My Son Learned Winning Against Dad Is Easy - If You Cheat | Seamas O'Reilly
The boy cheats. We're playing Guess Who?, the popular family game where two players guess the identity of their opponent's character by asking questions and flipping tabs until only one remains. Specifically, we're playing a discounted version of Guess Who? called something like Who is it? or Identify yourself! I don't know which one, since we can't find the box, and we usually resort to removing the game board and pieces from a tidy storage bag, like we're digging through the forensic evidence of a case of murder that's been dormant for a long time.
I love this game. It hasn't been ruined for me by overplaying, as I haven't grown it and none of my friends either. This is probably a statistical aberration, but I prefer to think that the Northern Irish were wary of his clear ulterior motive; teach kids how to better describe political dissidents to the police.
Most of the time I like it because I'm way better than my son, and the list of these activities are decreasing every day. He beat me pretty convincingly at all of his memory games because, as noted, his brain is made of wet gum, so adept at storing information that every blink of his might as well be the shutter of a spy satellite. I, on the other hand, have lost the ability to store new memories and I would be hard pressed to tell you just one thing that has happened to me since 1997. We have a game called Shopping where we compete to cross out items from our list by flipping tiles representing, for example, eggs, orange juice or beans. He scans it like a scholar, his eyes dead, while I uselessly flip the same tile over and over again, amazed each time to find that it's still bread. 'Bread again, dad! he said, each time, laughing at my ruined brain.
His stamina exceeds mine too, which means he can easily beat me at snakes and Ladders and Ludo, games that require a tolerance for boredom that I just don't have anymore. Same goes for any game that involves repetitive physical actions or movements like Hungry Hippos - excuse me, Famished Even-Toed Ongulates - to which he triumphs every time.
This is how I roamed the Guess Who? arena with confidence.Basic strategy is to lay down broad, binary questions: Is your character male? Do they wear a hat? Do they have glasses? – each tailored to weed out the most number of contestants in one go. My son refuses to learn this and has an adorable, but deadly habit in competition of starting with too specific questions: does he wear big red glasses? or vague – do they look good? – be profitable work.
And yet I'm not going anywhere. He answered no to all my questions, reducing my pool of candidates to five, then two, then one. "It's Chico!" I said with the assurance of a royal flush. He laughs, mischievously, and tells me no. For the first time I notice the back of the tile that retains his character. This isn't from a Guess Who? derivative at all. I rush over and return her guilty little secret. It's my old friend, bread. I stare, memorizing his face so I can report him to the police.
“Start the bread again, dad,” he says, his victory complete.
Follow Séamas on Twitter @shockproofbeats
The boy cheats. We're playing Guess Who?, the popular family game where two players guess the identity of their opponent's character by asking questions and flipping tabs until only one remains. Specifically, we're playing a discounted version of Guess Who? called something like Who is it? or Identify yourself! I don't know which one, since we can't find the box, and we usually resort to removing the game board and pieces from a tidy storage bag, like we're digging through the forensic evidence of a case of murder that's been dormant for a long time.
I love this game. It hasn't been ruined for me by overplaying, as I haven't grown it and none of my friends either. This is probably a statistical aberration, but I prefer to think that the Northern Irish were wary of his clear ulterior motive; teach kids how to better describe political dissidents to the police.
Most of the time I like it because I'm way better than my son, and the list of these activities are decreasing every day. He beat me pretty convincingly at all of his memory games because, as noted, his brain is made of wet gum, so adept at storing information that every blink of his might as well be the shutter of a spy satellite. I, on the other hand, have lost the ability to store new memories and I would be hard pressed to tell you just one thing that has happened to me since 1997. We have a game called Shopping where we compete to cross out items from our list by flipping tiles representing, for example, eggs, orange juice or beans. He scans it like a scholar, his eyes dead, while I uselessly flip the same tile over and over again, amazed each time to find that it's still bread. 'Bread again, dad! he said, each time, laughing at my ruined brain.
His stamina exceeds mine too, which means he can easily beat me at snakes and Ladders and Ludo, games that require a tolerance for boredom that I just don't have anymore. Same goes for any game that involves repetitive physical actions or movements like Hungry Hippos - excuse me, Famished Even-Toed Ongulates - to which he triumphs every time.
This is how I roamed the Guess Who? arena with confidence.Basic strategy is to lay down broad, binary questions: Is your character male? Do they wear a hat? Do they have glasses? – each tailored to weed out the most number of contestants in one go. My son refuses to learn this and has an adorable, but deadly habit in competition of starting with too specific questions: does he wear big red glasses? or vague – do they look good? – be profitable work.
And yet I'm not going anywhere. He answered no to all my questions, reducing my pool of candidates to five, then two, then one. "It's Chico!" I said with the assurance of a royal flush. He laughs, mischievously, and tells me no. For the first time I notice the back of the tile that retains his character. This isn't from a Guess Who? derivative at all. I rush over and return her guilty little secret. It's my old friend, bread. I stare, memorizing his face so I can report him to the police.
“Start the bread again, dad,” he says, his victory complete.
Follow Séamas on Twitter @shockproofbeats
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