line to end. Top right corner? Bottom left? The centre? Make sure your choice sets you up for an advantage in future turns. When the line you created hits the next letter in the word, the line stops. Continuing from where the previous line ended, you must connect it to the next letter in the word. Repeat this process until complete.

Your “score” is based on the number of times your line crosses over itself. The best score you can get is 0, which means that the line didn’t cross over itself once. How you angle your line is key to getting a good score, since one good shot could turn a seemingly impossible word into a completely possible one. Try it! Pick literally any word that you can think of, and see if you can figure out a way to get a score of 0.

…how’d you do? What was your score? Was it more challenging than you thought? Depending on the length of the word, as well as the letters in it, it can be pretty difficult to get a line that doesn’t cross over itself at any point. I found myself running into that scenario multiple times when I first came up with this game. It was frustrating, not being able to complete any words longer than a few letters. So, when presented with such scenarios, I would find… alternative ways to give myself an advantage that weren’t previously outlined in the rules. You might call that cheating, I call it…

As with any game, the most important part are the advanced techniques you can do. These allow even the simplest of games to gain a high skill ceiling for its players. I already explained the objective of the game. I also explained how this game gets alot more fun when trying to spell harder words. However if you try to play this game with a word longer than 4 characters, you may notice that it's pretty much impossible to make a chain that doesn't overlap itself. This is no good. When I come across this scenario, I will sometimes make up a brand new 'technique' separate from the core rules to help me solve the word.

The advanced techniques present in my game allow its players to find solutions for even the most challenging of words. As stated previously, most of these techniques came to be when I was presented with a scenario where I couldn’t complete a word. Some of the other techniques were things I came up with on the spot because it was an oddly specific scenario I hadn’t accounted for within the original ruleset.

Anyways, here are the techniques:

1. You can choose your starting position on the starting key. In the 'blog' example from earlier, I started on the centre of the B key, but I really could've started anywhere I wanted to as long as it was somewhere on the B key. I could've chosen the top left corner of the key, the bottom right corner, or even 1mm to the left and 2mm down from the centre of the key. While a pretty small difference in distance, that small distance could have a huge impact later on in the game.

In the 'blog' example, I would've been better off if I had started at the top right corner of the B key, since that would create the shortest line between the B and L keys. However this doesn’t really affect the game much since there’s no need to go anywhere near that line for the rest of the word. For a better example, I made the word 'gem' below. I began the connection in the bottom left corner of the G key, which makes connecting the line from the E key to the M key much easier than if I had started in the centre since the GE line is out of the way of the EM line.

2. If a line hits the edge of the keyboard (or any key that isn’t a letter), it will ricochet off of it and continue onward. This can help you finish a word if the path you previously created is blocking off a straight shot to the next letter. However, this comes with the consequence that it blocks off a huge portion of the board itself. Ricocheting off a wall most likely means that you won't be able to ricochet off of that same wall again, so it’s something you want to use resourcefully. The ricochet is probably the most useful technique, and you will most likely need it in order to able to solve any decently complex word longer than a certain number of characters.

In the example below, I made the word ‘bright’ by ricocheting off of the wall to connect the H and T keys. It technically wasn’t necessary to do that to connect the two keys, as I could’ve gone to the bottom left corner of the H key and connected them from there, but I wanted to display the versatility of the ricochet. Being able to ricochet off the wall gives you more flexibility in your solutions rather than having to rely on setups made previously, and if I had been a bit more careless with my previous moves then I wouldn’t have been able to directly connect H and T together (Also, I just didn’t realize that the ricochet wasn’t necessary until after I had already made the example and I didn’t feel like redoing it).

3. If you have a word like 'book' where there are two of the same letter in a row, then your next move must be to create a line connecting two points on the same key. This gives you a chance to pick a more favourable position on the key if your last move left you in a challenging spot. Granted, a word like 'book' doesn't really require you to use this technique since you could easily reach the K key no matter where you landed on the O key, but it is something that can be useful for longer words with more complex paths.

This technique also helps you visualize the fact that there are two of the same letter in the word, as opposed to the line staying in the same position no matter what and looking like you were trying to spell ‘bok’ instead. Since this whole game evolved out of visualizing words, being able to retrace what you spelled is important.

And that's everything you need to know to be able to play the game! I think. Hopefully I'm not forgetting something. I wouldn't be suprirsed if I was. Before I sign off I want to compare two rounds of this game, one played using just the basic rules I outlined at the beginning and the second played with the advanced techniques. I'll provide my analysis on the game which should help illustrate the helpfulness of the advanced techniques, as well as how they work together.

Take the two games played above. Both are spelling the word ‘JetPunk’, but go about it in different ways. The version on the left only ever goes for the centre of the keys, ignoring where it’s been previously, which leads to it doubling back and crossing over itself numerous times. The version on the right goes out its way to avoid touching itself, starting on the lower-left corner of the J key and even bouncing off the wall near the L key. The techniques reduce the number of collisions from 2 to 0! Getting to find these contact-free solutions and visualizing the shapes the path makes in my head is where the fun of this game lies for me.

This game was inspired by a meme that claimed typing 'skepticism' was like playing ping pong with your keyboard. And it's true! Every letter in that word is on the opposite side of the board as its neighbours. Then I started to visualize the pattern 'skepticism' made in my head, then I started doing it for other words, then bingo bango bongo I ended up with this game. Tentative names are Keyboard Pong, Skeptic Strokes, or just The Keyboard Chain Game. Honestly I'm not really sure what I like better. I hadn’t really given it much thought until now since I've never actually shared this game with anybody before, so this is the first time that the game has actually needed a name.

If this game sounds like a mildly amusing way to pass the time, then try it! Let me know what the longest word you can string together in the comments below, and how low you can reduce your score. If you ever end up in a scenario where you need to… make ‘modifications’ to the rules (AKA cheat), let me know in the comments below as well! Who knows, I might adopt the mod into my own ruleset too ;P

That's all from me for now. This is a bit of a shorter blog than I usually post, but I guess I also just had less to say. I was really more explaining rules than offering up my opinion or the history of something, I suppose. I also meant to upload this blog way earlier, but unfortunately life got in the way and I wasn't able to have it ready in time. I hope you accept my later upload.

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