Kkeut-mal-it-gi: Korean Word Relay

For me, this game has the same role as the game “I Spy” in Western Culture. You play it on the road, when you have nothing else to do, and sometimes parents get annoyed at how long the game lasts.

It’s called “끝말잇기” (kkeut-mal-it-gi).

I guess it can be translated to “Word Relay.”
The goal of the game is to continue a chain of words, by saying a word starting with the last syllable of the word the previous player said.

The words have to be real, and at least two syllables long.
Typically, only nouns are allowed to be used, and slang isn’t usually allowed either.

Let’s say, the first player chose the word “바다,” (ba-da), meaning ‘sea’ or ‘ocean.’
The next player would have to think of a word that starts with the last syllable ,’다’ (da).
A word that could follow that would be “다리” (da-ri), meaning ‘leg,’ or ‘bridge.’
And then, the next player would think of a word starting with ‘리’ (ri).

This game continues until a player can’t think of a word.

When I’m playing this game, and I want to win (or I’m trying to end the game), I like to use the names of elements from the periodic table.
They’re all valid words, but since many of the elements still have their English names (just adapted with Korean spelling), it’s nearly impossible to find a word to follow them.

For example, words like titanium(티타늄: ti-ta-nyoom), uranium (우라늄: ooh-ra-nyoom), helium (헬륨: hel-yoom) all end with a syllable that’s really rare in Korea. So it would be near impossible to find a word that starts with those syllables.

But don’t be like me, and use that trick often, or you might be banned from some games.

It’s not the most exciting game in the world, but it brings back many memories from road trips when I was young, and from sleepovers when I just didn’t want to fall asleep. It’s even nice to play it on walks when there’s nothing to talk about.

I play a bunch of video games, enjoy some board games, and laughed my way through a bunch of drinking games in college. But I guess the game that I’ve played the longest is Kkeut-mal-it-gi.

So yes, in this sense, this is my favorite game.

Daily writing prompt

What’s your favorite game (card, board, video, etc.)? Why?

View all responses