rock paper scissors lizard spock [View all]

[phantom power]

I was thinking about "rock paper scissors lizard spock" from The Big Bang Theory, and it's clever that they added *two* new plays, instead of just one. One of the reasons the original rock-paper-scissors game is good is that it is balanced - each possible play can beat one other play and be beated by one other play. In the five-play version, we see the combinatorics allows that balance is maintained - in this case each play can beat two other plays, and be beaten by the other two, as the directed graph on this t-shirt nicely shows:


http://www.snorgtees.com/rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock?gclid=CKTj2qj10bUCFSSCQgodgE8AIA

You can see that any odd number of plays will allow a symmetric game, but the rules you have to remember grow quadratically.

Anyway, the bit of attention they pay to this stuff is one of the reasons I like the show