"Out to lunch"

Members of the library’s Talk Lab English Club proved they were not “clueless” or “out to lunch” when it came to figuring out the meanings of new vocabulary words and American idioms at a fun with words session on Sunday, Oct. 16.

The members also were impressive as they played several rounds of the game “20 questions,” organized by two United States Peace Corps volunteers. There were 30 participants, ranging from children to senior citizens.

The fun activities began with each participant being assigned a word or idiom to explain and then use in a sentence. The word “clueless,” by the way, is slang for helpless in solving a problem. However, the expression “out to lunch” can have a straightforward definition – for example, being away from the office on a lunch break – or slang for not being focused on a particular task.

Other words introduced on Sunday included suspense, thriller, sneak, crouch, squat, traded, doorway, cave, flow, ponder and leftovers.

For the “20 questions” game, each member was asked to take a slip of paper and write down a famous person (living, dead or fictional), an animal, a place or an object. Then, the group would attempt to guess each of the words by asking no more than a total of 20 “yes” or “no” questions as in the following example: Is it a person? Is it a woman? Is she living? Is she an actress? Is she American? And finally someone decodes the answer – Marilyn Monroe.

Club members usually figured out the answers within 10 to 15 questions, although a few went to the limit of 20. Answers included Jesus Christ, Buddha, Cleopatra, Leonardo DiCaprio, the state of Florida, the SpongeBob Square Pants cartoon character, and Romeo and Juliet.

In another game, a club member sat at the head of the table and had to guess the word that a Peace Corps volunteer displayed on a card for everyone else to see. The other members could give one-word clues (in English) to the person in the game's hot seat. More photos.