Furthermore, this page says that you have to start by having each player put an article of clothing in the pot, which makes sense.
Otherwise you could be in the situation where there's only one article in the pot, but you have to don half of what's there, and would therefore not be able to don anything at all. But that would clearly be contrary to the spirit of the instructions.
2: that does make sense. I didn't know this was a real game, though of course it stands to reason that others would also have hit on it.
What I want to know is whether there's a simple formula for the exected length of the game based on the number of players and average number of articles of clothing.
It seems like it could take a long time if there are many people. Particularly since once someone is naked, they have close to a 50% chance each round of acquiring clothes.
A thought rings in the emptiness of my head, Homer Simpson-style:
"Don't quote the South Park dreidl song. Don't quote the South Park dreidl song."
We used to play dreidl as children using M&Ms for money.
How does the South Park dreidl song go, Flip?
Their voices seem to be different from how I remember them.
Hey is a form of greeting in 786 different languages
says wikipedia, amaizng
Could someone help me out by making a joke in which we propose playing this game at UnfoggeDCon, and someone unlikely gets laid as a result, and we all proclaim that a great miracle happened there? kthx.
How do we decide who is the unlikeliest? There's a sort of race for the bottom, there, I think.
Myrrh has finally said what we're all thinking. With no more discussion of Ogged's personal life, this blog is going to get way too predictable.
There's a sort of race for the bottom, there, I think.
Your fruit... it hangs so low...
Obviously mrh wants someone to suggest him as the unlikely person who will miraculously get laid. Have you seen his URL?
Has anyone ever played a strip game that resulted in sex between any of the players? I have not, to my knowledge, though the possibility that such a thing might happen seems to spur interest in the game.
Has anyone ever played a strip game? I can't imagine such a thing actually happening in an objective reality.
As an Orthodox Jew, I am offended by this post.
18,19: yes --- in fact cases of both unintentional results and allowable bet.
17: How 'bout it... laydeez?
18, 19: Only when the game was between two people already in a sexual relationship, and the game was just for funsies.
21 not in this particular game though. poker is secular, b.
In high school, some of my friends played strip poker once, but we were all geeky, virginal, respectful types who didn't openly gawk. In fact, I remember one of my friends confessing, after I lost, that he peeked and felt really guilty for having done so. I was like, "Um, it's strip poker."
I also played it once in college while really drunk on SoCo. Turns out one of my buddies had on Darth Maul boxer shorts, which we have rightfully never let him live down.
IME, it's not sexy at all like it is in movies. It's more like a contest to see who can act the most nonchalant in their undies. But I imagine it would be sexier if you didn't play it with longterm buddies.
We should really have a thread devoted to the things Ned *can* imagine/has noticed.
How do we decide who is the unlikeliest?
By asking who won't attend.
26, I think I would have noticed that.
I think that if I found out someone had Darth Maul boxer shorts, I'd totally develop a crush on them.
Mr. B. has Dracula and The Mummy boxers.
29: I already did have a crush on him, sadly, so the DM shorts, weirdly, sent it over the top for a while. Reader, I never slept with him. Shortly thereafter, he came out by sleeping with my ex-boyfriend.
Playing strip dreidl with an exhibitionist somehow takes the challenge away.
What I want to know is whether there's a simple formula for the exected length of the game
Well, I haven't done any calculations, 'cause I'm way to lazy, but I'm pretty certain it's infinite if you exclude the trivial case of one garment among two people (and perhaps a couple other such cases).
Once there's a garment in the pot, the spinner has an expected result of adding at least quarter of a garment under Ben's rules. Garments will get shuffled, but the pot will typically be empty or near empty.
I have absolutely no modesty, am more than happy to see naked women, and am not bothered by naked men (after years of being in lockers rooms). So I am surprised to look back and realize that I have never played stip poker or strip-[any other game].
So sad.
Well, I haven't done any calculations, 'cause I'm way to lazy, but I'm pretty certain it's infinite if you exclude the trivial case of one garment among two people (and perhaps a couple other such cases).
I'm pretty sure it will be expected to end for a two player game with any number of garments, what will happen is that one player will end up with all the garments (it's essentially a 1 dimensional random walk, at some point you'll end up N steps from 0 in one direction or the other).
Erm, well, this particular game isn't quite like a normal random walk. First, it's bounded in the total that each player can have (by the total number of garments brought into the game), which mostly affects the size of the pot and thus the expected movement in number of garments at each turn. And second, since the expected number of garments to be put on is a fairly positive. This is kinda like weighting the likely result of a walk toward zero at any given point (as opposed to a random walk w/drift), which may prevent the likelihood of hitting any given N from being 1.
Ah well, as I said, I'm too lazy to work it out in detail. If I should be working on anything, it should be studying for my accounting final tomorrow. And now I gotta find food.
But I imagine it would be sexier if you didn't play it with longterm buddies.
Is exactly right --- it's an icebreaker of sorts.
The one time I played strip-dreidl we did it with blindflods on and one girl got the "shin" and the other three got the "hey"; and when one of the next-door girls got the "gimel" Mrs. Goldberg shook her finger at the blushing girl as much as to say: 0, I know all about it! Then they led me up to the dreidl to see what I would get and, while they were putting on the bandage, I laughed and laughed till the tip of my nose nearly met the tip of my chin. But then I felt a soft wet substance with my fingers and was surprised that nobody spoke or took off her bandage. There was a pause for a few seconds; and then a great deal of scuffling and whispering. Somebody said something about the garden, and at last Mrs. Schwartz said something very cross to one of the next-door girls and told her to throw it out at once: that was no play.
This is kinda like weighting the likely result of a walk toward zero at any given point
I don't think the boundary condition matters (since, of course, if it's reached the game is over), but I think you're correct that the fact that you can only take off one garment in a round, but can put on any number of garments, will weight the movement toward 0.
My intuition is still that any two player game would be expected to end, but I also don't have a good model.
Both times I have played strip-X, X was supposed to be poker but never was. The first time was in high school and no one knew how to play poker, so we played strip spoons instead. The second time (in college) we decided to make things more exciting by playing strip-spin-the-bottle. Neither instance led to any sex that wasn't already going to be had, though.
It restores my faith in Unfogged that this has been derailed to a discussion of game theory.
I'm pretty certain it's infinite
I have an estimate for an upper bound.
If you have N players with X articles of clothing each, one way for the game to end is for N-1 of the players to get a sequence that contains X Shin, and no other results except Nul.
So, for an upper bound, the odds of a game winning sequence would be 1/ N-1 * (4^x).
34, 35: I'm pretty sure the two-player game is finite. Assume for the moment that the only two possible results are Shin and Gimel. Then you can break up the sequence of rolls into a set of subsequences, each of which consists of zero or more Shins terminated by a single Gimel. The subsequence G is a basically a no-op (with an empty initial pot); SG is a +1 move away from the initial player; SSG is a +1 move towards the initial player; SSSG is a +2 move away from the initial player; SSSSG is a +2 move towards the initial player, and so on. Clearly this is a one-dimensional random walk where each of these subsequences is a move in the random walk, and some of the moves are bigger than 1. Since the random walk with unit moves terminates in finite time with probability 1, this one "should" also. It's a little tricky to prove this precisely, because the probabilities aren't uniform, and some of the moves (with an even number of Ss) change who the initial player is, but the intuition seems pretty clear. Adding back the Hey and Nun outcomes makes the analysis more complicated, and adds some more subsequences with a net effect of 0, but I think the idea of looking at each subsequence that ends with a Gimel still holds up - most of those subsequences are going to involve a net transfer of clothing from one player to the other, and so the random walk analogy should apply.
I propose a simple modification to w-lfs-n's rules that would tilt the balance away from tedium: For "Gimel: don all the articles in the pot," substitute "Gimel: you may direct any other player to doff one item."
DaveW, I leave the quantification of the impact of this rule change up to you.
But that's not what gimel stands for.
Dear people, I'm guessing that if it works with gelt, it works with schmatte as well. Does anyone fear that a regular game of dreidl would never end? This is quite possible, but it hasn't stopped people from playing it for, like, ever. People also continue to play Axis and Allies despite the potential interminability, as well.
People also continue to play Axis and Allies despite the potential interminability, as well.
But the object of Axis and Allies isn't to see other participants get nekkid.
You could try asking them to take their clothes off.
Besides, the point of dreidl is not to achieve the end of the game, but to remember that a miracle occurred there, and to give you time when everyone else thinks you're indulging your vices to talk about the Torah. So strip dreidl is just for show; really, we'll be the ones at DCon discussing the Exodus.
You could try asking them to take their clothes off.
Uh, AWB, are you familiar with the typical demographic profile of Axis & Allies players? No thanks.
discussing the Exodus.
The book by Leon Uris was the first introduction to those events that I remember. The book blew me away.
The more I think about it, the more embarassed that I am that it took me as long as it did to confirm that the game is not infinite (for the reason given in 41). It's one of those obvious examples of the difference between "very large number" and infinite.
It does, however, illustrate an interesting point about convergence, divergence, and the boundary condition.
I think Po-Mo Polymath is correct in his observation that each step of the game is weighted to take you away from a end condition, rather than towards an end condition. He misunderstands the importance of the boundary.
The key reason that it has to be finite is that there is boundary for how far away from and end condition you can get.
Imagine a game in which you start at 0, each turn you roll a die, on a 1 you subtract 1 to your score, on a 6 you add one, for any other result your score is set to 0. If you get to -10 you lose, if you reach +10 you win. Obviously the game will be long and tedious, but will end because you can never be more than 10 steps from an end condition.
By contrast, imagine a game in which you start out with 2 points, roll a die, and on an even number you lose 1 point, and on an odd number you gain 2 points. The game ends when you reach 0. That is a game with an expected length of infinity, because you can be infinitely far from the end state.
One way to think about the dreidel game is that the game ends when the Gini Coefficient reaches 1, because it's bounded at 0, you're always going to be between 0 and 1 and, at some point, you will reach 1.
The book (Exodus) by Leon Uris was the first introduction to those events that I remember. The book blew me away.
Me too at about age 14, except I'd also read the same author's Trinity and noted a degree of bogusity (?) in his simplistic view of the roots of the Northern Ireland conflct. So I didn't trust him entirely.
Has anyone ever played a strip game? I can't imagine such a thing actually happening in an objective reality.
In a game of strip charades, in hotel room in North Hills, PA, during a speech and debate tournament, my pants were voted back on.
Mr. B. has Dracula and The Mummy boxers.
I have Donald Duck boxer shorts.
Grading this thread on an elliptic curve, I have to say everyone wins.
Oh, and as far as strip-X games goes, one, in fact, did end in sex that I know of. Not for me, but a coupla friends got lucky together. It did eventually end in tears, though.
It did eventually end in tears, though.
Tricksy homographs: teers or tehrs?
I've also played a strip game [with various dares and things]. Because the people involved all knew each other quite well and were [mostly] involved with other people at the time no-one quite got fully naked.* The dare element got way out of hand, though.
At some point there was a mock burning at the stake enacted in a neighbour's garden [and in full view of the street] which involved amazingly elaborate paraphernalia given how drunk everyone was.
* although a couple of people seemed surprisingly keen to do so.
Once again I've led an entirely sedate life. I did go skinnydipping in Walden Pond once with a mixed crowd, but no games were played, and no one unexpected ended up having sex. Fun, though.
Well, if it ended in a pile of moss, I didn't hear about it, and am glad not to know the details, if any.
[dons entirely unconvincing google-mask]
I did have sex once as a result of a bet/dare, though. A girl I'd just met at a party made some bet with me about some stupid thing with the loser to be the others slave for 24 hours. I conspired to lose, figuring the main thing she'd want from her slave would be sexual favours and that would be a win win for me. I figured correctly.
I did go skinnydipping in Walden Pond once with a mixed crowd, but no games were played, and no one unexpected ended up having sex.
"Lives of quiet desperation", indeed.
61: Yeah, that would be the sort of story I entirely lack. Have I posted lately about the remarkable progress I've made with the Irish lace doily I've been crocheting?
I have Donald Duck boxer shorts.
I'm not even a little bit surprised.
no one unexpected ended up having sex
A very Bushian non-denial denial, I'd say.
57 reminds me of this awful birthday party Max threw for me in 2004. Half the guests ended up naked as the result of an ill-advised outdoor 3am Truth-or-Dare game around a bonfire. This is Brooklyn, and the lamest part of Brooklyn at that, so not only did none of the guests ever speak to each other again (the sort of grad students who become prudish again at daybreak), but none of Max's neighbors spoke to him for a while after that, either.
It was all a surprise to me. I was inside talking about books with some of the less-drunk guests, totally unaware that there were naked cartwheels going on in the backyard. I came outside to sit down next to Max, sitting naked as a jay on his lawn. It was the next day that he decided to quit drinking for a year.
Wow, the nakedness seems much less surprising than the bonfire. In Brooklyn? How fast did the cops get called?
I came outside to sit down next to Max, sitting naked as a jay on his lawn.
When an accomplished prose stylist uses an ambiguous antecedent, must we not assume that it is intentional?
64: I've been trying to find a picture of them online without any luck. The front is a big, angry Donald Duck face; the back is the back of his head.
Inappropriate nudity is one of the leading signs of an alcohol problem best side effects of drinking.
70: Yeah, the Mummy and Dracula shorts both have the big open-mouthed face on the front. Because Mr. B. is classy like that.
Wow, the nakedness seems much less surprising than the bonfire. In Brooklyn? How fast did the cops get called?
Seriously. At least in the warmer months, nudity isn't anything that strange around here (Dumbo), but I can't imagine a fire going unnoticed for long. Maybe somewhere out in Queens. Or Lon-Giland.
Yeah, that would be the sort of story I entirely lack.
In my observation the friends that have stories like that also have a larger number of stories in which situations like that end up being unpleasent for everyone involved.
68: In his part of Brooklyn, I think eternal resentment and suspicion is the passive-aggressive True Path. A few blocks south of there, one calls the police.
69: I am having a nervous breakdown today (extreme and sudden financial distress), which should account for the solecism. Alas, that particular night I was guilty of no crime.
Speaking of Dumbo, I'm wondering if these boxers with big faces on the front have the fly located in the middle of the face, so someone can use a non-nose organ to stand in for Dracula's nose.
non-nose organ
Like, a mouth organ? Who keeps a harmonica in their shorts?
75: Dude, everything all right?
Sorry to hear about your breakdown, AWB. Lottery tickets are good for the financially desperate. Or casinos, if you feel like making the trip.
Lottery tickets are good for the financially desperate.
Also, having children. Tax exemption!
I am having a nervous breakdown today (extreme and sudden financial distress)
!!
That's awful.
80: I think she's looking for a quicker fix than that, Apo.
78: Very extremely not all right. I don't think the suicide hour has quite arrived, but I have until Thursday before rent's due. I see all these movies in which people manage to get absurd sums with a deadline of 24 hours, so I'm trying to take inspiration from there and be incredibly wily. But it's hard to be wily when money gets you down.
I got the third class for next semester, so I'll be okay come February or so, but I can't get a loan through school until about three weeks go by, if I'm lucky and they put the paperwork through.
Sorry to bitch. It's deeply disconcerting.
83: No prospect of family assistance?
Who keeps a harmonica in their shorts?
Not quite the same thing, but this guy I knew in highschool who was found drunk with the first section of a flute in his pants. He didn't play flute. He didn't have a good explanation. He was sort of a pathetic figure, so we didn't even razz him about it much; it was just sort of embarrassing.
AWB: Hope things get better. As someone headed for a financial train-wreck unless something changes, I can sympathize. Just remember, a wise man once said something like, "Ah, beer. The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."
first section of a flute in his pants.
"This one time at band camp?"
Oh, ack, AWB, that's awful. I'm sorry to hear of your travails.
this guy I knew in highschool who was found drunk with the first section of a flute in his pants
One time, at band camp...
AWB, do you have any lines of credit you can tap? Like a cash advance on a credit card? Or an "overdraft protection" at the bank? You might be able to get an increase in your credit card limit with a phone call if you have been timely with your payments in the past.
Last resort: usurious payday loan from a storefront lender.
I am not a NY lawyer so I do not know the law or the practice there.
But, in other jurisdictions, it takes a little while to kick someone out for not paying rent.
Therefore, it can be very productive to go to the landlord and tell them your situation. You might find that the landlord could loan you the money. (or something similar)
They might prefer that as opposed to spending money to accomplish the same result (of you paying late with a late fee and still staying in the apartment).
"This one time at band camp?"
I nearly peed myself when I saw that, and the people I was with thought I was excessively amused by what they found only pretty funny. I had to explain later, and I think they still thought me a bit, erm, overly amused. I alway hate using the "you had to be there" excuse, but, well, I think it is a little true in this case.
I'm off to go teach, but thanks for the sympathy. No credit cards (never needed them), possibly I could ask my landlord to let me eat the late fee and pay double next month, by when a big loan might be able to come through. I just hate being in this position.
92: It takes months and months to evict someone in NYC. Court dates must be scheduled, etc., and even after that the judges are interested in letting people stay in their apartments. I second Will's suggestion of explaining the situation to your landlord.
I could ask my landlord to let me eat the late fee
I sure hope that's not a euphemism.
88: Damn you, LB, you pwning squamate, you.
96:
He/she wouldnt be the first landlord to take the rent in barter.
I would also expect that the landlord would be willing to negotiate -- particularly if you've lived there a while.
He/she wouldnt be the first landlord to take the rent in barter.
I feel like there should be some good traditional songs on that subject, but I can't think of any at the moment. (I find myself stuck on Casablanca as an example and Shingling the Rum Sellers Roof which isn't at all relevent, but has a very catchy tune.)
No credit cards
AWB's admitted a lot of weird stuff on this site.
Not weirder than this.
AWB's admitted a lot of weird stuff on this site.
Not weirder than this.
Here's at least one other person that doesn't do unsecured credit. I like cash. I don't like debt.
I'm considering getting a card, but only because I expect a fairly painful economic period coming up, and I work for myself in a relatively unsheltered market. But it would pain me terribly to use it.
Credit cards are a good idea, even for people who don't want one and don't need one, because in certain situations (renting cars) they're preferred. Also, without borrowing you don't have a credit record if you need one. A friend of mine borrowed $2,000 once, deposited it in a savings account, and transferred $200 or so a month from one to the other until it was paid off. Basically she paid the difference in the interest rates just in order to have a credit rating.
The irony is that the people who don't have credit cards are the ones who won't abuse them, whereas the people who immediately agree with my argument in the previous paragraph end up busing their credit. As I did.