Before I tell you about the numerous benefits of playing iSketch, I should warn you that iSketch is not an Apple application that aims at making you witty.

Rather, iSketch is simply an online, multiplayer Pictionary game that you can play from your web browser. The goal is to make people guess the word you’ve been given by drawing it — no writing allowed!

The game is quite enjoyable and fun. However, you will need to get used to being humiliated by some players’ exceptional drawing skills (many of them using graphics tablets), and the too-frequent frustration of not being able to draw such basic elements as a human profile.

I used to play iSketch regularly around a year ago.

For the most part, I had good memories of the game, and that’s why I eventually got back to playing it.

Much to my surprise, absolutely nothing changed in the game.

The user interface had stayed exactly the same, and the old kitsch introductory video was still there – it was just a matter of time before it all came back into vogue again.

In the same way, the login screen still bore the antediluvian promise that account registration would soon be available. Come to think of it, it was a bit reminiscent of those unsettling signs you can find on the walls of abandoned buildings. With time, they have lost all meaning and are now mere vestiges of a bygone, teeming era.

However, this is where the comparison ends.

As soon as I stepped in and got past the hostile facade, I was welcomed with the usual warmth of the game.

Yes, nothing had changed.

But in a good way.

I felt a pang of nostalgia as all the good memories came rushing in.

Needless to say, playing iSketch has once again become a habit, and some games I’ve played were so interesting that they made me discover some surprising benefits of the game. Now, I can tell myself that I’m not just having fun, but, rather, that I’m working on my language skills, or on my creativity, or (if I’m really desperate for a reason) on my drawing skills.

Don’t get me wrong, though: I truly think that this game boasts many assets.

First, let me say that the community is overall pretty friendly and motivating. Since the game is quite old (I’ve learned just now that it was launched in 1999 – old indeed), the community itself is quite small, although not to the point that it’s hard to find people to play with.

You often come across the same nicknames, and as a result, you get to know some players rapidly and be involved in familiar chit-chat early on. The occasional discussions are usually quite varied, as people come from all walks of life and cover the whole age spectrum (some are even learning their first words with iSketch as we speak!)

Just as varied are the rooms in iSketch.

Once you’ve “logged in” (read: entered a nickname), you need to pick a room to join. Each room has a designated language and wordlist. For instance, if you want to practice French, you might want to join one of the “French (Easy)” rooms.

There are thousands of wordlists to choose from, though only a handful ever get used. You will find wordlists related to history, geography, specific countries (useful if you wish to know more about their culture), sport, art, books, movies, animes, TV shows, video games, even Internet memes. Unfortunately, it’s not quite possible to use your own wordlists, not that it matters: there is already enough content to content most people.

A wordlist I find particularly interesting is the “Homonyms” one: you must make the other players guess two similar-sounding words, using whatever method you like. Usually, players only have to find one word to guess the other one… except when they’ve never come across the other one ever before in their life: for my part, I remember learning the words “ruff” (“rough”) and “bight” (“bite”) in the hour I spent in that room. I still know their meanings today thanks to the vivid memories I have of their drawings. I can also recall the thoughts that went through my head while I was racking my brains for a homonym I simply didn’t know yet.

Context is golden.

Since the brain’s a network, the more pathways lead to some thing (for example a word you want to memorise), the easier it is to remember it. Being aware of this helped me just last week for instance, as I was watching a film with a very famous French actor whose name I had on the tip of my tongue. To call it up, I tried to think of another film in which he starred. That was easy: I quickly came up with “L’As des As”. A second later, the name of the actor, Jean-Paul Belmondo, simply popped up in my head, thanks to the link that my brain had unconsciously made between the film and the actor’s name.

Knowing the rules that govern the brain, it’s easier to use it more efficiently.

Speaking of rules: in addition to having a specific wordlist, each room in iSketch also has its own set of rules.

For example, in the rooms named “Big Picture”, you must draw two words in a single scene — the results can be quite hilarious.

In “Tandem”, you and another player get paired up and given two words that you need to draw as a team, simultaneously — either separately or in a “Big Picture”, at your discretion.

The room “5 strokes” is pretty self-explanatory.

The rules of the room “Connections” might be a bit harder to guess. In “Connections”, you need to incorporate the previous word into your drawing. This often results in very bizarre, unique drawings, sometimes even inspiring, depending on the creativity or eccentricity of the players. In my opinion, this room’s a great way to work on your improvisation skills and your creativity while having fun all the while, and, if you’re gifted, showing off your drawing skills.

Together with a bunch of other players, I once played an extreme version of “Connections”, where in each drawing, we were trying to incorporate each word from the previous rounds since the game started (each game consisting of 10 rounds). To this day I still clearly remember the final drawing each one of us had contributed to: a car with a sun roof entering a garage while streets were getting flooded (tide)…

This game really is a proof that visual memory can work wonders.

I suspect that the “Connections” room of iSketch could be applied to language learning too, although for now I fail to see how exactly. It could even be applied to memorising elements in a certain sequence, as I can almost recall the order that the elements were added.

This makes me wonder: how great would it be if you could casually memorise a list by sneaking inside your drawings some external elements, seemingly superfluous to others yet extremely important to you and helping you reach your memorisation goals? Nobody would find out. Even if the other players smelled something fishy, they wouldn’t be able to grasp it; at best, they would be thinking you have an OCD of sorts.

Visual memory is extremely effective, and so is spatial memory.

I recently read about the Loci method used by the Greeks. According to legend, it originated when a Greek survivor of a building collapse realized he could name the crushed, disfigured bodies entirely based on their location at the banquet. He had unconsciously bound the physical spots to the people who usually sat there, in much the same way you know the exact placement of each piece of furniture in your home.

The Loci method is primarily used when you need to memorise elements in a certain order. The idea is to choose a path – in your home, city, or an imagined world –, pick a few objects that you will walk past, and assign to them, in the same order that you encounter them, the elements you want to memorise. If done properly, you should then be able to remember the elements in order as you stroll along your path in your head (or in real life, if you want to).

You might now understand why the Loci Method is also conveniently known as the “memory palace”. I have heard a lot of good things about this method and I’m sure it works. It has been used by numerous distinguished mnemonists, among which is French blogger Jean-Yves Ponce, who, by the way, keeps an extremely interesting website named “Potion de vie” (“Life potion”) : http://www.potiondevie.fr/ .

I haven’t tried this exact technique yet. However, I’ve been toying with a similar idea to learn the gender of some German nouns I’m having trouble with. Knowing how shamelessly familiar I am with the maps of the video game Counter-Strike, I’ve been assigning problem words to different maps based on their gender. I will see how this works out.

I believe that there are a lot of creative ways to use our memory, and that most of them can derive from the automatic ways we memorise in our daily life. For example, off the top of my head, I’m sure I could somehow turn to my advantage my knowing of song titles or album covers.

I find interesting the idea of making use of daily, mundane habits to serve your memory.

The idea of an alternative, systematic look at ordinary things is also present in iSketch: as you hang out with veterans, you notice that most of them have a signature of some kind, be it the way they draw, or their characters looking a certain way, or the presence of a ubiquitous sunset in the background… This can lead to inside jokes, for instance by imitating other people’s drawing styles or by referring to earlier episodes in your drawing.

Case in point; I was once playing a game in “Connections” and had to link “face” and “bride”. I first drew a face, and then curly brown hair in place of the left eyebrow and long straight blonde hair in place of the right one. I then made the eyes the heads of the two lovers, et cetera. I stuck with the habit of drawing these specific hairstyles instead of eyebrows for a while, just for fun, and other people picked up on it, which made for a lot of fun and strangeness in the end.

Yesterday I had to link the word “subtract” with “circle”, so I made a compound figure with a circle, a square and a triangle, then drew a minus sign, then drew the same compound shape without the circle in it, and I pointed a red arrow at the result (a question mark).

Just today, I had to link the word of the previous round, “son”, with the word “sound”. I tried to make use of the fact that “(le) son” in French means “(the) sound” in English, so I drew an arrow pointing at where the previous word was written in the chatbox, and another arrow going from the French flag to the Union Jack.

In another round in “Connections”, I somehow ended up drawing an angel shedding a tear in which you could see the devil. (It sounds better than it looked, trust me.)

Hopefully you see what I’m getting at: you can make the game as exciting as you want, and even use it as a starting point for works of art or philosophical problems if this is your cup of tea. Most importantly, it’s an excellent tool to practice thinking outside the box.

This being said, sometimes it’s not possible to surrender fully to your muse in public rooms. That’s when you typically want to make a private room with some of your friends so that you can take your time to think up and execute a creative drawing for the word and give a signal to the players (for example adding a checkmark to your picture) when you’re done drawing and they can start guessing. You can utilise the several meanings of the word you’ve been given, go for an absurd illustration, or use the different drawing tools available to achieve a certain style (for example using negative space).

And as if all that wasn’t enough, some players even made up alternative rules that they apply to their user-created public rooms (you can read the rules here: http://task10.com/?mash).

I hope I haven’t put you off with all these options: if you want to play vanilla style, you’re free to do so! Besides, that’s the way most people play.

Whatever the game mode, I highly suggest you try the game out; you’ll be surprised at how addictive it is!

Well, that’s about it for me. Thanks for bearing with me that far.

As a token of my gratitude, I’ll share a final use of iSketch with you. It’s a dirty trick, but it works!

Here goes: if you can’t for the life of you remember what a certain thing is called, you can draw the word you’re looking for instead of the one you’re supposed to draw; the players’ guesses will probably point you in the right direction.

// Addendum (some nine years later): Sadly the game does not work anymore on modern browsers, and none of the replacements I have found seems to do the original game justice.
Things really were better back in the days!

For another interesting and creative web-based game drawing heavily on drawing, you might also want to check out my article on Drawception. I also wrote an article on Shiritori, an online game that lets you practice and expand your vocabulary.