I played an epic word game with my Advanced class students today. My foreign coworker called in sick, leaving me to come in early and cover his classes. He had already covered half of the lesson I normally do in each class, so I had 25 minutes left to kill when I finished my lecture. The students asked if they could do something else, but I told them I had a new word game for them, and they would have a great time trying to figure it out.

I got started by stating: “You can read a book, but you can’t read a magazine.”

The game “Can and Can’t” is full of non-sequitur statements. The sentence itself isn’t meant to make sense factually, but does have to follow a single rule. The student’s job was to figure out what that rule was, and then be able to give me sample sentences that showed they understood that rule. Once the students got a grip on the concept, I got down to giving them a ton of examples.

“You can be killed, but you can’t be murdered.”

“You can wear mittens, but you can’t wear gloves.”

“You can shoot, but you can’t score.”

“You can go to a pool, but you can’t swim.”

The game was me speaking in these sorts of cryptic clues for about ten minutes, then I got some people started to try to crack the code. The first people that tried answering had no idea what to do. Some of the students got statements right, but didn’t know why.

Then, one of my brightest students spoke up, “You can wear a muffler, but not a neck tie.”

She had cracked the code! I had a huge grin on my face when I told her she was correct. The entire class gave her a double take and shouted in disbelief. I told students that cracked the code that they were forbidden from sharing the secret.

One of the students that makes it through about 50% of a class before taking a nap was the only other student to crack the code. While a bright girl cracking the code first was no surprise, to see a slacker get it second was maddening to this group of overachievers. Everyone in the class got really upset when the three of us started making up ridiculous sentences together and checking each other’s skills.

The boy said, “You can eat an apple, but not a watermelon. A banana would be okay too.”

The girl said, “No! No, bananas! You can eat apples, but not bananas!”

The rest of the class was in utter confusion, but I confirmed that the girl was correct.

I was going to walk out of the class without explaining it, but I knew that the peer pressure those two students faced was going to be too rough. The rest of the students said they wanted to learn the rule we were using so that they could torment my director with the same game in the next hour. The three of us then broke down and explained the rule.

The entire class went, “AH HA!” at the same time. I think it was a big success, but would have never worked if one of the students was bright enough to get it early. Otherwise I’d have looked like an utter madman.

Do you know this game? Post some sentences to see if you’ve got it right. I’ll confirm any comments that are correct.

For example, “You can comment, but you can’t type.”

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