Flames

The word 'flames' normally reminds people about war, destruction and sometimes even things as sublime as love. Well, to me, the first thing that comes to mind is a childish game called flames. I don't know if it can be called a game, but I am quite certain that people don't take it seriously. Atleast the modern man doesn't believe in superstitions and stupid numerology.

The game is so easy that if you have heard of it, you would have definitely tried it many a time in your life. Guess why? It predicts the relationship between two people! And with all the privacy in the world that you want; yes! it is a single player game. You don't have to entertain pop-ups screaming loud in your ears, claiming to predict the name of your true lover and so on and on anymore! And you don't have to answer possibly annoying questions in random websites :P.

Now if you don't know the game and have read so far, I am hoping that you are dying to know how the game is played. The key thing is that each letter in the word flames stands for some relation. Since I have said that it is a childish game, some letters stand for certain absurd things, for eg. S stands for sisters! Ofcourse, the game is kind of adaptable even to the more mature and adventurous audience... I mean it is so generic that you can use your creativity to set your own (notorious?) expansions for each letter. But don't keep changing them to accomodate your interests :P. The standard set is as follows: F stands for friends, A for affection, L for love, E for enemies and M for marriage.

Let me illustrate how to play this game with a simple example. Let's say there is a girl called Ping in your office... she wears low-hip jeans, is quite attractive and makes your friend Ranjit go crazy. And you are extremely unhappy because Ranjit, being an Indian, doesn't go on and talk to her and instead keeps paining you saying romantic things about Ping, which ofcourse you don't want to hear and besides, he is obviously stupid enough to ignore you and go for Ping. So you want to settle this once and for all. And given that Ping speaks only Chinese, you aren't exactly spoiled for options. You have been thinking for a while now.

Well wait no longer, since FLAMES comes to the rescue. Take the two names: Ping and Ranjit. Strike out the common letters in both the names (don't strike out duplicates unless they are matched as well). If you are tired, believe me, the only letters that occur in Ping and Ranjit are 'i' and 'n'. Striking these out, you are left with 'pg' and 'rajt'. Now count the number of letters in each name and add them up. You get 6. Ok, you got the number. Now what? Write down the word FLAMES. In a cyclic order, keep striking off the 6th letter in FLAMES till you are left with only one letter, which magically brings to light the relationship! Still confused? Let me walk you through... The sixth letter in FLAMES is S. So you strike it out. You now have the word FLAME. You start with F since it was after S (yes, cyclically) , and then count cyclically to 6; you end up at F. Strike it out. LAME. I know what you are thinking. So stop laughing and let's complete this. You start with L and count up to 6 ending at A; left with LME. After A it was M, so you start with M and you find that the next letter that gets the hard goodbye is L. If you are as proficient in math as me, you'd still be biting your nails not knowing what's going to happen to Ranjit and how you are going to show this to him. So a quick tip to you now, is to stop biting your nails and get to work. Now that's a handy hint :P. We start with M now, as it was after L... and count upto six. You are counting five now and at E... a sigh of relief ... your day is bright, the walls are colored pink and maybe you even feel slightly happy for Ranjit. Well, whatever it maybe, Ranjit is getting mad. Ofcourse he is, you think. Oh wait, no.. he is getting married, that's right: that's what M stands for, to Ping. And that's the truth according to traditional FLAMES.

You are already addicted to FLAMES. Infact you are now vigorously straining your memory to find out what could have happened with possible yesteryear sweethearts. Well, then now is the time for some neat tricks. Given that you have fixed what each letter stands for, what are your options if the outcome of FLAMES is not welcome? Dr. Lanning of 'I, Robot' fame, says 'I'm sorry. My responses are limited. You must ask the right questions'. Oops! You need to get different answers. You need some variations. Aaha! Why do people have surnames and nicknames? Dr. Lanning replies, 'That, detective, is the right question. Program terminated.'

A piece of wisdom: Uriel is the Jewish word for flame of God.

For once, 'Happy Flaming!'.