Fun Friday: Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock

With the season finale of The Big Bang Theory last night, I wanted to talk about rock-paper-scissors, a game that I learned in first grade. Before that point, I only determined "it" through the means of eenie-meenie, one-potato-two-potato, or odds-and-evens. I was in love with the whole idea that you could TIE in rock-scissors-paper, and got giddy when we would just play rock-scissors-paper over and over instead of an actual game! Years later, it's rarely used, though in college we frequently played it to determine who should play first in miniature golf.

Anyway, because I was not alone in loving the game, I'm probably not alone in finding an upgrade to be AWESOME. If you're not familiar with the expanded version as Sheldon plays it on The Big Bang Theory, the rules are (straight from Sheldon!): "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 as it always has, rock crushes scissors." You can see a handy visual below, originally found at nathanthenerd.tumblr.com.

This game comes up several times in The Big Bang Theory, notably in "The Lizard-Spock Expansion" (S02E08) and “The Rothman Disintegration" (S05E17), the latter of which even credits the creator of the game, Sam Kass. I have yet to really test this version in real life, partly because I need to study it a little harder, and partly because I'm not sure how many other people will really convert to this advanced method. Can anybody out there attest to the powers of the new game?