The origins of The Game are uncertain. The most common hypothesis as is that The Game derives from another mental game, Finchley Central. While the original version of Finchley Central involves taking turns to name stations, in 1976 some members of the Cambridge University Science Fiction Society (CUSFS) developed a variant where the first person to think of the titular station loses. The game in this form demonstrates ironic processing, in which attempts to suppress or avoid certain thoughts make those thoughts more common or persistent than they would be at random. How this became simplified into The Game is unknown; one hypothesis is that once it spread outside the Greater London area, among people who are less familiar with London stations, it morphed into its self-referential form. The creators of "LoseTheGame.net", a website which aims to catalogue information relating to the phenomenon, have received messages from multiple former members of the CUSFS commenting on the similarity between the Finchley Central variant and the modern Game. The first known reference to The Game is a blog post from 2002 – the author states that they "found out about it online about 6 months ago". Finchley Central is a mind game in which two players take turns naming stations in the London Underground. The first person to name Finchley Central is the winner. Of course, the first player could say "Finchley Central" straight away, but as mathematics professor Jonathan Partington notes, “An opening move of ‘Finchley Central’ is too much of a cheat, and you might wish to start with, say, Liverpool Street, when, assuming that your opponent isn't rude enough to reply with Finchley Central, leaves you with a mate on your second move (though you probably would prefer to stall by playing, say, Bank, in the hopes of a more spectacular win later). It is clear that the ‘best’ time to say Finchley Central is exactly before your opponent does. Failing that it is good that he should be considering it. You could, of course, say ‘Finchley Central’ on your second turn. In that case, your opponent puffs on his cigarette and says, ‘Well… Shame on you.’”
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