Newswink 24 • 28 July 1989

Same Dave, New Address

Dave, Déjà, Sam, Alex, and Max Lockwood are moving in mid-August into their newly bought house at 3148 Gershwin Lane, Silver Spring, Maryland 20904 USA. Call ’em at 301-890-8902. You can’t forget the number.

Ferd Goes West

Ferd has migrated to western Massachusetts, leaving behind OAK-BYTE and a winkly-famous Somerville address. He is now at 195B Main Road, Gill MA. Call him at 413-UNDIMPY.

What is a Legal Shot?

by Brad Schaefer

Most of the disputes that have come up during games in the last year (aside from the strength of Lockwood’s cologne) have concerned the definition of what is a legal shot. The latest set of rules says that a legal shot “consists of any downward pressure of squidger on wink that is an attempt to move a wink or causes a wink to move irreversibly”. The rules also state that “from the moment that a wink starts to move irreversibly, the movement of the squidger must be quick and continuous.” The trouble with these rules comes in defining what is meant by “an attempt”, “quick”, and “continuous”. That is, different people can (and do) hold perfectly reasonable opinions of what these definitions are, but these opinions would lead to different rulings on the legality of many shots. When the British invasion of 1988 was at its high tide mark (they almost burned the White House like during the previous successful British invasion of 1812), it became apparent that they had a different set of definitions than any American does. Even within the American community, there exists a wide spectrum of opinion with Lockwood perhaps at the most conservative side.

It seems to me that these definitions (or lack thereof) are the single worst point of our rules (or of the British rules). This problem dwarfs the problem of reconciling the two rule systems, since currently the deviations are slight and only cover rare cases that seldom occur in international play. During the British invasion (or was it the Scottish and British invasion), I heard a lot of talk about how these rules could be coalesced, but never once did the situations in question arise. Meanwhile, I heard virtually no reasoned discussion of shot legality; however I did hear a number of acrimonious discussions during games that hinged on the definitions. I think that it is high time that winkers stop playing at being nitpicky lawyers, and address the important issues face on.

Specifically, I think we and the British should evolve a set of definitions which will cover most of the practical cases that actually arise. I think that we and the British must act together, else there will be lawyerlike discussions for decades. I also think that it does not matter terribly much what definitions we decide on as long as they are clearly stated. In other words, I would feel good to go along with any decision provided that I know what the decision is.

Currently, the rules are ambiguous, and that is the worst situation and has already lead to harsh words between participants of our “gentleman’s game”. Let me give a number of examples which are ambiguous, even though tradition or lawyers may think that a clear answer exists:

(1) What about potting a completely nurdled wink? Larry can pot them maybe fifty percent of the time. No one questions their legality. But what is the actual technique recommended by Larry? He recommends that the squidger drag the small wink about one inch away from the pot before a normal pot shot is made. This raises the question about whether a two step shot has been made. In a number of cases, I have heard Lockwood passionately plead that any two step shot is illegal. Of course the squidger motion is continuous and moves with a high velocity. But the question remains as to how “quick” the shot is. I have occasionally heard the definition of quick linked to the total time that the squidger is in contact with winks (after irreversible motion has started). By this criterion, it would be grossly illegal to pot nurdled winks.

(2) What if we take the same shot as in situation 1, except that the wink is sticky (or the squidger has a high coefficient of friction) so that the wink is slid away from the cup along the surface of the mat. Is this legal? Well, I’ve seen it accepted without comment in many games. However, when I was contemplating the use of a rubber squidger (which would have created exactly this situation), Larry lead [⨳ sic, should be: led ⨳] an evangelical movement to stop my introduction of Nazism into our community. Larry tried raising every objection that came into his fertile imagination, but none were legally sound. For example, he claimed the squidger was illegal, but it satisfies all the requirements of section 2 in the rules. (If he would like to modify the rules to include a criterion based on the coefficient of friction, he is welcome to, but such an impractical idea will never come to pass.) Then he tried to claim that a “slide shot” would have no downward pressure, but it has as much downward component as any pot shot (as it must, otherwise physics tells us that no shot would occur). Then he tried to claim that the shot would not be quick, but it is easy to show that the “slide shot” can be made arbitrarily “quick” and it is always quicker than those nurdled pots that Larry always makes. Finally, someone else came up with the real reason not to use a rubber squidger—it will change the strategy and skills of the game so that at least the American community will refuse to play with anyone who uses this (legal) squidger. But then we have the question of whether to ban Larry from play because he uses a special squidger (with a somewhat higher than normal coefficient of friction) for potting small nurdled winks?

(3) What should we do when a sticky wink moves two millimeters when setting up a shot? I heard one of the Brits claim (jokingly) that they accepted just such a nonshot by an opponent. I believe that by all the rules that they would have been within their rights to accept that “shot”. The one possible exception is that the “shooter” may claim that the “shot” was not “an attempt to move a wink”. This argument and possibly the rules shows that intention is a factor in deciding the legality of a shot. Unfortunately, intention is a very hard thing to prove. Most specifically, it is difficult to distinguish an unintentional move from a bad shot. Once again, however, tradition is the final arbitrator of legality in this situation, in that I have never heard of anyone seriously insisting that a “sticky wink” shot be accepted.

(4) What about a squidge-in that slips out too soon and travels three inches? This is the opposite of the sticky wink problem. Here the tradition is for everyone to accept it as a bad shot. But it is not fundamentally different from situation 3.

(5) When I do my pot shots, I often stroke my wink with my squidger several times to get the feel for the shot. What if during one of these strokes, the wink moves by two millimeters? This is legally the same situation as 3 and 4 above. But in the two above examples, tradition gives conflicting precedents.

(6) Suppose that we had a small wink over a big wink and tried to boondock the big. The shot would be to tap the upper side of the small wink so that it moved to one side and then to shoot the big one. But by the placement of the top wink, the stroke on the bottom wink requires the squidger to slide across most of the diameter of a big wink. Even if the squidger motion has a high velocity, the duration of the shot will have to be longer than many people’s standards for a quick shot. I have seen Marlin judge against this very shot. A second question about this shot is how “continuous” it is. That is, the first part of the shot has the squidger moving primarily downwards while the second part of the shot is entirely a horizontal motion. Is the shot discontinuous in that the squidger acceleration is discontinuous? For that matter, when we speak of “continuous”, do we mean that the position, velocity, or acceleration is continuous? Are we picking out any one component of the motion to apply this test to? Should the test of continuity apply to the winks or the squidger or both? A third question is whether the shot is a two step shot. The reason is that the upper wink moves away long before the bottom wink starts to move. (This is a consequence of the long distance that must be stroked.) So in effect, there is a pause in the wink motion while the squidger moves a wink diameter. In practice, all three questions about the legalities of boondocks are ignored as long as a substantial portion of the bottom wink is showing.

(7) But what about boondocks where the bottom wink is not showing, i.e., where the upper wink overhangs the bottom? This is a difficult shot to do effectively, but that is not the question at hand. I have universally met the opinion that these shots can’t be done legally. But there is no technical difference between this and situation 6. Note that in both situations the squidger must first contact the upper surface of the upper wink, but that is easy to do and is not the complaint usually lodged. The indictment is always that the shot was slow. But it is not significantly slower than in situation 6 where it is accepted. (And if the bottom wink is a small wink, it may even be faster in duration.)

(8) A generalization of situation 6 can occur during any pile shot. Let me give a concrete example: suppose a squidger touches the top wink of a high pile, which then begins to rotate while the squidger’s downward motion is still going on in a quick and continuous manner. Further, let the top wink’s rotation stop before the squidger contacts and shoots the bottom wink of this high pile. Through all this time, the squidger is in linear uniform motion with a high velocity. But the wink action is two-stepped in the sense that there was a slight pause in which the wink motion was slight. This example is not imaginary, and I have seen players argue passionately over its legality.

(9) One one occasion, I saw a player make a bad squidge-in, only to then realize that a bad bump under the mat was the cause. Should this shot be taken over? The rules only cover the case where the irregularity is found before the shot.

(10) Are Arye Gittelman’s patented bristol shots quick? Are they also a cure for baldness? His bristols wedge the winks up at a high angle to the mat before they finally escape. From the point when any irreversible motion starts, the squidger moves over a small distance at a relatively slow velocity.

(11) Now let us take a really psychotic case (which I could not conceive happening with any current winker), where the shooter uses his squidger to adjust a disturbed pile, only to have his opponent accept the “shot”. Similar situations can arise from dropped squidgers or large buttons on shirt cuffs brushing a pile. A similar, but less psychotic, example comes from my own experience against a long-retired winker. His claim (I think it was based on an older set of rules) was that a shot is illegal if you used any part of your hand for a shot. He interpreted this to mean that a blow-up shot that had any wink even grazing a hand, arm, or shirt was illegal.

In most of the above situations, tradition has established a norm against which legality is judged. Unfortunately, the norms are occasionally contradictory in their interpretation of the rules. Also unfortunately, the traditions within both the American and international communities are different.

There are two possible routes to codifying legality. One route is to accept tradition and record the traditional values into our formal rules, even if it means specifying many cases and exceptions. The big trouble with this approach is to pick the tradition. Even if we could pick some unique set, it may be difficult to codify them. The second route is to define precisely what is meant by “quick and continuous”. This has the advantage of precision and conciseness. The disadvantage is that many traditions may have to be overturned. Of course, there can be a middle route. That is, precise definitions can be laid down with a number of stated exceptions to cover the most venerable violation precedents.

Let me propose a set of rules to stimulate debate. I do not intend to argue passionately for this particular set; I only advance it as a strawman set of rules:

(A) The quick and continuous rule will apply only to the motion of the squidger.

(B) Shot quickness refers to the velocity of the squidger and not the shot duration.

(B’) Rule B does not apply to bristol shots.

(C) The squidger motion is continuous if all components of its velocity have only one maximum.

(D) The concept of a “two-part shot” has no legal bearing.

(E) An unintentional movement of winks is not a shot. The burden of proof is up to the shooter. This proof can be supplied by the claim that even a horribly bad intentional shot could not conceivably have had the actual result.

I can just see all the people out there reading this rule set and saying that it is stupid. Well, then why don’t you come up with something better?

I think that the important point is not that we take any specific route or that our rulings follow any specific philosophy. The important point is that we do something (anything) specific. The ambiguity of legality is the biggest crippler of our rules.

At the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum (1525 Bernice Street, P.O. Box 19000-A, Honolulu, Hawaii 96817) there was an exhibit of a game called Lafoga, involving small discs on something resembling a strip of map and larger objects made out of stitched coconut shells that may have played the role of squidgers as players attempted to knock opponents discs off the mat.

Courtesy of Adele, via Sunshine

LSU head basketball coach Dale Brown: “That doesn’t mean taking tiddlywinks and basketweaving.” Re athletes not playing a freshman year, but studying instead; NCAA Proposition 42. On CNN Crossfire, 17 January 1989.

Dextrosity

Recent sightings

Left: Andy Purvis, Charles Relle

Right: Patrick Barrie, Alan Dean, Tony Heading, Bob Henninge, Larry Kahn, Dave Lockwood, Jon Mapley, Mac McAvoy, Richard Moore, Geoff Myers, Alex Satchell, Brad Schaefer, Mike Surridge, Rick Tucker

Both: Sunshine

Please inform Newswink of others you may know.