Cruelty-Free, Phonics-Free Hangman

Sometimes we play hangman or tic-tac-toe at restaurants, while we're waiting for the food. But Daniel developed a new game, and was very excited about it.

We were in a Vietnamese restaurant the other night, and Ian started in on a round of hangman. Daniel was clearly inspired by Ian's activity, but he had ideas of his own. He took a napkin, asked me for a pen, and set right to work. He quickly drew 26 little boxes on the napkin, and asked me to fill out the letters of the alphabet. I did. Then he asked me to guess what thing, in the restaurant, he was thinking of.

- A sign on the wall?

Without drawing the classic gallows of hang-man, Daniel drew a head.

- A table?

Daniel drew a line for a neck.

- A bowl of soup?

Daniel drew a little round torso.

The guesses soon got pretty exhaustive, and soon the figure had all kinds of little round shoulder, elbow, forearms, legs - all circles connected by lines. And a big frowny-face up top.

At one point, Ian said, "Guess a person."

- A person?

Daniel lost a bit of composure, obviously sad that I guessed the answer.

So I rescinded my guess, and went back to minutiae. Chopsticks? Salt and pepper shakers? Tea? Silverware?

Daniel was back in business, very happy, drawing out as many little nodes as he needed to on his hapless not-quite-hangman. Then it was time to bring the boys for their pre-highway potty trip. Daniel brought his napkin-canvas with him, and made me keep guessing, setting it down on the sink.

Frown-man turned out to be a great game for Daniel, and he was eager to bring his sopping, ink-dripping project to the car, which I did, if only to humor him. I was happy that he could get into a drawing-and-guessing game without the standard death-penalty imagery. And I think Daniel was happy that he could play something extremely close to hangman, without having to get caught up in all that silly spelling.

Everybody wins.

(November 11, 2011)