In those far off days, when the guests at an evening party in the country worked really hard for their own entertainment, and when one round game followed another with the regularity of clockwork, it was usual to fill in an interval of comparative quiet with the horrible game called Buzz.
People who had been rushing violently from one end of the room to the other in the game of General Post, or pacing uneasily round about the rows of chairs with their ears strained to hear the sudden break in the music of the piano were supposed to feel refreshed by a quiet game of Buzz. Physically rested they might be, but the mental strain was as great as anything that went before.
As they sat round in an exhausted state, a player would say "One," and the count went on briskly, every player speaking his number in its turn, until he was banished from the game by a breach of the rules. No player must mention the number seven, nor any of its multiples, nor a number in which seven appeared in any shape or form. Instead of these fateful numbers one had to say "Buzz"; and as the count went on, the average brain became numb with the awful certainty that before very long one would say a number when one should say "Buzz," or the other way round, which was just as bad.
The Irish Times, September 30th, 1930.