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OT - Trivia Question du Jour

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Friday, 14 October 2016, at 1:55 a.m.

In Response To: OT - Trivia Question du Jour (Stick)

O.K., that's a pretty good definition of "scoreboard."

I'm not sure if backgammon even counts, because if a match is terminated prematurely for some reason, does the player with the higher score automatically win? It's not clear to me. So we should probably limit ourselves to games where it is clear, or even explicit in the rules, that the scoreboard determines the winner in the event of a premature termination (e.g., a rainout in sports).

As we've seen from the discussion on this thread, there are lots of examples of the following type: The scoreboard is lagging behind the game state and the game state is such that your chances of winning are >50% even though if the game were prematurely terminated, you would lose, because your advantage wouldn't have been converted yet into something that registers on the scoreboard.

Examples like this aren't always very satisfying. For example, in baseball, if it's the bottom of the ninth and the home team is trailing by 3 runs with the bases loaded, and the batter hits a ball that is on its way over the fence, then of course for the few seconds that the ball is in flight, the away team is ahead on the scoreboard but losing.

It would seem to be more satisfying if we limit ourselves to game states immediately after the score has just been updated. That rules out examples where the game state "runs ahead" of the scoreboard and the scoreboard just hasn't caught up yet.

Othello would therefore be an answer, except that the disc count isn't commonly called the "scoreboard" and there isn't any official provision for adjudicating a game that is prematurely terminated.

I don't know the rules of curling but from Mike Clapsadle's description it sounds like the best answer so far.

I can see that with all the provisos I've laid out, there might not be a completely satisfactory answer, precisely because if it's possible for the side that is leading on the scoreboard to be losing, then there will be natural resistance to making the scoreboard the official adjudicator of a prematurely terminated game.

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