{"id":143,"date":"2012-01-13T00:58:07","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T00:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/?p=143"},"modified":"2012-01-13T00:58:07","modified_gmt":"2012-01-13T00:58:07","slug":"improved-rock-paper-scissors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/2012\/01\/13\/improved-rock-paper-scissors\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Improved&#8221; Rock-paper,-scissors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know about you, but growing up I always played rock-paper-scissors with just three weapons &#8230; you know, the three in the title.  But my wife is French, and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rock-paper-scissors\">as Wikipedia explains<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Similarly, the French game &#8220;pierre, papier, ciseaux, puits&#8221; (stone, paper, scissors, well) is unbalanced; both the rock and scissors fall in the well and lose to it, while paper covers both rock and well. This means two &#8220;weapons&#8221;, well and paper, can defeat two moves, while the last two weapons can only defeat one of the other three choices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So I have questions for you.<\/p>\n<p>1. There is a weapon in the French version that should never be used (in an optimal strategy).  Which one is it and why?<\/p>\n<p>2. Is it possible to add one weapon to rock-paper-scissors without rendering one weapon inferior to all the others?  If so, give an example; if not, show why not.  (Fans of <em>The Big Bang Theory<\/em> know <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock\">it&#8217;s possible to add two.<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know about you, but growing up I always played rock-paper-scissors with just three weapons &#8230; you know, the three in the title. But my wife is French, and as Wikipedia explains: Similarly, the French game &#8220;pierre, papier, ciseaux, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/2012\/01\/13\/improved-rock-paper-scissors\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-math","category-puzzles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions\/145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}