Board games make infrequent appearances in C&H: Scrabble a couple of times, checkers, Monopoly, and, once, a Ouiji board. This is one of the more successful board game strips, mostly, I think, because of the timing of Hobbes's expression in the last panel. 'Tis the sport to have the tiger hoist with his own petar.
I used to think that games like Scrabble were won by the player with superior raw intelligence, or at least the superior vocabulary. I remember my sophomore year of high school, on the last day of the semester in A.P. Literature, Mr. Holocek challenged me to a game. Mr. Holocek was one of the legendary characters of East High, a kind of cowboy poet who'd been around since the 60's, and whose silver mustache had a yellow dimple where he held his cigarettes. "Now the student has become the master," my friend Andrew mocked as I approached the desk at the front of the room.
But in fact, the student had not become the master. A few moves in, I took an early lead. Somewhere in the middle of the game, though, Mr. Holocek took control with a string of 20+ point words. By the end he'd beaten me solidly, presumably, I thought, because he just knew more words.
It wasn't until several years later that I learned it wasn't true. Mr. Holocek did have a better vocabulary than mine, and he was probably smarter than me, but that wasn't why he won. He won because he'd learned tricks, methods for exploiting the rules of that particular game. For example: don't waste your time learning long words--memorize every two-letter word you can; try to stack words parallel to one another, like "zoo" on top of "own"; always try first to use double and triple point spaces, and try not to set up your opponent to use them.
Once I started abiding by these simple little rules of thumb, I found myself beating other players--even smarter players--who didn't use them, every time. A little bit of very specific knowledge trumped a lot of general intelligence. It's a lesson I've found to apply in many tasks: law school issue-spotting exams, investing (so I'm told), and--needless to say--every board game out there (I've won a dozen consecutive games of Monopoly, but that recipe will remain a secret).
So specific knowledge beats general, tricks beat brainpower, and playing smarter beats playing harder...sometimes. Because tricks still need to be used at the right time, and in the right circumstances. Reliance on a misplaced trick is the way to ruin:
A bag of tricks is only consistently useful to a wise hand selecting among them.
I've suggested at times that once per game of Scrabble each player should be able to make up a word, provided they give a reasonable definition. Perhaps I was unknowingly inspired by the above comic?
ReplyDeleteI am also encouraged at the ease of writing a graduate thesis. Or, wait, are you trying to say Calvin's clear plastic binder trick doesn't actually work?