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March 31, 2004
Hamburglary crime wave in America
I played the pretty new game Odds'R last night, which was surprisingly a pretty good game but one moment of the game last night was absolutely hillarious, having several of us laughing so hard we had tears in our eyes. I recommend the game for those into party games and who like wagering but are willing to put up with the very high luck level.
The review I link to does a nice job of describing it but I'll give a quick overview here. We played with 3 teams of 2 and the game is a trivia party game where all the questions are about odds and likelihood of events with 3 possible multiple choice answers. The game has a ton of luck in moving around the board and particularly a Free Parking like lottery system which gives a massive reward with no skill whatsoever. The innovative thing about the game is that the team(s) not answering a question get to bet on whether they think the active team will get the question right and can bet as much money as they want. The active team also bets but must bet to try to get the question right and are limited in how much they can bet. Thus, it could be your turn and a question could come up which I am certain you know the answer for but how much should I bet that you will be right? I could bet all my money but then you would only bet the minimum amount and intentionally get the question wrong so I have to be careful. On the other hand, if I think you really have no idea about the question, it isn't unreasonable to bet almost all my money on your being wrong as 2/3 of the time I will double it when you get the question wrong (this is also particularly true since the bizarre lottery scheme gives me a chance to get all my money back even if I'm wrong and you get the question right). I really enjoyed the betting on others scheme and it was also interesting how you could sometimes make guesses about what the question answer is based on how the other teams predicted whether you would be right. If the other teams all said they thought you would get the question wrong, well then probably it isn't the obvious answer and is some sort of trick question - quite interesting information to have in making a guess.
Ok, on to the particular hillarious incident. It turns out that, while all questions have three multiple choice answers, in some cases the third answer is a joke (like a question late in the game was In what Olympic sport has the greatest distance record been set? A) Hammer Throw, B) Discus, C) Dwarf Tossing) so as to effectively make it a 50% question rather than 33%. Other game shows like Who Wants to be a Millionaire? also commonly have a final choice joke answer for a couple of the early questions.
The first such question we had was: McCrime of the '90s: What crime had more occurences of in the 90's? A) Larceny, B) Burglarly, C) Hamburglary. Also, remember that 4 of us (the teams not answering the question) had already seen the answer and made bets on whether the active team would get it right (I think we bet for and the other team bet against but am not certain of their bet). Well, the active team was David (our host) and Alex, who was a very nice guy there for only his second time. Alex seriously though the answer was Hamburglary (presumably the stealing of hamburgers like in the ancient McDonalds add by the Hamburglar character) and his main argument was "Why would they put it in it wasn't right?". David realized it was a joke but Alex kept defending it and wanting to go with it for something like 5 minutes. This sent the rest of us into hysterical laughter as we couldn't believe someone would actually want to guess this and defend it vociferously. Despite our laughter which should have been a dead giveaway that the answer was not Hamburglary, Alex persisted in pushing for it. Finally, David convinced him it was probably a joke and they got the answer right (Larceny). I honestly can't remember the last time I laughed as hard as I did over this debate. Alex of course got some good natured joshing about this for the rest of the night but I'm going to make a point of not bringing it up in future as it might otherwise become a sore point.
ps. Another nice feature of the game is the plastic poker chips used for money. Not nearly as nice as Clay chips but so much better than paper money. Kudos for this choice to Eagle Games.
Posted by aarondf at March 31, 2004 12:47 PM
Comments
Minor point: it's "Alec", not "Alex".
Posted by: Bill S. at April 19, 2004 02:43 PM
Bill, actually, no, it IS Alex. He was there last night and I made sure I had his name right.
Bill and I both know a different person named "Alec" and some people do often mess up his name but I'm not one of them. I have known him pretty much the best and longest of all of us in this circle except for Brian. He also almost never comes to David's - in fact I think the only 3 times he has come is to go with me to see the midnight opening day showings of the Lord of the Rings movies.
P.S. I wonder at the blog etiquette of handling this? Is the right thing to 1) Delete the comment and email Bill. 2) Ignore the comment and email bill. 3) Post a correction. I decided the correction was most appropriate but am not sure.
Posted by: Aaron at April 21, 2004 10:46 AM
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