Kobayashi Maru

[Victor Steinbok]

Another follow-up on an old thread. A while ago we had several posts on
terms that entered everyday language from science fiction. One item that
had been left off the list is Kobayashi Maru which I've read or heard in
different contexts at least five times over the past two weeks.
Interestingly enough, there were sightly different shades of meaning in
different instances, but I have not kept track of them in enough detail
to reproduce them. Twice Kobayashi Maru was mentioned on Top Chef (I'm
watching 9:10 on Verizon On-Demand right now, although this is from a
bit over a month ago). I've also seen it on a number of blogs, including
two bloggers referring to the Nevada caucuses as Newt Gingrich's
Kobayashi Maru--an unwinnable scenario that is used to evaluate how a
person behaves in a losing situation. On Star Trek--specifically, in
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan--Kobayashi Maru is an unwinnable
scenario that Kirk beats by simply changing the problem. So Kobayashi
Maru stands for both an unwinnable scenario (particularly when the
objective is to observe the behavior of the person who cannot win) and
thinking outside the box. With respect to the election writing, it's
always been the former (in my experience), but on Top Chef it's been
used as the latter. Also, one of the chefs, oddly, referred to it as
"Kobarashi Maru". For more references, see Wiki. I'm just putting this
out there so that people are on the lookout for occurrences.

UD also has an entry. OED has it in one quote from the novel The Wrath
of Khan.

Mayday, int. and n.2
A. int.
> 1982 V. N. McIntyre /Wrath of Khan/ 8   Mayday, mayday. /Kobayashi
> Maru/ twelve parsecs out of Altair Vi.

Kobayashi Maru is also the name of the ship that carries the Maltese
Falcon in the eponymous film. Although it predates Star Trek by decades,
it might have served as an inspiration for Star Trek writers as a doomed
voyage.

     VS-)

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