I made up a new game for this task, and you can play if you want. The game is simply to describe what each of the pictures reminds you of, so feel free to add comments with your reactions.

I first wanted to do this task while waiting at an airport. However, it was a crack of dawn flight, and everyone else waiting seemed to be purposely not making eye-contact. Also, I was inhibited because my department manager happened to also be waiting for the same plane, and although he has already (1) seen me wearing shoes with blinky lights (2) read my novel and (3) seen me get buzzed after 1 glass of wine, somehow I still felt embarassed to bother complete strangers in front of him before 7am.

Then I started carrying around the pictures with me while waiting for a waiting situation. Before a lecture about Neolithic cave art symbols, I found myself waiting in a crowd of complete strangers. Perfect.

Women intimidate me, so I started by approaching a middle aged man who was sitting in an aisle seat. This also allowed me to kneel next to him, instead of actually sitting down in a neighboring seat. This seemed like a less threatening posture, so I hoped he would cooperate when I asked him if he would be willing to look at some pictures and tell me what they reminded him of. He was willing, but warned me that he was "really bad at this." I though, how often does this guy get asked to free associate with pictures? It turned out he was pretty bad at it, coming up blank for 2 out of 5 pictures. He said afterwards that if I wrote a paper about the results, he'd like to read it. (I guess I should have gotten his contact info so I could have sent him this link.)

Next I approached an older woman. She had been knitting, but had laughed a few times while watching me with the previous person. Laughing seemed like a good sign. She was played the game.

Then, I talked to a woman who had been watching all along. She surprised me by asking "Who are you, and what planet are you from?" So I introduced myself and explained that I was really interested in getting a number of opinions about what these pictures reminded people of. She cut me off and said "Not right now, thanks." I felt rejected, but decided to keep going.

Then I entered a nearly empty row and sat near a young man, who looked amused but didn't ask any questions and played along.

I went back into the aisle and talked to an older man. He was really interested in the pictures and asked me whether I'd made them up. I explained that they were examples of Easter Island glyphs and that this was a form of writing that no one knew how to read, but that I was curious whether some of the glyphs would remind people of things. He got really into the game and talked at length about his associations.

At this point, the lecture seemed like it might start, so I went back to my seat. While I'd been up, someone had sat nearby, so I asked him to play. This man went through the pictures pretty fast, and then we chatted briefly about the lecture series. The lecture started, so I stopped bothering strangers. Unfortunately, the lecture was not very interesting, and I kept falling asleep, so I may have offended some strangers by my lack of attention. I made a hasty exit once the lecture finished.

I realize that some sticklers would insist that a game must have rules and a way to win, and that this was really more of a leisure activity or entertainment. So I will declare that player number 4 wins, because he had the most interesting descriptions, and player number 1 loses, because he couldn't come up with anything for some of them.