In 1995-96, I played the acronym game a lot in chat rooms on eWorld (no longer exists).

To play the game, someone suggests a word, and the players make acronyms out of it. For example, if the word were BAYOU, an acronym could be Babies Always Yack Oreos Up.

(Incidentally, that example for BAYOU, one of my all-time favorites, was one of the first offered by Ronelle McKenzie of Brooklyn NY immediately after I met her in a chat room. With such brilliance, you can see why I was taken with her. In fact we had a torrid email romance for a while.)

The games on eWorld were proper: they had a host, rules, time limits, the whole nine yards. The host would suggest the word, then all the players would make as many acronyms as they could in 60 seconds. At the end of a round, each player would vote for one other player (whoever had the most clever or funniest acronym). My advantage was that I can type 100 wpm, so I could rattle off several ideas while the others could usually only come up with 1-3. So because I had more "candidates", it was more likely that somebody would think that one of them was the best.

One thing to know about this game is that 5-letter words work best, and that the longer the word, the harder it is. Also, letters like J and K in a word make it difficult. One night, the theme was candy, and the final word of the game was CRACKER JACK. That's monstrously difficult -- very long, with a J and two K's. The screen was dead. We were all stumped and we had only 60 seconds. I don't know how I came up with this, but I tapped it out as fast as I could:

Crazed Republicans attacked crying kindergarteners, effectively rendering judgement and civility "kaput".

I'm not sure I'd ever been prouder, which may indicate that there's something wrong with me. But anyway, I obviously won that game, and then retired from playing. It was a good note to end on.

If I ever get around to it, I'll try to dig up some of the other funny acronyms that the other players and I came up with.