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Google Songs - a game for our time.

One morning I had a song going around in my head. I only knew a few disjointed lines. I had no idea of the song title or lyrics. Frustrated, by not knowing how the lines I knew, linked together I found myself thinking what phrases or words would I need to type into Google in order to find the exact song lyrics?

At the time I was traveling around the country. I didn't have immediate access to the internet so my mind kept pondering further over this question. The question is fairly straight forward. There's not much more to add. Thus, my mind extended the idea to thinking about the search results and what combination of phrases and words might result in the lyrics being returned in the number one search result spot?

Then I thought that getting exactly what you're looking for in the number one search spot could be quite a challenge. You could make a game out of this. I may not be the first person to think of 'Google Songs' as a game, since it's such a simple concept but I did create it independently of knowing about Google Games using similar rules.

Google Songs: The Rules.

A game for 1 or more players.

Players think of a song title or phrase from a song (that does not include the songs title). They enter the title or phrase into Google's search box. In addition they can add up to five seperate words (known as word modifiers) to help narrow their search and increase the chances of a link to the songs lyrics appearing in the number one search result position.

e.g. For the song title "Sympathy for the Devil" you might enter the title plus the words 'lyrics', 'song', 'Rolling', 'Stones' and 'music'. Each word modifier must be one word only i.e. 'Rolling Stones' would be two words.

You can use any of Googles search modifiers e.g. +, - etc.

Each Player can try their chosen song title or phrase up to three times with different modifiers. As soon as a link to the song lyrics appears in the top five search results (or the player has tried three times) the turn is over.

Scores for each turn is out of five and runs in decending order of where the song lyrics appeared in the top five results. e.g. position 1: 5 points, position 2: 4 points etc.

The winner is the first person to reach 20 points or greater. In the case of single player games the goal is to achieve 20 points or greater in as few a turns as possible (the perfect game should take four turns).

Game Variations
  • Make the game more strategic by having other players choose what song title or phrase you search for. Songs must be familiar to the person doing the search (no obscure songs).

  • Have everyone search for the same title or phrase each turn. See who can get the best result for a particular song title or phrase.

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