<-- RETURN TO MENU 24 Seven Charades Rule! by SEVEN MCDONALD Sipping a cup of Indian Spice tea in her Mount Washington Craftsman, Susan Lynch is still reeling from a killer charades game two days ago. Fueled by a love for words and a dogged competitive edge, the 30-something Lynch, who makes her living as an art director/set decorator, has been playing charades for more than 15 years. She professes to "keep it light," but those who have played with her, including her 9-year-old daughter, her ex-husband and a former best friend, would disagree. A recent e-mail invitation to a Lynch charades party included the postscript "no pussies," and she wasn’t kidding. "It’s no fun if no one is playing attention," Lynch explains. "Or thinking of good clues, or abiding by the rules." "A couple years ago, we had a game, we separated into our teams, I explained the categories — TV, books, films — then we came back and ‘What the fuck??!!’ I pick up the first clue: ‘Benny and the Jets.’ ? What’s the matter with that? "That’s a song! Their whole team was like, ‘Why can’t we use songs? I hate coming here.’ " People actually said: 'I hate coming here'??? "Yes, I think so." Lynch genuinely feels the game transports her to "someplace else," a "semantic dream state," where she can access long-forgotten information and also express and explore her relationship with words. To hear her describe it, charades is a marriage of dance, poetry (specifically Dickinson), team sports, intellectualism and Gestalt group therapy. Her capacity to have such a full-bodied experience with the game seems to trace back to her childhood in the sleepy Northern California community of San Carlos, where she claims to have started reading her mother’s books around the age of 7 — things like Agatha Christie and Mary Stewart’s Touch Not the Cat. Having six older, and athletic, brothers seemed to have cultivated her pluck. Would you describe your childhood home as a competitive environment? "I guess that depends if you like wrestling . . . " During those years she played tennis, softball, soccer and touch football; currently she holds the state championship — for her division, as she is quick to remind — in squash, a sport she took up four years ago. She didn’t complete high school but soldiered on as an avid reader, favoring Patricia Highsmith, Raymond Carver, Joan Didion and F. Scott Fitzgerald. She loves David Sedaris and The Office’s Ricky Gervais and admits that during the course of a normal day, she will often take pause upon the discovery of a perfect clue. Of course, her all-time favorite film is Charade. She has lost sleep over the compilation of her guest list and explains that a good friend doesn’t necessarily translate into a good player. "I have friends who are not into the game," she admits. "I don’t invite them anymore." She prefers individuals who have a love of puns and an appreciation that her living room is really a court or "charadium." But with such high standards, she’s sometimes resorted to churlishly pursuing strangers, or "warm bodies" as she calls them, in order to get enough players. A four-person team is ideal for Lynch: "I think you get a lot more personal action that way." But she says she "loves the energy of a larger game." Still, she insists, "It’s not a party. It’s social, in that you’re interacting intimately with other human beings. That locking of the eyes, that pleading expression, that ‘there’s a connection happening here and I think we both know what’s going on. You are gonna guess my clue.’ But, it’s not a party. It’s more than that. It’s hard to break it down into words." Is that a joke? Lynch, who is trying to train her players to use the word "event" in regard to her monthly gathering, also takes issue with the word "game." She’d rather refer to charades as her practice or process; she’s even considering the clunky phrase "processing my practice." Laying it all out, Lynch explains she doesn’t like chitchat, the use of props and, worst of all, players who actually talk or make huffing sounds on the court. "A good charades player has economy of movement, doesn’t give unnecessary information and is completely focused. Let’s say it’s Fiddler on the Roof — they aren’t going to sit at a table drawing blueprints for the house. They are very obviously going to take the fiddle out of the case, put it on their shoulder, cock their neck and take the bow [she plucks at an imaginary bow], ‘twang’ ‘twang’ and play . . . fiddler! Fiddler on the Roof. That could take under five seconds if you’re focused.? According to Lynch, what really separates the pros from the pussies is when "you make that developmental leap from acting out the word to a true, break-it-down ‘sounds like.’ Until you start viewing language that way, I would say you’re still a novice. You can be playing for 10 years and still be a novice, because you haven’t made that developmental leap — you don’t have an overhand serve." Will you tell me what happened with Francis? "I had a good friend. I mean, she probably loved the game as much as I did. We grew up together, went punk together, stayed in touch, probably have been friends for, I don’t know, 20 years. We were playing charades. One of the rules is no letters, no numbers. I draw a clue — L.A. 411 — it’s an industry guidebook. I start complaining and she looked right at me and gave me the finger, up in my face, and it was real. We didn’t talk for two years.? And your daughter Eloise, does she play? "She likes to think she does. Listen, iksnay on the idskay." Is it true she left a recent game of yours crying? "I was made out to look like the bad guy." What was her clue? "That’s another reason why the game is not appropriate for kids. Her clue was Last Tango in Paris. First of all, she doesn’t know what the tango is." Lynch’s most recent charades event was a 13-player game that included a movie producer, an editor, a script supervisor, a Teamster, an architect, a real estate agent and a restaurateur. Of the brutal game, which she lost to a feverish opposing team (Sweet Child of Mime, by 11 seconds), Lynch, who has not lost a game in many, many years, has only one regret. "I wish the other team had used a clue that was legal. I wish they knew the letter G was not a word." What was the clue? "Da Ali G. Show. No initials. No initials. You’re not allowed to use initials. It’s not controversial, it’s a rule." Your ex-boyfriend wrote that clue. Is it true you regularly play with him and your ex-husband? "Yeah. Listen, I’m easy." That said, Lynch is looking into having an ombudsman or referee present next month. “Though, quite frankly, I feel like I am the only one who really knows the rules of the game.” Is there a book or something? "No. This game has traveled generation to generation by word of mouth." <-- RETURN TO MENU