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Do you know the game "Taboo"? It is a great word game, where you have to describe a word without using any of the five taboo words. I quite like the game, but it is always a hassle to carry it to where you want it - especially to far off mountain huts where you have to hike to (more about this exicting weekend, including burning cars, later and probably in German, so planet readers: see here).

So today I wrote Tapu, which is an implementation of Taboo for the mobile phone. It should work on any phone with Java support. It will present you the cards and keep track of the time and score. To give it a try, just put the jar file on the phone. I have only tried it on my Sony T610, I'm looking for reports on other mobile phones. Note that currently, the UI and the 100 words, copied from the original game, are all in German, but the code is not. If someone writes an i17n-patch, that would be terrific.

Also, since I assume that the words of the original game are copyrighted, I'm looking for help developing a free word list for taboo. Just think of a word and five taboo words that make describing this word interesting, put them all in one line and send it, together with lots of other such lines, to me, so I can add them to the list.

Oh, and why is it named Tapu? Well, it was Taboo first (since I thought it is wise to not call it Tabu, the name of the German version of the Game), but sice the English version is already called that, I renamed the Program to Tapu, which is the Tongan origin of both Tabu and Taboo, according to the Wikipedia.