Idea Spaghetti Game
Get a topic and a target number of ideas, then try to beat it in five minutes. You score a point for every idea over the target and lose one for every idea under.
Updated
Idea Spaghetti Game
1. Get a topic and a target. On the book’s board, you pick a fork and follow a spaghetti strand to an ingredient. The number on the ingredient is how many ideas you need in five minutes. The topics in the book include "new names for pasta", "uses for a brick" and "ways to generate power". You can also use a problem of your own.
2. Come up with as many ideas as you can in five minutes. The aim is not a good solution to a problem. The book calls the game a brain-train: it trains your brain to generate lots of ideas, or spaghetti.
3. Score the round. You earn a point for every idea over the target and lose a point for every idea under it. The book’s example: if the ingredient says 12 ideas and you come up with 15, you score 3 points. If you come up with only 10, you lose 2 points.
4. Play four rounds. Each round has a different topic and a different target. After four rounds the highest total wins. The book says the more ideas you think up, the more likely it is that you will have a good one.
Now play your own four rounds below.
Round 1 of 4. Total so far: 0
How to play
- Pick a fork. The game deals you a topic and a target. The target is how many ideas you need in five minutes.
- Start the five minutes. Type every idea you can think of and press Enter after each one. Quantity matters more than quality.
- Score the round. You get a point for every idea over the target and lose a point for every idea under it. Beat a target of 12 with 15 ideas and you score 3. Come up with only 10 and you lose 2.
- Play four rounds. Each round has a different topic and a different target. Your final score is the total.
You can swap the dealt topic for a problem of your own in any round. The book suggests starting with its topics as a warm-up and moving to your own problems once you have got the hang of generating lots of ideas fast.
Why it works
The Idea Spaghetti chapter argues that the more ideas you come up with, the more likely it is that you will have a good one. The game is not about solving a problem. The book describes it as a brain-train: it practices generating lots of ideas, or spaghetti, rather than judging them. The target and the clock keep you from stopping to decide whether an idea is any good.
The targets and topics
The targets are the numbers on the ingredients on the book’s board. On the board you follow a strand from your fork to an ingredient, and here a target is dealt at random. The topics are the book’s list, such as “new names for pasta”, “uses for a brick” and “ways to generate power”. We left out one topic that does not suit a workplace site.
Where this comes from
This is the Idea Spaghetti board game from the Idea Spaghetti chapter, played on screen. The rules, the topics and the scoring are the book’s. The Random Idea Generator also has a Spaghetti mode, with a fixed target of 50 that is our own. Nothing you type leaves your browser and nothing is stored.
Questions
Do repeats count? Only exact repeats are dropped. Whether two ideas are really different is up to you.
Can the score go negative? Yes. Fall short of a target and you lose points, as in the book.
Can I play with other people? The book’s game is for one to four players, each with a fork. Here you play alone. To play with others, deal yourselves the same topic and compare scores.