I have read your article on the “CHARLIE CHARLIE” game played at schools, (Estcourt News, September 28, page 1) as a matter of fact, my daughter has told me about this game played by learners in school.

I dismissed it as nonsense, she was adamant that it was true, so I asked her, did you see that ACTUALLY happen, she replied NO, but the other learners told her about it, so I left the conversation as is, until I read about it in the Estcourt News. Having chosen a profession in the fields of Science and Chemistry, which is challenging on an everyday basis, I decided with my lab colleagues to give this game a shot, so we simulated what the learners have been doing, ie: take an A4 page, mark a line in the centre of the page running vertically and do the same in the centre of the same page but running horizontally across, so you get this +, in the upper left block we have inserted “YES” and the upper right block we inserted “NO”.

We now placed one pencil on the horizontal line and the second pencil onto the horizontally running pencil, but running vertically, both pencils now simulating a PLUS symbol, ensuring the vertical pencil positioned on top of the horizontal pencil does not contact the page surface.

This exercise was carried out on an office desk with myself sitting, and I spoke the words, “Charlie Charlie, do you want to play?” and to my amazement, the vertical pencil moved to the right position indicating “YES”.

We agreed this is crazy, there has be an explanation. We again looked at the entire set-up and the so-called dialogue that is “Charlie…”. We concluded anyone can be fooled with this game.

The explanation and logic behind the movement of the vertical pencil lies within the dialogue itself, when one speaks the words “Charlie Charlie, do you want to play” the mouth, tongue and breath, functions as per pronunciation of any word, in this case one says CHAR…..you are exhaling, the breath creates a disturbance to whatever is directly in front, the same applies to the words “DO – WANT – PLAY” all exhale related, which creates the pencil to move in any direction, and it’s the words “YES” and “NO” that play mind games, convincing one to believe that some supernatural power is responding miraculously to our earthly comedies.

We at Lab Ghostbusters have concluded this mystery. Please feel free to try it yourself.

Vinod Sharma