Summary
One player is a reporter or talk-show host. Another player is introduced as a world-renowned expert on a completely absurd topic (audience-suggested). The expert must answer every question with absolute confidence, making up plausible-sounding nonsense with no hesitation. The interviewer’s job is to ask genuine, curious questions — not to undercut the expert. The game rewards players who commit to a clear, specific voice and who build an internal logic to their nonsense. The funnier choices usually come from specificity, not randomness.
Example
“Tonight we have Dr. Patricia Wren, foremost authority on the emotional lives of parking meters.” Interviewer: “What does a parking meter feel when time runs out?” Expert: “Tremendous relief, actually. The expiration is the release. We’ve been misreading their suffering for decades.”
Variation: Two-Person Expert Panel
Two players are introduced as co-experts on a completely made-up field of study (audience-suggested). They must not only answer questions with authority but also agree with and build on each other’s invented expertise, creating the impression of a coherent, if absurd, field of knowledge. Players should resist the urge to contradict each other; the game is richer when both are genuinely building the same shared world of nonsense. A host facilitates questions from the audience or from prepared prompts.
Example: Field: “Competitive Cloud Arrangement.” Host: “How is the scoring determined?” Expert 1: “It’s entirely subjective, which is what makes it objective.” Expert 2: “The judges are trained to feel the cloud, not see it.” Expert 1: “Exactly. Vision is actually a disqualifier in regional competition.”