Wild guess: are these starts-and-ends from the game also known as Telephone Oracle, in which players take turns answering questions and posing questions that fit the answers (without seeing the Q&A history up to that point)? That's one of my favorite parlor games.

It's a related parlor game, but much weirder, because the questions and answers are generated totally independently and the assignment of one to another is wholly random. You have to see it in operation to believe it: you get chills.