Calvin Ball

The archetypal (fundamental? quintessential? :) read the poems in the collections) game without rules. Or, more precisely, a game whose only rule is that you cannot play it twice in the same way. Calvin and Hobbes (the main characters of a comic strip of the same name by BillWaterson?) play this some five or six times through the strips' ten years. Ordinarily, it's just the two of them, announcing new rules every five seconds.

CalvinBall is the opposite of TeamSports?. It is played with the religious fervor of all games that children make up themselves, and does not stop just because someone fell down.

What do you mean by religious fervor?

Mindless intensity, usually.

What exactly is CalvinBall? I remember a CalvinAndHobbes ComicStrip? where they played a ball game. Is this what you mean?

Yup, that's it. Oh, and for asking the question you now have to sing the "Sorry" song.

The last time Rosalyn babysat for Calvin, she played it with them.

This is a poem! Please do as you're told. Here is a bucket of water, ice-cold. Please take this water and dump it on me. Don't hesitate; do it ASAP.

"I can't wait till YOU step in the 'Pernicious Poem Place!"

CalvinBall is a SelfModifyingGame. Its only absolute rule is you can't play it the same way twice.

You've stumbled into the corrolary of wisdom! Quick, if we run for the anti-sentient zone we can avoid the effects of any decree thus passed.

I touched you with the no-edit flag! Now you can't edit this page any more!

I used the special one-time "override the no-edit flag", now we can!

Hah! "no edit flag" is an anagram of "gonad filet"! Your override only works in the all-eunuchs zone!

You are wrong. that means the flag would only work in the all-eunuchs zone!

Try again, buster! You forgot to define a no-eunuchs zone, so now the entire world is an all-enuchs zone!

And thus the override works! And I score a triple tag at the 30 yard line!

That line is merely the edge of the I-have-one-more-point-than-you plane! No way can you win now!

I have free passage to wicket 10 for commenting on a discussion that probably has long passed!

Hah! Today is the Mod-10 conference! Wicket 10 mod 10 is Wicket 0! You go back to the start of this conversation and repeat it, losing by definition!

A game of Geelf (RulesOfGeelf) is analogous to CalvinBall for adults, and so I think a rule should be added there that stuffed tigers get you extra points, unless they score points against you in the game, (Impossible? In Geelf, you never know...)

CategoryGame