Farkling/farggling

[Peter A. McGraw]

--On Wednesday, July 9, 2003 3:15 PM -0400 Laurence Horn
<laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:

> At 8:25 AM -0700 7/9/03, Peter A. McGraw wrote:
>> Since, to my puzzlement, no one else has spoken up, I guess I'll have to
>> be the one to offer still another variant.  I remember playing the game
>> as a kid in So. California, and the order was definitely "rocks,
>> scissors and paper."  The logical pecking order, so to speak.  (No
>> farkling, sorry.  No matches, either.)
>>
>> Peter Mc.
>
> I guess I don't understand; if there's a pecking order like the one
> above rather than a cyclic one, wouldn't everyone choose rock?  Or
> are you saying that paper DOES cover (defeat) rock, but as I
> mentioned below it doesn't really feel that bad to be covered,
> compared to being smushed?  This gets into game theory, of course--if
> you KNEW that your opponent was going to choose rock, you would
> always choose paper to cover, but otherwise rock is safer.
>

I didn't mean anything scientific or deeply psychological.  I just meant
that the version of the title that I learned went logically down the
hierarchy: rocks crush scissors cut paper.  Then of course it cycles back
to the top, since the lowly paper covers rocks.  Come to think of it, I
guess "rocks-paper-scissors" is just as logical, since it could be seen as
going backwards up the hierarchy: rocks are covered by paper is cut by
scissors (are crushed by rocks...and the loop starts again).

(Meanwhile, I've been banging away at a pair of scissors with this rock I
found, and the gol-durn things are still holding together!  The rock's got
a few chips out of it by now, though.)

Peter Mc.

*****************************************************************
Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************