Welcome to LangTime Chat! In this episode, Jessie creates a language-based game for David to play called LINGsanity (if you’ve ever seen Winsanity, then you’ll know the gist of what David’s in store for).

In terms of gameplay, contestants are presented with numerical-based facts and must “stack” those facts in the correct order to win. For instance, a contestant might be asked to stack “Number of times David has sneezed during the live stream” and “Number of times Jessie has sneezed during the live stream.” Of course, the correct ordering is to put Jessie’s sneezes on top since she had an attack of allergies during a single episode that earned her more sneezes than David.

After the game, David and Jessie keep chatting (it is LangTime Chat after all) and cover everything from games to photos. Jessie mentions a drawing of David presenting at SFA–one of her students brought her son to David’s presentation, and he drew a photo to commemorate the event.

The details are quite amazing (and accurate!). And now for more information about the game.

WARNING!!! SPOILER ALERTS AHEAD!!!

If you want to play along with David, do not keep scrolling to view all the images below. The images below present the facts in each round that David is asked to stack, and then the next image provides answers for that round. If you don’t mind seeing the answers before listening to the game, then scroll away.

Jessie selected each fact for this game for specific reasons, and each round is followed by discussions and chit-chat focusing on those facts and the reasons they were selected. Whether you play along or peek at the answers first, enjoy the first-ever unveiling of LINGsanity!

Round 1: Duo for the win

Below are the first two facts David has to stack, both focused on Duolingo and courses offered through that app. The first round is always the easiest.

Round 2: All in the family

Now it gets MUCH trickier, especially with a fact about WALS, and David sweats his answers to this round, which focuses on language families and speakers.

Round 3: Against the WALS

This round focuses specifically on data provided in WALS chapters, requiring David to stack facts whose answers are quite close. While this round should have been more difficult than the last, David astounds Jessie with his knowledge of linguistic feature frequencies.

LINGsanity: Final answers

The image below shows all facts from the game stacked in the correct order with their numerical values assigned.

What a game!

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