MojiMaki

Somewhere between a train platform and a paragraph, a handful of balls are rolling through the same shared page. You are about to be one of them. The words below belong to whoever rolls them up first — and once a word is on somebody's ball, it is gone from the field for everyone.

filed at the trailhead · no accounts · no chat · just rolling · capacity: everyone who shows up

The Rules of the Field

There is exactly one field, and everyone reading this page is standing in it. You will see the other Makis as pale ghost balls drifting between the paragraphs, wearing their own colors and names. You cannot bump them, borrow from them, or ask them to slow down. You can only watch where they wander — and notice, with rising urgency, the empty patches they leave behind. Wherever a ghost has rolled, the words are simply gone.

1. Every ball starts small: plum-sized, wobbly, full of hope.
2. Small words stick on contact. Bold words need a bigger ball. Headings need a bigger ball still.
3. A word feeds exactly one ball. First roller keeps it, forever, or at least until everyone leaves the field.
4. If you race another Maki for the same word and lose, the word pops back off your ball with a polite little spark. No refunds beyond that; this is the wilderness.
5. When the last Maki rolls away, the field resets itself, fresh and full of words, ready for whoever comes next.

The early Maki eats the introduction. The wise Maki skips straight to the bullet lists.

Field Notes on the Local Wildlife

The Ghost Balls

Other Makis appear as white spheres with a colored ring, a drifting trail, and a name floating overhead like a very small flag. Watch one closely and you will notice it genuinely rolls — stripes turning, gathering speed, careening into the fauna section below. It is not simulated politeness; that is their actual ball, drawn from their actual position, roughly a twentieth of a second ago. The internet is doing its best.

The Empty Patches

The strangest part of the field is not the other balls — it is the absence they leave behind. A paragraph you were saving for later can become a patch of invisible words while you are off rolling up a list of trail snacks. This is not a bug. This is scarcity, the oldest game mechanic in the world, wearing a straw hat.

Growth Chart

Growth here is earned by appetite, one rung at a time, and the early rungs come fast: six small words and the next course unlocks — the row of eight dots up in the corner keeps score, and the next dot pulses when you are close. The rule of the menu: a ball eats its own rung and the one below, so the small stuff survives for the next Maki to arrive. Herewith the menu, from appetizer to the long-awaited main event:

pebbles

Ordinary body text. The bread and butter of any young ball. Sweeping through a paragraph of pebbles is the fastest way out of the plum district, and the sight of forty small words riding your equator never entirely stops being funny.

acorns

Bold words — heavier than they look, worth the trouble, and excellent for showing off once your ball can actually lift them.

pinecones

Small headings, like this one and the one about pebbles. They pop loose with a satisfying sound and make the ball look well-traveled.

Trail Markers

Mid-sized headings, scattered along the field's footpaths. If your ball can take a trail marker, it can take most of this page.

quiet hours

(a very small heading — small, yes, but still a heading: the ladder counts rank, not inches)

Then, of course, the big game: section headings, the lede up top, the word below, and eventually — for the truly committed — the great MojiMaki sign itself. The top of the ladder is a long walk on purpose; some fields simply do not hold enough words to get there, and that is fine — that is what the deep end is for.

ROLL

(a 110-point dessert, sitting in the open, waiting patiently for a ball that has earned it)

Trail Snacks & Other Provisions

Listed below, in no particular order, the traditional provisions of the field. They are here for rolling purposes first and nutrition second; take what you can carry:

• one pocketful of loose adjectives
• six slightly dented conjunctions
• the smell of woodsmoke, badly translated into text
• a laminated map of a lake that does not exist
• three marshmallows, structurally optimistic
• every word "please" that anyone said all autumn
• one complete cookout, see diagram

Lost & Found

If you roll up something you did not mean to — a whole heading, say, or the word ROLL, which the field now politely refuses to hand over before you have earned it — you may press Escape at any time. Your page puts itself back together, word for word, and you leave the field quietly through the side gate. The other Makis will keep rolling without you, because that is the nature of fields, and also of web pages. Come back whenever you like; the field keeps no grudges and only sometimes runs out of conjunctions.