Encore Game 2008
Clear your throat and drink that honey-lemon tea: It's time to  play Encore, the game of dueling larynxes. The goal is to come up with  a song that contains particular words--and then sing lines from the  song that contains those words. Here's how it works: The first team  turns up a card featuring five words; the two teams then take turns  singing at least six words of any song that contains one of those five.  The round continues until one team is stumped, which, if the word is  "love," could take a while. But repetition is not allowed, and for  every "said" and "moon," there's a "highway" or "piano"--whaddya do  when you've exhausted the Billy Joel songbook? And it's great to draw a  lyric that's in a song title, but if you don't know five others that  come after, you'll be like the player who drew "nice"; he spent the  entire run of the sand timer with his shoulders hunched like Sinatra  because he couldn't connect "and let's make all the stops along the  way" with the song's title, "Nice 'N' Easy." Oh, and don't play Encore  with Renaissance Faire actors--when they draw the word "lady," they'll  come up with an inexhaustible supply of 15th-century madrigals. Only  after they've won will you discover that they were all bogus.--Tony  Mason