IF YOU THINK that Racloir are very small shelves used for drying peanuts, or that a Tampan is a circular iron plate for baking cakes then you are in trouble. If, however, you know that a Remi-ped has oar-shaped feet then this game collection should prove no problem for you.
There are two types of game you can play. The first is similar to Call My Bluff, the popular BBC TV series.
Before play you must select the number of players and choose an icon to represent each. One to four people can take part and there are six icons including a cat, duck, alarm clock and wine with glass. If you select a correct definition from a panel of four your icon will be animated.
The game has a dictionary of 2,000 words, most of which are culled from dusty corners of the Concise English and Concise Oxford dictionaries.
Trivial Pursuit fans will see the similarity between it and Fictionary. The Sinclair game, however, allows you to play against the computer and the animated icons make it more exciting than the board game.
The second game on the cartridge is Wordhoard, in which you are given a word and have to make as many words out of it as possible. The game has an 18,000 word dictionary and if you create a word which it does not know it will ask you whether the word is legal.
You have three minutes in which to make your list. Plurals are allowed but names and foreign language words are frowned upon. The shortest word you can use is three letters, scoring four points, and the longest is nine letters, scoring 28 points.
The final option on the game menu allows you to play Fictionary and Wordhoard together. First you are given 50 words to define correctly, then the program loads in Wordhoard. When you have finished both sections of the quiz the computer calculates a combined score and tells you who did best.
Even if you don't put playing with the English language as one of the top ten most enthralling things to do you will find the definitions in Fictionary humorous and at times crude.
QL Fictionary reinforces the move by Sinclair Research towards good software. The games may be simple in construction but the use of graphics and the speed with which the program searches its vast dictionary make it ideal for masterminds with a literary bent.
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