ALGERNON PROPERTIES:
A MANIFESTO
Party games assume you will remain a person.
They assume your language is your own. That memory is retrievable.
They assume you're there to share and to perform on command.
Algernon Properties makes none of these assumptions.
This is not about decline. It is about small subtractions.
I.
THE GUILLOTINE IS ONE LETTER WIDE
Party Games & Icebreakers
Constraints are puzzles. They test cleverness. You work around them. You laugh when you fail.
The Human Condition
Remove the letter E.
Now describe the first time you felt loved.
Now name your mother.
Now explain why you are afraid.
You cannot.
Not because you have forgotten. Because the tool required to say it has been confiscated. The memory is there. The feeling is there. The mouth will not produce the sound.
This is not difficulty. This is severance.

The mind does not degrade gracefully. It fails like a circuit with one wire cut.
II.
IMPOSSIBILITY IS DOCTRINE
Typically: Every position is solvable. Even if you are losing, you can act. There is always a legal move.
In Algernon Properties:
The Child requires one-syllable words only. The Weight requires three-syllable words only.
If you hold both, speech is impossible.
This is not an edge case. This is the rules working as intended.
The game does not apologize. It does not offer an alternative. It declares you mute and moves on.

The universe does not owe you a solution. Your brain does not owe you continuity. Language does not owe you access. If you need comfort, know that all your stories were never more than fabrication. None ever happened as you recall.
III.
HONESTY IS NOT ON TRIAL
Party Games
The point is connection, community.
Vulnerability is the currency.
The room wants to know you.
The Reality
There's no rule nor reward for honesty.
You can lie through every answer and win. You can tell the truest story of your life and fail.
The name of the game is compliance.
Because this game does not care who you are. It cares whether you can produce coherent output under constraint. Intimacy is not the metric. Maintaining system integrity is.

This is not bonding; that said, you are among humans, so you are in good company.
IV.
TIME IS THE EXECUTIONER
Typically: People wait. Patience is a virtue. Please gather your thoughts.
In Algernon Properties:
Thirty seconds of sandy indifference.
The timer does not care that you are witty. It does not care that the word is right there. It does not care that you have a doctorate, that you have told this story a hundred times, that you are almost finished.
To falter is unforgivable. To slow is to fail.

An agenda without pause is merciless.
V.
THE PALACE IS A BODY
Construction Games like Jenga
You build.
If it falls, you lose. Collapse is game over.
Proceed with caution.
Focus completely on your steady hand.
In Algernon Properties
Collapse has no penalty. The game does not react.
Rebuild while the next question is already being asked, while the timer is already running for someone else.
The memory palace is the visible proof of your cognitive integrity. Thirteen cards means you are whole. Two cards means you are in Crisis. Everyone at the table can see exactly how functional you are.
When you fail, someone physically removes a card from your structure and adds it to theirs. They are not taking points. They are harvesting stability.

Collapse is never game over. You can infinitely rebuild. But the cognitive load is a bitch.
VI.
CRISIS IS DESIGNATION
Typically: When you fall behind, the game extends a helping hand, a boost, a rope. Balanced play.
In Algernon Properties:
When you enter a State of Crisis, the table unloads itself into you.
Every impairment held by every other player transfers to you. You become the receptacle. The sin-eater. The system stabilizes by concentrating all accumulated damage into a single body.
You receive lumber as payment. You can rebuild.
This is how institutions stay functional. This is how families stay intact. This is how groups remain "healthy." This is how cells repair themselves by offloading detritus.
They name someone the sink.

In Crisis they come to your rescue placing a rope in your right hand and an anchor in your left.
THE POINT
Party games let you perform who you wish you were.
Algernon Properties shows you who you are rapidly becoming. One or two setbacks and you can't even speak the name of your beloved or recount your first pet.
Every house is a house of cards.
This one has the courage to admit it.
FOUNDATIONS
¹ Flowers for Algernon
(Keyes, 1959). Charlie Gordon's tragedy is not that he lost intelligence. It is that he documented his own deletion. He watched himself disappear and could not stop writing about it. This game is the diary without the narrator.
² Aphasia
(clinical phenomenon). Language can be destroyed by pinpoint lesions while comprehension remains intact. The terror is not ignorance. It is imprisonment with full awareness.
³ Cognitive Load Theory
(Sweller, 1988). Working memory has hard limits. Stacking constraints does not increase difficulty linearly—it produces catastrophic failure. The system does not bend; it breaks.
⁴ The Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon
(Brown & McNeill, 1966). The psychological state of knowing that you know while being unable to retrieve. Algernon Properties turns private frustration into public performance.
⁵ Entropy
(Second Law of Thermodynamics). Ordered structures tend toward disorder. Collapse is never punished because collapse is expected.
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