The Village

A game for 6 billions players (or more) Proposed by Jérôme Chevrolet and Franck Chabot

Version française

Game principles

We all know lots of persons who are themselves involved in different groups and communities, and so on. The game is based upon the assumption that, thanks to 7 other people, each of us know any living human being on this Earth. That is to say we know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows any given Human being.

The idea of the game is to check this assumption.

Rules for two players

1. By "A knows B", it is meant that:
   • A knows B's name.
   • B knows A's name.
   • A et B have been in touch at least once. Any means of communications are allowed. If only asynchronous ¹ means of communication were used, it is necessary that an exchange occured: it's not enough to have sent a letter to Dalaļ-Lama to claim you've been in touch with him. Nor to have received an invitation for a garden party at the White House to claim that Mr. Bill C. knows how much you like cigars.
2. The game is divided into rounds which number and lasting are left to the players' choice.
3. Before starting to play, each player says which languages she/he knows and wish to use during the game.
4. At the beginning of a round, each player gives the other the name and address of someone living on Earth. She/he guaranties that this persons speaks one of the languages mentionned by the other player at the begining of the game. She/he should try to give as much information as possible to help the other player contact the given person (phone and fax numbers, e-mail address).
5. Once this trade has been done, it's time to find the link (up to 7 people) to the given person.
6. Players and people known by both of them are not allowed as part of the link.
7. It's a game: cheating is stupid. Helping your co-player is far better.

How to win ?

Winning the game means winning more rounds than the other players.

The winner of a round is the first player to find the link (up to 7 people) to the person she/he has been given.

¹ During asynchronous communications people don't communicate with each other at the same time. It's for instance: mail, fax, e-mail, sea bottles, travelling pigeons. On the opposite, during synchronous communication people do communicate at the same time. It's for instance: meeting, phone, smoke signs, TV duplex.