Out of the mouth of babes. An old parlor game. A way to defeat the suicide protocols? A smile is confirmation. Suppose . . .
"If he'll drop dead if you ask him questions, mom, then just play—"
"CHARADES!"
Charades is a parlor or party word guessing game. Originally, the game was a dramatic form of literary charades: a single person would act out each syllable of a word or phrase in order, followed by the whole phrase together, while the rest of the group guessed. A variant was to have teams who acted scenes out together while the others guessed. Today, it is common to require the actors to mime their hints without using any spoken words, which requires some conventional gestures. Puns and visual puns were and remain common.Literary charades
The Triumph of Clytemnestra
Becky as a Louis-Quatorze Philomela
A charade was a form of literary riddle popularized in France in the 18th century where each syllable of the answer was described enigmatically as a separate word before the word as a whole was similarly described. The term charade was borrowed into English from French in the second half of the eighteenth century, denoting a "kind of riddle in which each syllable of a word, or a complete word or phrase, is enigmatically described or dramatically represented".
Written forms of charade appeared in magazines, books, and on the folding fans of the Regency. The answers were sometimes printed on the reverse of the fan, suggesting that they were a flirting device, used by a young woman to tease her beau. One charade composed by Jane Austen goes as follows:
When my first is a task to a young girl of spirit,
And my second confines her to finish the piece,
How hard is her fate! but how great is her merit
If by taking my whole she effects her release!
The answer is "hem-lock".
William Mackworth Praed's poetic charades became famous.
Later examples omitted direct references to individual syllables, such as the following, said to be a favorite of Theodore Roosevelt:
I talk, but I do not speak my mind
I hear words, but I do not listen to thoughts
When I wake, all see me
When I sleep, all hear me
Many heads are on my shoulders
Many hands are at my feet
The strongest steel cannot break my visage
But the softest whisper can destroy me
The quietest whimper can be heard.
The answer is "an actor".
In the early 20th century, the 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica offered these two prose charades as "perhaps as good as could be selected":
"My first, with the most rooted antipathy to a Frenchman, prides himself, whenever they meet, upon sticking close to his jacket; my second has many virtues, nor is its least that it gives its name to my first; my whole may I never catch!".
and
"My first is company; my second shuns company; my third collects company; and my whole amuses company".
with the answers being tartar and conundrum.
—Wiki.
