Color or Country, also known as the Color/Country Game, is a party game with a simple game mechanic that allows any number of players to continue playing indefinitely, making it a game of wits to some and a humorous way to pass the time to others. It has been called "an example of a game which is 100% skill and 0% chance, but nevertheless has no interesting strategy." [174].

The rules are frequently defined as follows: "Players take turns alternately. On your turn you may say a color or a country. If you say a country you lose." Players who have lost leave the game.

Most newcomers are usually confused, expecting additional constraints such as the inability to repeat a color or a time limit. However, this is not the case, making discovering the actual rules to the game, like Mao and Mornington Crescent, part of the humor value to the players.

Strategy

Many players attempt to further confuse newcomers by pretending to play with a strategy. The appearance of deep thoughts and reflection before moves, along with attempts to undo non-losing moves, creates the illusion of strategy. In reality, there is an infinite number of perfect strategies which are all known to the participants before the game starts. It should be noted that the game is often played with no goal of termination.

Entertainment

To keep the game entertaining after newcomers have learned of a lack of a meaningful strategy, players will often make "risky" moves by saying colors that resemble countries in a way as to nearly say the country while saying just the color, such as argent for Argentina, or by stating place names which are not countries, such as Taiwan, which is then cited as being not a country, but a territory of China.

Another way to keep the game entertaining is to use, or even come up with interesting color names. Using colors like chartreuse and russet can be far more interesting than the repeated use of blue, no matter how legal that gameplay may be.

Inventing colors

The rules of the game are vague about what happens when a player names something that is neither a color nor a country. One way this is often handled is to consider anything that is not a country to be a newly-defined color. Countries that are also names of colors, like "Peru," can be used if specified to be a color, and for extra silliness, the group can create color definitions for random countries of their own choosing.

A middle ground is to rule that something is a color only if the player who uses that color can justify it, usually by saying what the color looks like and why that makes sense. It is not unusual for color or country games of this type to make heavy use of abstract nouns (such as "happiness") and complete nonsense (such as "transparent" or "chocolate eggshell").

Generalizations

Color or Country can be generalized into new games of the form "<math>X</math> or <math>Y</math>". Some of these games may be just as silly, but others may actually be challenging. Functor or category, for example, requires a specific understanding of mathematics (specifically category theory), lest a player inadvertently makes a losing move.

While it bears resemblance to Mao and Mornington Crescent, it is notable that the emphasis of this game is not on "winning": although a player can win once all other players have lost, this may never actually occur. Given the plentitude of non-losing strategies, this may seem unlikely. However, players, even ones who are not clueless newcomers, may actually lose due to carelessness, Freudian slips, caprice, boredom, or just feeling that this stupid game is not worth winning.

History

Although hard to trace, Color or Country is likely to have originated among friends at the University of Waterloo, and was seen as early as 1997. It spread from there to other groups such as the Ross Mathematics Program and the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics. After being introduced to Canada/USA Mathcamp in 2002, where a "world championship" was reportedly held that year, it has been reported to have spread to a number of high schools across Canada and the US and some colleges. In the past two years, the game has also made an appearance at the PROMYS program. At MIT, small groups of people from Ross already knew of the game before 2002, when the Mathcamp version spread.

Related links

Mornington Crescent

Mao

The Game