Tag: Bogost

I played a board game over the weekend called Codenames: Pictures by Vlaada Chvátil. One acts a spy master who can see which picture cards belong to your team (and the other), but the rest of your team cannot. But only they can pick the pictures that your team needs. You then have to tell them which pictures they need to pick, but are constrained to saying only one word and one number. Example from picture above: “Medieval 3” which would you choose? (I’m thinking of the castle, the sword, and the weird knightly figure with candles around it)

Amazingly, even with the one word one number description, people do win at this game. Somehow, the human mind can form connections so quickly with so little information. As with the Kuleshov effect, we place meanings and assumptions on things to make sense of them. It reveals a lot about how the person thinks and what they notice in the pictures – and if anyone can notice the same thing as them or not. Sometimes it seems to obvious, just hidden behind that tiny invisible wall that’s in between conscious knowing and “Ohh, I knew thaaaat!” Tiny details in the pictures, relations that we all know but didn’t think of until it was mentioned, patterns… (It was said around our table that married couples played the game best hahah)

I think this is what the quote is saying. That noticing and paying attention is simple; you just have to be reminded.