re/cognition (3).
this time, i'm going to be playing 4 pics 1 word, a puzzle game based on pop culture, words, and double meanings that was extremely popular back when i was in high school (2013? 2014? i can't remember the exact year!). to be completely honest, i'm not about to play this game blind—i was practically addicted to this game in its peak, along with a ton of my classmates, but i am hoping that the years i've spent away from this game will allow me to have a fresh perspective on how it works!
mechanics.
the game is pretty straightforward: you're given four photos and you're supposed to look for the word that 'links' all of them together. the connections can be pretty easy, as we can see above (ink), but they can also be confusing if your brain simply refuses to supply you with the perfect word that matches all of the (seemingly unrelated) pictures.
what makes it fun?
apart from the fact that games naturally make you feel good whenever you get things right or win them, puzzle games (personally) make me feel a sense of smugness whenever i figure out the answers. it makes me feel great, as if i’m part of an inner circle that ‘gets’ it, even if the some of the questions are rather easy. i feel accomplishment whenever i figure out some of the more confusing questions (like the one right above this section, it took me a few seconds to realize that the answer was ‘light’).
knowledge.
the biggest realization that i had while playing the game was how efficient our brains really are in sorting concepts into categories. i never really thought of how my mind organized ideas in my head; of course, i was vaguely aware of the fact that things really are sorted (otherwise, how would i be able to form coherent thoughts?), but not to this extent.
as i was finding the answers to these puzzles, the semantic network approach came to mind. the semantic network approach basically posits that knowledge can be seen as linked concepts, connected through their similarities and can even be arranged in an hierarchical manner. this approach is also heavily related to language, as it relies on meanings to create concepts and cluster them into linked groups.
to better see this, i’ll pull up an example by terashima (2002):
if, for example, a photo of an automobile were put as one of the four images in the puzzle, i would immediately come up with different concepts that are related to it: the body, its handle, its tires, its brake, even its windshield or the fact that it is used to drive. from these concepts alone, i have a general idea of what the word that the puzzle wants from me is.
to further narrow down my choices, i would have to look at the other photos in the bunch. if, for example, a photo of a screwdriver were presented, i would naturally try and input drive or driver, based on the amount of boxes and the available letters. if a photo of a phone was there, however, i would try to write down mobile, as in [mobile phone] or [automobile]. my answer simply depended on which concepts these photos had in common, and if those concepts described with words could be slotted in the puzzle.
language.
obviously, language would be tied in rather heavily with this puzzle game, as it relies on words—it’s literally in the game’s name. semantics seems to be the most important part of the game to me, as well as one’s ability to speak the language used in the game, which is english. one must know the english language as well as know the meanings of the words to be able to answer the puzzles. otherwise, it is not possible to figure anything out.
lexical ambiguity as well as discourse are also pervasive, as it has been shown in the puzzle again and again that words (that are associated to the photos) can have more than one meaning. to illustrate, here is an example:
the word is ‘kick’, but it has different meanings in the different photos. the ones on the left side both show kick as something that is done with the leg to exert force (karate kick, kicking a soccer ball), but the images on the left side use kick in a different way (sidekick, a kickstand for the bicycle). lexical ambiguity explains this phenomenon by stating that words can have more than one meaning.
discourse, on the other hand, is also important because it adds context to the photos. this is where the added layer of culture (in this case, pop culture) would have its effect. for example:
the answer for the image above is ‘happy’. discourse is important because without the knowledge that pies are used for happy celebrations and that pharell williams (bottom left) had a hit song called ‘happy’, one may have more trouble with figuring this particular puzzle out.
do i recommend it?
if you have free time and you like flexing your puzzle-solving skills along with your pop culture knowledge + your wide vocabulary, go ahead! there’s a reason why this game was so big back in 2013-14, and it has a free app, anyway. there’s no reason not to try it out if you’re interested. there were definitely times when i was a little surprised by the answers, or times when i couldn’t figure out the words, but don’t worry! there will be free hints there to help you. :)