Game Type

Word game

Title

Thesaurus At Play

Brand

Logophilia Unlimited

🃏 Rare LOCAL Vintage Game “Thesaurus At Play” by Palo Alto Creator 🃏 🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏 🃏 Rare LOCAL Vintage Game (c.1981) 🃏 “Thesaurus At Play” 🃏 by creator H. R. ‘Tom’ Sawyer of LOGOPHILIA UNLIMITED, Palo Alto 🃏 (see 2 articles below) 🃏 In excellent condition 🃏 $250 (cash only) 🃏 P/U in Redwood City 🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏 https://offerup.co/faYXKzQFnY?$deeplink_path=/redirect/ Publication Date: Friday Jul 21, 1995 Spotlight: Palo Alto's own etymologist Name: H.R. "Tom" Sawyer Age: "Old enough to know better" Residence: Palo Alto Background: While working as an engineer for an American company in South America after World War II, Sawyer, who was learning Portuguese and Spanish at the time, developed an interest in word origins. "I started 'collecting' words; it became my hobby," Sawyer says. Upon moving to Palo Alto in 1980, Sawyer parlayed his interest in etymology into the development of a patented educational vocabulary game he calls Thesaurus at Play. He has been fine-tuning the game and working on marketing it for the better part of a decade, investing about $250,000 of his own money into the effort. The game: "I've discovered through intensive research that for maximum effect, (Thesaurus at Play) should be played by five people. That's the ideal number." The concept is simple: points are won and lost for correctly or incorrectly guessing the definitions of words in various word root categories--from agoraphobia to zoomorphism. Playing with five people maximizes the retention process, Sawyer says. The concept behind the game: "By learning only about 250 word roots, people are able to divine the meaning of over 100,000 words." Other projects: When he wasn't working on Thesaurus at Play, the intrepid inventor designed and built the prototype for a table tennis ball-retrieval system, which involves surrounding the table with netting and using a vacuum to suck up those badly aimed balls into a return station underneath the table. "It's especially great for people in wheelchairs, but could be a benefit for anyone," says Sawyer, who also holds a patent for this idea. To play Thesaurus at Play: Sawyer says his game is especially appropriate for "learning clubs" and study groups, but anyone can play. Send a check for $48, plus $4 for shipping, to P.O. Box 60344, Palo Alto, CA 94306. 🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏🃏 https://offerup.co/faYXKzQFnY?$deeplink_path=/redirect/ SPARTAN DAILY… Word buffs get new game By Phil LaVelle - March 19, 1982 (Page 6 on PDF) By the time most people have gotten to college know the meaning of such advanced words as nihilism, odious, and histology. But the meaning of ketabasis? Or what it means to macerate or to obfuscate? (Ketabasis is a military retreat. To macerate is to soften by soaking something for some time, or to soften through digestion. To obfuscate is to confuse, bewilder, stupefy.) All these words, and many more, appear in an ad- vanced vocabulary game developed by a Peninsula philologist, and they should be part of a college level vocabulary, he maintains. "These aren’t esoteric words. They are words used by writers and columnists. You’ll run into them if you read quite a bit,"said H.R."Tom"Sawyer. Sawyer said the initial idea for a vocabulary game came as a reaction to heavy dictionaries. "I’m a word buff. I hate to wrestle with a five-pound dictionary if I don’t have to," he said. Sawyer developed his game Thesaurus at Play three years ago, oddly enough as the result of being laid up with a serious injury. Sawyer broke his neck and had to spend two months in bed, completely immobilized. "When I was lying in bed, I had blurred vision and I couldn’t read. So, I thought a lot. I figured this thing (the game) out and took it to a patent attorney," Sawyer said. When Sawyer learned he’d been granted a patent for his vocabulary game, he formed Logophilia Unlimited of Palo Alto, a firm he uses to distribute and promote the game. Thesaurus at Play consists of two decks of cards, score sheets, a spinner and instructions. The first edition of TAP sells for $16 at the Spartan Bookstore. The basic course of the game has players challenge each other to define words on cards chosen by the roll of the spinner. Points are added or subtracted, depending on whether the definition is correct or not. "The object of the game is to acquire a good vocabulary and use it and remember it," Sawyer said. "By the time you’ve played a few of these decks, you’ll have increased your vocabulary," Sawyer said. Sawyer uses the World Book Dictionary by Doubleday as his source, which he says has a "better selection, better etymology." Sawyer said subsequent editions of TAP will cover foreign words and terms used in the English language and "confoundables," words Sawyer s

Age Level

17 years & up