Shiritori Competition

Day 866, 00:47 • Published in Japan Japan • by Democratic Party of Japan
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Hello everyone, how are you going?

Our party members has put in a lot of thought and effort to create a competition which we aimed to make the community more interesting, the contest will be based on a game called shiritori (しりとり), the game will be carry out under this post, the following paragraphs will describe the basic rules of the game, scoring system, and the prizes.

Introduction

Shiritori is a traditional word game in Japan. While the history behind the game has largely been forgotten, The game seems to hold some significance in Japanese "mythology". According to the Book of XXXHolic, the legend said that a game of shiritori can be used for used for wanding off curses from evil elements, and spirits.

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Artist illustration of vergeful spirits in ancient times and modern times.

In the modern day though, shiritori is used extensively as an education tools for school children for learning and practicing new words. It is also used to help people to relax their mind.

The rule of the game

In a game of Shiritori, "Shiri" means "end" and "tori" means "take.", so the pharse Shiritori means "taking the end" literally (Wikipedia). The basic idea of the game is to take the end of a word and use it as the start of another word.

For example, player A, B and C is practicing a game of shiritori as the following.
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Under the normal game rule, the player who failed to provide a word when it is his or her turn will lose, but since the turnbased element is not suitable for a game where people can just join in the middle of the game and people leaving in the middle of the game.

We have changed the mechanism of the game into a point scoring system, which means everytime you come up with a valid word, you will earn a certain amount of points, and this will enable someone to join in start of the game or middle of the game, etc. We will discuss more about the scoring system later on.

To encourage people to participate, the language we used in this game is Japanese and English. However, because of the difference between the two languages, there are a number of rules you need to observe to ensure the game can run smoothly.

1. If you are using Japanese word, you must also included the Romanji of the word using Hepburn romanisation, incorrect romanji may be consider as a invalid word.
2. Everyone will take turns, and nobody may double-post. Those will be counted as 'disqualified' words.
3. You cannot use the same word again, or use the grammatical tense of a word, or the plural of a word (e.g. ducks is invalid if duck has been mentioned, or picked is invalid if pick has been used.)
4. Every word must be consist of only one word only

5. For people who use Japanese in the game, if your previous word is in Japanese, you must use the same last character as the previous player. That is if the last player's word is "しぶや" or "shibuya", then you must use "や(ya)" as the start of your word, and not yo, yu, or yi.

5. However, because there are no words in Japanese started with ん(n), if someone comes up with a word that ended with n, then the next player can get a wild card, if they continue to use Japanese. And they are start a new word with any character. (Alternatively, you can play an English word instead)

5. For people who use English words in the game, if your previous word is English, you must use the same last chacter as the previous player. That is if the last word is "liquid", then you must use "d" as the start of your word, and not "id".

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Simple so far, this is which it get confusing.

6. If you are using English and the last word given is Japanese, you have to use the last Japanese syllable (e.g. if the last word is くま(kuma), then you have to start your word with "ma" instead of a.

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7. There are some words that are difficult to match between Japanese character and English words. To simply this, the follow rules can be applie😛
- If the Japanese word give is from the Yoon block (e.g. kya, sha, cha, nya, hya, etc...), the player can play a English word ka, sa, ca or ka, na, ha, etc... instead.
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- For Japanese words with long vowel like とうきょうと(Tookyoo), the player can play a English word started with kyo or ko.

8. If you are using Japanese and the last word given is English, you can use any Japanese syllable started with the character (e.g. if the last word given in English is "top" for example. You can form your next word with ぱ(pa), ぴ(pi), ぷ(pu), ぺ(pe), ぽ(po), ぴゃ(pya), ぴゅ(pyu), ぴょ(pyo), etc...)

9. However there are some English words that don't appear in Japanese phonetic system. The following rule will apply:
- if the last letter of the English word is c, you can use anything start with k.
- if the last letter of the English word is f, you can use anything start with h.
- if the last letter of the English word is l, you can use anything start with r.
- if the last letter of the English word is n, you can use anything start with na,ni, nu, ne and no, nya, nyu and nyo, (can't be started with n, as there is no Japanese word begin with ん).
- if the last letter is q, v, and x you can use a wildcard, and then start a new word with any character.

That's the rule for the game, sorry if it is too confusing. But once it got started, it is become easier.

Scoring system
1. Each valid English word worths 1 point.
2. Each valid Japanese word worths 5 points (to encourage more people to learn to use Japanese).
3. For every 10 words without using a wildcard, this will increase the chain level, the chain level started with 0 at the start of the game, each chain level gives you 0.5x more points. (e.g. if the chain level is 2, i.e. 20+ words was posted without using a wild card, then each valid English word worths 2 points and each valid Japanese word worths 10 points)
4. The chain level will reset to 0 everytime a wildcard is used.
5. Breaking the chain will cost you 10x chain level amount of points (e.g. if you break a chain at level 2, you will lose 20 points)
5. Aston will be monitor the scoring for us since he has more knowledge about Japanese.

Prizes
The person by the end of the event with the most points will be awarded first place.
+ Prize for first place is a weekly supply of Q5 food (i.e. 7x Q5 food)
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+ Prize for second place is 10x Q1 gift
+ Prize for the players with most Japanese words outside the first and second place will be awarded with 1x Q5 food
+ Prize for most English words outside the first and second place will be awarded with 1x Q5 food
+ Prize for participation 1x Gift

Date
The event will start now, and ended by the end of April 5th 2010 by the game clock. The result will be calculate by Aston and I after that. No entries will be counted after the end of the event.

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