MKK

He's also a major heretic, in my opinion.

Robert, you might get an extra prize, but darned if I can imagine what it might be.

I'm not sure I could do an entire publishing house version, but I suspect that jointly accounted, category manager, ordering to previous net, clean sell-through, and breakout book would appear in it.

A large mochaccino. Oh, excuse me—a venti mochaccino.

Or, if you're playing in the championships, an iPod.

My distraction for tedious gunner-filled classes was drafting booklog posts, so I never played, but I believe that's the idea.

"It's X meets Y"
"In the tradition of..."
"Like X, but with/without Y."
"high hopes"

For Back-Cover Blurb Bingo, I refer you to Neil Gaiman and Kim Newman's "Ghastly Beyond Belief". "Will he save the world-- or destroy it?" goes in the center square.

Besides, there's difference between being simply wrong, which all of us are at times, and active bullshit. "one day memberships!" is probably wrong. Being a (and I dearly wish I was making this up) "B2B ASP focusing on PPOs" is bullshit.

I think a valid game would be IIS hack bingo. Put up an IIS server, with a intrustion detection system so you can watch the attacks. Give out bingo cards with various attacks -- nicha, code red V.2, and so forth.

Call out the attacks, fill out the cards. Clever and bored sysadmin would write something to just light the attacks as the occur, so you don't have "nichia, again, again, again, hey, someone tried to run cmd.exe!"

Spam bingo would work to. "Penis Pills!" "419" "Norton Antivirus on Sale" "Mini RC Cars" "Bingo!"

Playing Bingo with buzzwords seems a fair critique of speakers' fuzzy language; indeed I've more often seen the game called "Buzzword Bingo" than that other name. Playing it with jargon doesn't seem to me to be so fair.

Adam, sounds like the kind of meeting that makes you really sorry that knitting isn't allowed. I used to know a head of production who got through interminable sales conference hardcover presentations (not Tor's) by discreetly tucking a crossword puzzle into her working papers. If you couldn't see what she was working on, she looked like she was taking notes.

Julia, explain? That sounds interesting.

Glenn, most of those belong in cover-blurb BSB.

Erik: Add work at home, Miriam Abacha, toner cartridge, singles in your area, mortgage, lose weight, teen sluts, zero percent interest, and make money fast.

Simon, I'm not sure I can distinguish between my industry's jargon and its buzzwords. I could do you a good round of cover copy tropes, though -- epic, vast, blackly humorous, new voice, fast-moving adventure, unfold, gripping, intriguing, richly complex, or so [he/she/it/they] think[s], wants only to, but all is not as it seems, must choose, can only be [accomplished] by, will find [him/her/it]self thrust into, meanwhile, have plans of their own ... stop me now, this is making me queasy.

Andrew, I love it.

A word in blurbs I have trouble with is "nearly." If any emphasis whatever is attached to this word, I find myself thinking "... who had NEARLY stood up to the Dragon of Angnor! Who had NEARLY fought the vicious Chicken of Bristol!"

----L.