Scissors, Paper, Rock

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Brad.

Hi, Brad. Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Indianapolis.

Welcome to the show.

Thanks so much.

What can we help you with?

Well, you know, I grew up playing a game called Paper Rock Scissors. I’ve also heard it called Rochampeau and Cowboy Ninja Bear, believe it or not. And I was just curious if you could let me know the history of the game.

You said Rochampeau with a P? You said Cowboy Ninja Bear?

Cowboy Ninja Bear and Rochambeau.

No, with a B. I’m sorry, not B.

Okay.

Cowboy Ninja Bear, that’s like what I wanted to be when I was three. All of those together.

And a garbage man, right?

Sure, everybody likes that.

Yeah.

So you’ve been playing this for your whole life. Is this something you learned as an adult? How does it work?

No, no. You know, you grow up playing it as a kid. If you can’t figure out who wins, if you basically have equally good positions, it’s often a tactic used to figure out who’s equally good position is ultimately better.

Right. Who’s it, maybe? Who’s the one who goes first and that sort of thing, right? If you’re playing a game.

Yeah, right. Exactly.

So it’s kind of a choosing game. It’s kind of like eeny, meeny, miny, moe sometimes, right? And sometimes it’s just a matter of who has to do the distasteful thing rather than the fun thing.

Right, right. It could be a choosing game or a game of chance or whatever you want to do.

So which one did you learn first, though? Did you learn just rock, paper, scissors?

See, I call it paper, rock, scissors. My wife calls it rock, paper, scissors.

No, wait, I call it scissors, paper, rock. Always have.

Rock, paper, scissors is the more common order, though.

For real?

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

Huh.

I always thought it would make more sense in the pecking order to have a paper, rock, scissors.

Why?

Because they’re equal. Each one is better than one of the other two and worse than the other two. So they’re supposedly equal.

Yeah.

Right.

It is cyclical when you look at it. Although there’s a little bit of psychology that says that most amateur players of this game, because there are big leagues for this, will choose rock first almost every time.

Is that right?

Yeah.

And they’re less likely to choose scissors. Scissors is the stronger first choice. Because most people won’t choose scissors first.

Really?

Yeah.

So it’s like opening game theory in paper rock scissors.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I had no idea. I think Brad and Martha beat Grant.

I do.

Yeah, you’re the minority.

Well, you know, we played a version that I invented where you introduced a stick of dynamite, which beat everything.

What do you mean?

It’s one finger in the palm of your hand.

Oh, really?

It’s cheating, though. Play that once. There are some variations that instead of three elements, you have five elements. And so that’s a little more complicated.

Five?

Yeah, it includes Spock and some other things. Like hold your hand like Spock with the, like this, with the V in the middle, the two fingers on each side.

Oh, really? Spock, paper, scissors? No, wait.

No, no, five elements, not just three.

Spock, paper, scissors. Wikipedia has all this junk about it. I don’t know how accurate it is.

Really?

But you can check it out, yeah.

That’s right. There you go.

And so if you go into the historical record pre-internet, you’ll find that this game has existed in Asia and Europe for a very long time. The Rochambeau probably was the earlier American version of the game. And then once the West started visiting the East, that is say Americans and Brits went to China and Japan, they picked up some variations there.

And so in the late 1800s and particularly in the 1920s and 1930s, you start to see the Japanese version of this game being described in these diaries and histories that are being sent back by military people and missionaries and people who like to travel, travelers and so forth, where they literally describe the game in Japan exactly like we play it today.

And even the words for it supposedly are related to something like Jan-Kin-Pon or Jan-Kin-Po or even just Kin-Po, which means rock, scissor, paper, or stone, scissor, paper.

Well, Rochambeau sounds French to me.

Yeah, it does sound French, and there is the famous Rochambeau who was involved with the American Revolution. There’s no connection as far as we can tell. There’s no evidence for or against that guy being connected. We do not know. Nobody knows.

And all of the evidence, supposed evidence, that I’ve seen about Rochambeau is bogus. But anyway, so there’s a long history of this kind of thing. It’s a choosing game. And if you Google choosing game, you’ll find a lot of different ways that we decide who does the thing that nobody wants to do or who gets to do the thing that everyone wants to do.

It’s a way of deciding. It’s a fairness issue. We are humans. We have this innate need, particularly as children, to develop a system for fairness. They are naturally at a disadvantage to the adults around them. And they struggle to be recognized as a whole human being and to feel big. And that’s the language that they often use. I am big. I’m not a little person. I’m not half of a person.

And so they always look for these ways to be recognized as an equal, and these rituals of deciding who goes next are part of that working out the fairness of a situation.

It’s funny. I’m a lawyer, and you still see that somewhere between judges and lawyers. And I read a brief, or I’m sorry, an order a few years back coming from a federal district court in Florida, I believe, where the parties before the bench couldn’t work out a discovery dispute in the litigation, which usually you don’t need to get the court involved very often in those circumstances, or at least they don’t like it when you do.

And so the court ordered them to play a game of paper, rock, scissors on the courthouse steps to conclude their dispute.

Why don’t we decide everything this way?

This is great.

It might be easier. You know, we could cut out a whole election season if we did this.

Hey, there’s an idea.

Minus the commercials.

I’m liking this idea.

You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to link to a bunch of sources for this. There is a world league for this where they have all these rituals involved, and it’s pretty interesting stuff.

And frankly, it’s the kind of thing that I love teaching my son because he gets it right away.

I’m guessing the World Paper, Rock, Scissors League has beer involved.

You think?

Yeah.

Never mind.

Oh, man.

Well, thanks so much for your time, guys.

Yeah, sure.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Great question.

Bye-bye.

Okay.

Thanks, Brad.

Bye-bye.

Tell us your variants on Rochambeau or Scissor Paper Rock. 877-929-9673. Send all your language questions to words@waywordradio.org.