Egyptian Airport: Check In

How to play: you are the ground agent at the Experdize Air check-in at Cairo International, and every passenger speaks Egyptian — this game teaches the language of checking in for a flight. Passengers file through the stanchion ropes to the one desk, and every check comes up on the panel as a question in Egyptian. The terminal stands still while a question is up, so read at your own pace: the level is ten reads, there is no clock to beat, and the record is how long they take you and how many you got right first time. The terminal is built up a level at a time, and every passenger takes their own way through it. At level 1 there is one desk and a roped queue, and every check-in opens with the booking against the passport — عبد العزيز against ABDELAZIZ. ⚠ In Egyptian the التاء المربوطة (ة) is a silent letter that decides a name: أمير is a man and أميرة a woman, سمير and سميرة are one ة apart. The strip along the bottom of the passport is plain A–Z — a TRANSLITERATION — and the booking and the passport often spell the same Arabic name differently (أحمد as AHMED or AHMAD), which is precisely why the desk must read both eyes. Then they ask for a seat — جنب الشباك the window, جنب الممر the aisle, أي واحد either. Level 2 opens the self check-in kiosks by the doors: some passengers print a boarding pass and pick their seat there, some checked in online and walk straight in. Level 3 brings checked bags and the bag drop — the kiosk prints the bag tag, the scale reads the weight in words against الحد تلاتة وعشرين كيلو, and the feminine ة rides the units (تمانية, تسعة), and an overweight case is repacked before it goes down the belt, because only a carry-on goes past the desk. Somebody who forgot the kiosk is sent back for a tag. Level 3 turns the body scanner on — سكينة and ولّاعة are confiscated, مفاتيح and فلوس فضة are legal; ⚠ the gender (سكينة feminine, مفتاح masculine) is part of every one — and level 4 the X-ray, where زجاجة ميّة and ولّاعة do not fly. Level 6 opens the information booth: people ask the way — الأمن فين؟, الجمارك فين؟ — and you tell them where it is; a few are not flying at all and only want arrivals. Level 5 adds the gate podium, where passengers ask من إيه البوابة and you read the departures board — لـ لندن، لـ دبي — for البوابة رقم اتنين, البوابة رقم اتناشر or البوابة رقم اتنين وتلاتين. From level 5 the board shows each flight's status — في ميعاده, الرحلة اتأخرت, الرحلة اتلغت, الصعود بدأ, آخر نداء — and passengers ask the booth what it says: a cancellation sends them home, a delay to the seats, a final call has them hurrying. Trolleys, seats, signs, a café and flight screens fill the hall on the way. Wrong answers are taken or answered back, never refused — they cost the streak or a fine, a walk the wrong way or a protest, and the read settles as wrong. The Difficulty row on the setup card decides how much help is written under each line: مبتدئ adds the say-it-like-this and English, متوسط the say-it-like-this alone, متقدم the Egyptian by itself. What is spoken out loud is always the Egyptian.