Missing Words Round

Background

When the BBC Backstage project first opened up RSS feeds of BBC News headlines in 2005, I was inspired to build a simple web game based on the "Missing Words" round on Have I Got News For You.

How it works

Every 15 minutes, it took 100 recent headlines from the news feed. Certain words were selected semi-randomly by the server, using an algorithm to remove certain types of word over others. This means it didn't quite have quite the comic potential of the TV version as PHP isn't renowned for its sense of humour, but did come up with some gems.

The feeds were filtered for certain keywords, since death, murder and destruction aren't really that funny. The odd one may still slip through, but I used a feedback loop to add words to the "ignore" vocabulary list.

Users were given points for guessing an answer correctly, and wrong (presumably funny) answers were shown other people guessing the headlines, adding a social element, and hopefully also giving them a chuckle.

There was no start or end - players just kept going until they got bored. 

The next natural step would be to allow "guest publications" by submitting the URL of any other RSS feed. 

User comments

I've seen some really innovative stuff on BBC Backstage, but this is the best so far! - Rich Daley

Very good, and very addictive waste of time during lunch hour. - Very good, and very addictive waste of time during lunch hour.

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