Rock, Paper, Thunder?

So I woke up the other morning to hear that the Miami Heat beat the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA playoffs. (For my husband, the Center of the Universe, a.k.a. CoTU, that’s basketball. A sports fan he is not.)

I began picturing headlines: Heat Beats Thunder, Heat Crushes Thunder, Heat Over Thunder and the like. And it occurred to me that this sounded like some kind of new version of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Except that you would need a third element, like Rain.

Then the hierarchy would have to be something like Heat Beats Thunder, Thunder Over Rain, Rain Kills Heat.

This reminds me of an episode of The Big Bang Theory from a couple of years ago. Raj suggests settling a dispute over which nerdy tv show to watch by playing Rock, Paper, Scissors. Sheldon ridicules him, saying that studies have shown that good friends will tie in that game 75-80% of the time, due to the limited number of outcomes. As an alternative, Sheldon has come up with a new game, called Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock.

In his inimitable style, Sheldon explains how the game works. I’ll share this with you, in case you want to use it with your own family or friends.

“Scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock, rock crushes lizard, lizard poisons Spock, Spock smashes scissors, scissors decapitates lizard, lizard eats paper, paper disproves Spock, Spock vaporizes rock, and rock (as it always has) crushes scissors.”

After a blink, Raj says, “Okay, I got it.”

So feel free to play this simple (?) game amongst your peer group. But next year if the Utah Jazz are in the playoffs, I’m staying out of it.