World Record Telephone Game?

Reportedly this guy, comedian Mac King, invited a crowd of people to a game of "Whisper Down the Lane" yesterday in an attempt to establish a new Guinness World Record. An event of this proportion, while raising certain doubts about the collective maturity of Los Vegas entertainment aficionados, gives a certain sense of hope to those of us who believe in the spirit of fun and the power of play.

The article explicates: "The current record is 564, but Mac's hoping 800 people turn out Tuesday at Harrah's Carnaval Court to whisper their way into the record books. Mac King is thinking the whole thing will take a little over an hour."

It is with a certain somber certainty that I surmise that this record can only be established if in deed the last person in the chain of whisperers is able to repeat the very words whispered by the first. Though true to the spirit of world records, it has always been my experience that the fun of the game is in discovering how wrong the last person is.

In fact, when I play a similar game, I personally revel in the dissimilarities twixt the twain. My favorite variation: I ask the myriads to meander and mill, with, in fact, their eyes closed. I then instruct them, whilst they are milling, to whisper something to anyone they happen to bump gently in to. Then, to recommence general millage, whispering what they thought the last person said to the next person they encounter. If you ever happen to hear anything remotely similar to what you thought you heard before, you experience what can only be called a minor miracle. This version has no point at all. Which, of course, is precisely that: the real and only point of it all.