Road Games: The Predictive Text Game

“This part of the country is really beautiful.”

No it’s not. We’re in the Southwest and there is nothing to look at but highway, cacti and dirt. And thanks to our brilliant job of cleaning out the Gay Car before hitting the road we have no CDs to listen to. None…except our respective bands, and we’re waiting for the right moment to premier the rough mix of the new Gorgeous Armada album. With no music to listen to, road games are a must.

A decade ago Slug Bug and Out Of State Plate would have sufficed, but being that all the members of Fortress of Attitude are above the age of 14 (at least physically) we’ve had to develop new road games. Thanks to the communication age that we live in, last night Dr. Genius and I came up with The Predictive Text Game. Bomb Threat calls it “The T9 Game,” but that’s just because he’s too cool for school.

The Premise of the Predictive Text Game: You know how the T9 function on your cell pone works, right? You type in “2” “2” “7” and that translates to “C” “A” ”R.” Well, to play the Predictive Text Game, you read a series of numbers out loud and everyone has to figure out that word using T9′s rules.

If you’re not looking at your phone and you’re not used to texting a million times a day the game is actually pretty difficult. Just now, for the abovementioned example I had to go to the other room and grab my cell phone to know if I used the correct numbers for “car.” (Turns out I was right, probably because we spent a half hour playing The Predictive Text Game last night.)

In the above example the word could have also been “cap” or “bar” or “abs,” so those all could have been possible answers.  I have a feeling that if we keep this game up, by the end o the tour I will no longer have to look at my keypad when I text. And that’s a win

A total win.

Tags: bomb threat, brilliant job, cacti, cell phone, cell pone, communication age, correct numbers, dirt, dr genius, fortress, Half Hour, hitting the road, million times, predictive text, premise, right moment, road games, Road Games: The Predictive Text Game, rough mix, slug bug, text game