Art by Chance

M.A.S.H. is a game that almost everyone has played as a child. it's already a weird, interactive, 2-player game by design- but with a few more rules and changes it can be made even weirder and more random.  my idea for further randomness only requires a novel (in addition to a piece of paper and a pen). traditionally, M.A.S.H. is an acronym for mansion, apartment, shack, house and the game is something of a random fortune teller. my version makes it a random word generator.

Step one: Write "M.A.S.H" on the top of your page.

Step two: On the left side of the page write "Verbs" and make four spaces to fill with verbs later when we begin playing the game.

Step three: On the right side of the page write "Nouns" and make four spaces to fill with nouns.

Step four: On the bottom of the page write "Adjectives" and make four spaces to fill with adjectives.

Step five: Finally you should have a big blank space in the middle of the page. Have the player begin to draw a spiral starting small and gradually growing larger and larger. The other player will quickly tell them when to stop spiraling. count the number of lines from the center to the outside of the spiral. for the sake of this demonstration we'll say our number is 4.

Write down your number.

Step six: Grab a book and turn to the page of the number you picked (alternatively, you can turn to the chapter of the corresponding number).

Step seven: Read the words on the page and when you find the fourth word on the page that begins with the letter "M", write it down, under the letter "M" at the top of the page. repeat the process for letters "A", "S", and "H".

Step eight: Turn four more pages. Begin reading the page from the top, and write down every fourth noun in each of the four spaces in the section labeled for nouns.

Step nine: Repeat step eight- only instead of nouns, search for every fourth adjective and write them in the spaces labeled for adjectives.

Step ten: Repeat the last two steps- only this time search for verbs and write every fourth verb on the corresponding verb spaces.

Step eleven: With our board full of words, go back to the top of the page and beginning with your "M" word, begin reading each word that you have written, moving around the page in a clockwise fashion. Cross out every fourth word.

Step twelve: After rotating around the board, crossing out words- you should start running out of words to cross out. Make sure that you circle the last remaining word in each section and make sure not to cross out this word. Keep counting off four and crossing out words until you only have one word at the top of the page beginning with the letter "M", "A", "S", or "H"- one noun, one adjective, and one verb.

Write these four words down.

Step thirteen: At a very high volume, read the words aloud.

ART.