Mad Libs is a word game created by Leonard Stern [1] [2] and Roger Price. [3] It consists of one player prompting others for a list of words to substitute for blanks in a story before reading aloud. The game is frequently played as a party game or as a pastime. It can be categorized as a phrasal template game.
The game was invented in the United States, and more than 110 million copies of Mad Libs books have been sold since the series was first published in 1958. [3]
Mad Libs was invented in 1953 [4] by Leonard Stern and Roger Price. Stern and Price created the game, but could not agree on a name for their invention. [3] No name was chosen until five years later (1958), when Stern and Price were eating Eggs Benedict at a restaurant in New York City. While eating, the two overheard an argument at a neighboring table between a talent agent and an actor. [3] According to Price and Stern, during the overheard argument, the actor said that he wanted to "ad-lib" an upcoming interview. The agent, who clearly disagreed with the actor's suggestion, retorted that ad-libbing an interview would be "mad". [3] Stern and Price used that eavesdropped conversation to create, at length, the name "Mad Libs". [3] In 1958, the duo released the first book of Mad Libs, which resembled the earlier games [5] of consequences and exquisite corpse.
Stern was head writer and comedy director for The Steve Allen Show , and suggested to the show's host that guests be introduced using Mad Libs completed by the audience. Four days after an episode introduced "our guest NOUN, Bob Hope", bookstores sold out of Mad Libs books. [6]
Stern and Price next partnered with Larry Sloan, a high school friend who was working as a publicist at the time, to continue publishing Mad Libs. [7] Together, the three founded the publishing firm Price Stern Sloan in the early 1960s as a way to release Mad Libs. [8] In addition to releasing more than 70 editions of Mad Libs under Sloan, the company also published 150 softcover books, including such notable titles as How to Be a Jewish Mother , first released in 1964; Droodles , which was also created by Roger Price; The VIP Desk Diary; and the series World's Worst Jokes. [3] [7]
Price died in 1990, and three years later, Sloan and Stern sold Price Stern Sloan, including Mad Libs, to the former Putnam Berkley Group, which is now known as Penguin Random House. [7] Mad Libs books are still published by Penguin Random House; however, all references to Price Stern Sloan have been removed from the company's official website. Stern died at age 88 on June 7, 2011, [9] and Sloan on October 14, 2012. [3] [7] [8]
More than 110 million copies of Mad Libs have been sold since the game series was first published in 1958. [3]
It is unclear whether the creators of Mad Libs were aware of existing games and books similar to their own. One such game is Revelations about my Friends, published anonymously by Fredrick A. Stokes Companies in New York in 1912. [10] [6] Like Mad Libs, the book invites the reader to choose words of different categories which then become part of a story. The nineteenth century parlor game "Consequences" and the surrealists' Exquisite Corpse game are also similar to Mad Libs.
Mad Libs books contain short stories on each page with many key words replaced with blanks. Beneath each blank is specified a category, such as "noun", "verb", "place", "celebrity", "exclamation" or "part of the body". [11] One player asks the other players, in turn, to contribute a word of the specified type for each blank, but without revealing the context for that word. Finally, the completed story is read aloud. The result is usually a sentence which is comical, surreal and/or takes on somewhat of a nonsensical tone.
Stern and Price's original Mad Libs book gives the following sentence as an example: [12]
"___________!"
exclamation
he
said
________
adverb
as
he
jumped
into
his
convertible
______
noun
and
drove
off
with
his
_________
adjective
wife.
After completion, they demonstrate that the sentence might read:
"Ouch!" he said stupidly as he jumped into his convertible cat and drove off with his brave wife.
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The following is a list of most Mad Libs books in alphabetical order: [13]
A game show called Mad Libs, with some connections to the game, aired on the Disney Channel in 1998 and 1999.
Several imitations of Mad Libs have been created, most of them on the Internet. Imitation Mad Libs are sometimes used in educational settings to help teach kids the parts of speech. [11] [14]
Looney Labs released Mad Libs: The Game, a card game, in 2016. There is also a Mad Libs mobile app.
Exquisite corpse is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule or by being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed.
Marilyn Sadler is a children's writer with a deadpan sense of humor. She was born November 17, 1950, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of her best known works was made into a television Disney movie, under the title Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century. That book is about a space girl who is sent to Earth and the cultural clashes she finds in her new planet. Subsequently, two additional Zenon films were made, Zenon: The Zequel and Zenon: Z3.
Mean Creek is a 2004 American independent coming-of-age psychological drama film written and directed by Jacob Aaron Estes and starring Rory Culkin, Ryan Kelley, Scott Mechlowicz, Trevor Morgan, Josh Peck, and Carly Schroeder. It was produced by Susan Johnson, Rick Rosenthal, and Hagai Shaham.
Droodles was a syndicated cartoon feature created by Roger Price and collected in his 1953 book Droodles, though the term is now used more generally of similar visual riddles.
Marc Edward Wilmore was an American television writer, producer, actor, and comedian. He wrote and performed for shows such as In Living Color, The PJs, The Simpsons, and F Is for Family. Wilmore was a 10-time Primetime Emmy Award nominee. He was the younger brother of comedian Larry Wilmore.
Roger Price was an American humorist, author and publisher, who created Droodles in the 1950s, followed by his collaborations with Leonard B. Stern on the Mad Libs series. Price and Stern became partners with Larry Sloan in the publishing firm Price Stern Sloan.
Price Stern Sloan or PSS! was a publisher that was founded in Los Angeles in the early 1960s to publish the Mad Libs that Roger Price and Leonard Stern had concocted during their stint as writers for Tonight Starring Steve Allen and also the Droodles. Along with their partner Larry Sloan, they expanded the company into children's books, novelty formats, and humor. Some of the books they published include movie tie-ins for films such as Happy Feet, Wallace and Gromit, Catwoman, and Elf, How to Be a Jewish Mother (1964), and other properties such as Serendipity, Mr. Men and Little Miss and Wee Sing. Today, PSS! still publishes approximately ten Mad Libs books a year. Mr. Stern and Mr. Sloan went on to found Tallfellow Press in Los Angeles.
Leonard Bernard Stern was an American screenwriter, film and television producer, director, and one of the creators, with Roger Price, of the word game Mad Libs.
Maple Pictures Corporation was a Canadian–American film distribution company founded on April 13, 2005 when Lionsgate demerged to two companies—Lions Gate Entertainment and Maple Pictures. Maple Pictures was the official distributor for Lionsgate's films and video library throughout Canada.
VeggieTales is an American Christian CGI-animated series and franchise for children created by Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki under Big Idea Entertainment. The series stars Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber leading a variety of fruit and vegetable characters as they retell stories from the Bible and parody pop culture while also teaching life lessons according to a biblical world view.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth is a 2010 bestselling children's fiction book by American author and cartoonist Jeff Kinney and is the fifth book in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. The Ugly Truth sold 548,000 copies in its initial week of publication, edging out Decision Points, which sold 437,000 copies.
The 34th Young Artist Awards ceremony, presented by the Young Artist Association, honored excellence of young performers between the ages of 5 and 21 in the fields of film, television and theatre for the 2012 calendar year. The 34th annual ceremony also marked the first year the association recognized achievements of young internet performers with the inaugural presentation of the award for "Best Web Performance".
Malcolm Whyte (1933) is an author, editor, publisher, and founder of the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. He has produced nearly 200 books, 45 of which he has written or co-written. His taste is for unique, offbeat ideas with a sense of good humor and produced with an eye for color and beautiful graphics as represented by The Original Old Radio Game from 1965 to Maxon: Art Out of Chaos, FU Press, 2018.
How to Be a Jewish Mother is a 1964 Jewish humor book by American humorist Dan Greenburg which was the best-selling non-fiction book in the United States in 1965, with 270,000 copies sold. The book was first published by Price Stern Sloan under publisher Larry Sloan.
Lloyd Lawrence "Larry" Sloan was an American publisher of Mad Libs and co-founder of the Los Angeles publishing company, Price Stern Sloan, which opened in the early 1960s.
Gavin Edwards is an American journalist and non-fiction writer. He has written 14 books, including The Tao of Bill Murray: Real-Life Stories of Joy, Enlightenment, and Party Crashing, and Bad Motherfucker:The Life and Movies of Samuel L. Jackson, the Coolest Man in Hollywood. He co-wrote MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios, a New York Times bestseller published in 2023.
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