You may have heard of a little computer game called “Snood.” Freshman Jordan Ritter-Soronen’s mother certainly has.

“I downloaded it while I was home for Thanksgiving. And she took to it. A lot,” Ritter-Soronen said. “And as well as my mom being addicted on our home computer, she recently got a laptop to do work while she’s on the road, and she downloaded “Snood” onto her laptop so she can play in bed.”

So what is a snood, exactly? In Victorian times, it was a hair net, and in Scotland it was a ribbon fastened around the head as a sign of chastity. And believe it or not, that red floppy thing that hangs over the beak of a turkey is also a snood. The “Snood” we’re talking about here, however, is a highly addictive shareware game that seems to have infiltrated the entire Ithaca College campus.

“I see a lot of people playing it, you know, just walking around the halls,” sophomore Brian Miller said. “It’s a swinging game.” Miller admitted to having played “Snood” since his freshman year.

“Snood” is loosely based on an old Acclaim arcade game called “Bust-A-Move.” The object of the game is to free all of the snoods (brightly-colored heads) from the top of the screen by launching other snoods. If you match three or more of the same colors, the heads disappear and you’re one step closer to winning the game. There is no time limit, and the unregistered version of the game comes with five levels of difficulty and a puzzle level. Registration costs $14.95 and adds features to the basic game.

Dave Dobson, an assistant professor of geology at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., designed the game. The current “Snood” home page (http://www.snood.com or http://www.snood.org) was originally a personal page hosted on the Web site of the University of Michigan, where Dobson received his doctorate. The game was first available in May 1996 and became popular by the end of that summer, Dobson said, who also admitted, “I didn’t expect it to go anywhere.”

Dobson estimates that between 300,000 and 400,000 people have downloaded “Snood” from his sites, not including the downloads from other sites that offer the game. From those, approximately 20,000 people have registered “Snood.”

“Most of the people who write me and pay for it are not college students,” Dobson said. “I know that it’s really big on a lot of different campuses, primarily in the Northeast I think. It’s big at Dartmouth and Cornell in particular, also Harvard and Cal Tech.”

Most of Dobson’s students know that their professor is “the guy who made ‘Snood,’” and some even admit to using “Snood” as a means of procrastination.

“A lot of them say ‘I couldn’t finish my paper,’” said Dobson. “Or they talk about their roommates being addicted to it. They say that they haven’t eaten in three days or something.”

Many Ithaca College students use “Snood” as a way to take breaks from work or in between classes.

Freshman Wendy Thau plays at least once a day, often between classes. “I usually play for ten minutes at a time,” she said.

Freshman Charlotte Brennand saw the game for the first time on a friend’s computer over fall break, then downloaded it onto her home computer and later to her school computer and has “played it ever since.”

“I play it to take breaks from my work,” she said. “My roommate plays it all the time. And then people will come in and we’re both clicking.”

“Snood” provides an endless distraction from work.

“Last semester, during finals week, it got out of hand,” Miller said. “Whenever I had a break, it was ‘Snood.’”

Sophomore Amanda Zawadzki, an R.A., started playing “Snood” last semester after Miller told her about it. She said she has heard about a lot of roommates having conflicts over using the computer because they want to play “Snood.”

“Someone needs to do a paper and someone wants to play, and that person just keeps playing,” she said. “I don’t know if they actually went through the R.D., but they were talking about coming to the R.D. to talk about getting a new roommate agreement.”

It seems the thrill of the game wears off easily, however.

“I’m not into it as much as I used to be because it kind of annoys me now,” Brennand said. “Like Instant Messenger annoys me now because I’m on it too much.”

Some students have resorted to eliminating “Snood” from their computers, and their lives, entirely.

“I knew it was bad,” said freshman Ally Quigley, recently “Snood”-free. “I knew it was evil from the moment I got it. I saw what it did to my friends.”