Folklore: Scissors, Paper, Rock

Subject: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: John Hardly
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 08:54 AM

In the hierarchy of scissors, paper, and rock, by all rights the paper should have been able to cover over the scissors, thereby making them less visible, and consequently, less powerful.

But scissors cut paper. That's the rules. It's the rock that smashes the scissors. But what good are they then? Sure, nobody is likely to use broken shears, but is prevention, in this case, worse than the ill?

And that brings up another obvious flaw in the scissors, paper, rock hierarchy. If paper covers rock...

...what do you use to keep the paper from blowing away?

Wouldn't the three of them (scissors, paper, and rock) be much happier if they worked together for their mutual benefit, rather than covering, cutting, and smashing?

And then, see, the whole thing of just three (scissors, paper, rock) is so exclusive. Why not not crayon or pen? Why not stick?

You know, if scissors, paper, and rock continue to be so exclusive, so segregationist in their world view, it's bound to come back to haunt them. I mean, if they'd just include some other objects (like sticks) then the whole world might look more favorable on the threesome.

If they don't, at some point somebody's going to take real offense and take matters in their own hands. For instance, who do you think wins in a game of "scissors, paper, rock, dynamite"?

And what's with "a" scissors?

It's like that old question... Why are "panties" always plural, but "bra" is singular?

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: Amos
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 09:05 AM

John:

It's just like Hull with spelling!! :D


A

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: MudGuard
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 09:08 AM

It's just like Hull with spelling!! :D

ROFLMAOBTC...

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: sledge
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 09:27 AM

A feeble attempt to use this old chestnut to try and keep the thread vaguely current.


http://www.rockpapersaddam.com/


Cheers

Sledge

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: Jeri
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 10:08 AM

I think it all has to do with the verbs. You have bashing, cutting and wrapping. The bashing thing bashes the cutting thing, the cutting thing cuts the wrapping thing. The wrapping thing has always baffled me as well. You can wrap a bashing thing, but still be able to bash. It becomes a blunt object with a silencer.

I argued vehemently against the rock/paper thing when I first learned the game. People were equally vehement in their defense of tradition. Comments like "It's just a stupid game! Would you shut up now?" were common. They just didn't seem to care.

In the years since first noticing the problem, my attempts to come up with a third object that will overcome one of the other two, and yet BE overcome by the other, have been unsuccesful and very frustrating.

Re: 'panties' - and why do men not wear a brief or a boxer short?

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: mack/misophist
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 10:37 AM

Scissors are plural because they're a holdover from the now extinct "dual" case. (like trousers)

Bra is singular because it comes from a word meaning "arm".

OK, John Hardly?

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: John Hardly
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 10:45 AM

Obviously the charm of the game has to do with the objects being inanimate. For that reason you don't feel compassion for the losing object. You feel free to use the verbs (like bashing) and don't really feel sorry for the scissors that get bashed.

Conversely, if you made the game out of animals like, say, turtle, badger, wolf......hmmm...

1) wolf outruns badger but can't break through the turtle's shell
2) badger can rip the turtle out of it's shell but can't catch the wolf
3) turtle confounds the wolf but not the badger

...somebody's going to feel sorry for one or the other of the animals. Usually the sympathy edge goes to the furry ones. Thus, no kid is going to choose the turtle because it's not as cute.

Not to mention, it's a game of uneven consequences -- the turtle presumably gets eaten, while the bagder and wolf merely get outrun and frustrated respectively.

Well, I suppose that's true of Scissors, Paper, Rock. The Scissors get smashed (rendering them usesless), while the paper and rock merely get cut and covered respectively. And one might even argue that, while the paper is cut (maybe painful at the time), through that process its number is actually increased...

...So that creates a new problem. Whenever you have to do a "best two out of three", for each successive contest the paper is increasing in number (and thereby, presumably, strength), while at the same time, though the rock stays the same, the scissors are in no shape to do battle again. They are smashed.

re: briefs and boxers - at my age "briefs" aren't.

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: John Hardly
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 11:05 AM

I've been researching this game and found this:

The origins of this game are ancient -- tracing all the way back to ancient Middle Eastern cultures, influenced by an influx of trade from cultures beyond the Caucus Mountains.

The game actually began as War (the fist), Appeasement (the flattened hand), and Peace (the two-fingered peace sign -- you probably didn't know that that sign had such ancient origins, eh?).

When they were developing the game they concluded that appeasement would trump war, peace was better than appeasement, and war ended peace.

The game was short-lived because nobody could actually play it without, you know, WAR breaking out over the philosophical underpinnings of the element's claims. Specifically, war wanted to be able to end appeasement and claim victory, while peace always claimed itself as the ultimate goal of the game, and therefore, saw no need to participate in the contest.

So, in order to actually have a game, Scissors, Papyrus, Rock was invented. The earlier representation were lost to history.

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: Amos
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 11:08 AM

I suppose you could add a third player and a fourth element -- say, Fire, which melts scissors and burns paper but is helpless on rock. Or leave paper out of it. And add something like persimmon, or perhaps ice (ice shatters scissors, fire melts ice, rock breaks ice...).

You are (as usual) completely right, Jeri -- it's stodgy and irrational.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: John Hardly
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 11:18 AM

"And add something like persimmon"

I miss-read this and thought it said "like permission".

Now THAT would be a revolutionary concept! Except, wouldn't permission, as an element, trump all the others? Or would the three new elements be...

permission
persistance
obstinance

?

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: Amos
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 11:27 AM

Let's add benevolence. Benevolence melts scissors, but paper can smother benevolence...

A

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: dianavan
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 01:04 PM

My Chinese students play the same game only its called ching, chang, chung.

d

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: freightdawg
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 01:12 PM

You learn the darndest things on the 'Cat.

Freightdawg

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 05:04 PM

Limpit has her own version from her school, with fire, river and earth. River extinguishes fire, fire burns earth, earth blocks the river.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: Benjamin
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 06:58 PM

Maybe paper doesn't actually "cover" the rock as we've always been told. Maybe rock has to serve paper as a paper-weight, making paper it's master and the source of it's purpose of existance. Maybe what we need is a rock with a mind of it's own.

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 07:12 PM

John:

You're right, of course, paper could cover scissors, and that's probably the way it was when the game was first invented. But, very soon, scissors began to recognize paper as a potential threat to it's existence and so it began launching preemptive attacks against paper saying, "I need to fight paper over there so I won't have to fight it over here." And ever since that time paper could not cover scissors and they all lived happily ever after.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 07:44 PM

Amos:

You can't add a fourth item & mantain the equality of the game. With 3 items, and a cyclic list of supremacy, each item stands an equal chance of winning/losing.
This of course relies on your opponent not being predictable, in which case you could improve your chances.

Nigel

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: Amos
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 08:11 PM

Nigel:

If there were four items it would simply make the predictability less, but more interesting, as long as each pair of different items had one which over-rode the other. But since Benevolence overrides everything, perhaps it is not a good candidate.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: Fergie
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 08:26 PM

In Ireland we have a new version its called UUP, SF, DUP.
Fergus

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 10:17 PM

The gostok distims the doshes, the doshes distim the fnord, the fnord distims the gostock.

There.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 18 Sep 04 - 10:23 PM

Sorry, that should have been "gostak."

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 19 Sep 04 - 03:58 AM

Here in Hawaii the kids generally use the Japanese term, Jan Ken Po. Take a look at this site for some history and alternative games, including versions from all over Asia. This Cantonese version is a bit complex:

The Cantonese people of China play not a sansukumi but a gosukumi game [i.e., 5 choices instead of 3]. The symbols are god, chicken, gun, fox, and termite. God is the thumb, chicken the index finger, gun the middle finger, fox the ring finger, and termite the little finger. The sukumi relationships are like this: with God and Chicken, chicken is sacrificed to god and thus loses. With God and Gun, the gun introduces people to god(?) and thus God wins. The termite eats the God's statue, and thus wins. The gun defeats the chicken. The fox defeats the chicken too. The chicken defeats the termite. The gun defeats the fox. Other than that, the god and the fox are good freinds, as are the gun and termite, and the fox and termite take no notice of each other, so these symbols tie with each other. According to these rules, the god and gun are strongest, and the chicken weakest.

Got it?

Aloha,
Mark

(still trying to figure out the one from China called "Hammer, Scissors, Bomb"...)

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: John Hardly
Date: 19 Sep 04 - 08:25 AM

unlocking the mystery:

A good read of '60's psychedelia, and the mystery begins to unravel...

Paper? (Jackie Paper?)
Rock? (rock cocaine?)
Stone? (everybody must get stoned?)
Scissors? (Lucy In The Sky With Scissors?)

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 19 Sep 04 - 04:16 PM

My kids play "Hoof, Bandage, Knife" where Bandage wraps Hoof, Knife cuts Bandage, and Hoof breaks Knife (presumably by stepping on it.)   In my opinion, having trimmed a few hooves with a knife, Knife ought to beat both Hoof and Bandage, but when I said so, they both looked at me as though I was being EVEN MORE DENSE THAN NORMAL FOR A MOTHER and both said Hoof beats Knife for the same reason that Rock beats Scissors, and anyway, that's the way we play it.

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: ThreeSheds
Date: 19 Sep 04 - 05:32 PM

I'm sure Amos is so pleased to be able to spell Hull ( Sorry this post is a trifle tardy but I've had other things to do other than Mudcat) But wouldn't his snipe been cleverer if he'd been able to spell out the full name of the city . Does he know what it is or even where it is
What he doesnt appreciate that if it wasn't for the contributions from the East Riding Mudcat would be a vey dreary site. The East Riding is in many ways an unusual place a bit of a back water perhaps but a place where it isn't the obvious option to toe the line ,but not too far away from the pulse of the rest of the country so as not to knowwhat is happening in the world, totally differant from say the US mid West with its rigid fundamentalism and its its uninterupted views of fuck all

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: Mudlark
Date: 20 Sep 04 - 01:44 AM

John Hardly says..."Obviously the charm of the game has to do with the objects being inanimate."
From my experience, the obvious charm of this game, for the boys I've played it with anyway, is how hard they get to hit you when they win. In my opionion it's a stupid guy thing, no matter what you call it.

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: GUEST,Hugh Jampton
Date: 20 Sep 04 - 07:41 AM

Played with gusto as children to the cry of "Ickety, Ackerty, Ock". (My spelling as near as phoenetics will allow).

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: dianavan
Date: 20 Sep 04 - 08:52 PM

I was mistaken. Its not ching, chang, chung; its ching, chang, push.

Sorry for misleading you.

d

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: dianavan
Date: 20 Sep 04 - 08:54 PM

I forgot to add -

Boys and girls both play this game but there is no hitting. Its simply a competition. To win is enough.

d

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 21 Sep 04 - 10:52 AM

I always thought that Stone blunts scissors not smashes them.

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 21 Sep 04 - 11:36 AM

That makes sense, Dave.

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: Bobert
Date: 21 Sep 04 - 12:45 PM

Yer right, John, the game makes no sense at all and from what I'm hearing on the street is that it will be offically replaced next year with a new version entitled "Panties, bra & jock strap"... Stay tuned for the details...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: John Hardly
Date: 21 Sep 04 - 01:19 PM

No, now wait, Dave!

Stone sharpens scissors! That means that we now have an uneven game where scissors and stone are working together to shred paper!

So now, scissors and stone team up, shred the paper, but as the paper gets divided into more and more pieces it is capable of covering more and more stones -- thereby keeping them from sharpening the scissors. Thus, the scissors get dull and can no longer cut the paper...

...then the paper, uncut, remains a constant number and thereby controllable, so it starts losing the game because, when the wind comes up, it hasn't shown the foresight to form alliances with stone to act as a paperweight!

So now, paper, severely undermanned has no hope.

...if only paper had thought ahead.

So, both paper and scissors have a vested interest in forming alliances with stone, but stone is a cold heartless bastard! ...and he sees little value in forming alliances. He's basically satisfied to sit in the corner and remain stoned.

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: John Hardly
Date: 28 Feb 05 - 07:38 PM

great Sprite commercial on TV last night.

Huge ice chest, but only one bottle of Sprite floating therein. Two guys reach for it at the same time. Holding either end, one says to the other, "Sissors, Paper, Rock?". The other guy says "Yeah."

They shoot.

One guy has sissors and the other has paper...

...but without a pause the "paper" guy grabs the Sprite.

The, "Wha....?!" look from the Scissors guy draws the reply...

Hey man, the scissors got wet and rusted. Couldn't cut paper so paper came in and scooped up the Sprite.

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 01:24 PM

My niece and her cousins decided to think up new elements to this game one day. She vanquished all when she came up with "stinky socks."

Subject: RE: BS: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 01 Mar 05 - 09:41 PM

Here in the Idaho panhandle bars the guys with rifle racks in their rigs play 'hunter, bear, woman."

Players stand with their backs to each other to prepare, then jump straight up, turn in midair and crash down in the stance of their choice. Hunter mimes a rifle, Bear displays claws at shoulder height, Woman simulates breasts with cupped hands.

It's a manly kind of sansukumi game

clint

Subject: RE: Folklore: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: GUEST,SandyJ
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 06:08 AM

Of course the origins are much, much older and probably date back as far as the neolithic when it would, of course, have been stone, stone and stone.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 09:20 AM

GUEST, Clint Keller:

In your hunter, bear, woman, what's the order of protocol?

I can imagine what the hunter does to the woman, but it would seem to be offset by her reciprocal power. And the bear might kill/eat either of them.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Folklore: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: John Hardly
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 01:57 PM

Stone, stone and stone, indeed. LOL!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 02:44 PM

Hunter defeats bear, bear defeats woman, woman defeats hunter.

He's a _good_ hunter & she's an unarmed woman. Strong & brave outdoorsmen are putty in the hands of women and bears are immune to womanly wiles.

clint

Subject: RE: Folklore: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: John Hardly
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 03:10 PM

If she's unarmed how does she make the handsignals to play the game?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: John Hardly
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 03:11 PM

Oh, I suppose she could have hands attached directly to her shoulders.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 02 Mar 05 - 10:53 PM

Clothes make the man, John, but it ain't hand signals that make the woman. You been lookin' for love in at least some of the wrong places.

clint

Subject: RE: Folklore: Scissors, Paper, Rock
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 03 Mar 05 - 02:33 PM

20th Sept 07.41 GUEST,


Now tTHAT does make me think. The introduction of one Hugh Jampton into this thread didn't do much, but if you added it to the game?................I'll get me coat.

DT