Judge John Hodgman - Triple Word Scorn

Episode Date: December 1, 2011

Jesse and Jessica are used to squaring off against one another when they play games like Scrabble & Hangman on their smartphones. In this episode of Judge John Hodgman their rivalry spills into the courtroom as they litigate their literary license.  Please use JUSTICE in a sentence!

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I'm bailiff Jesse Thorne. This week, triple word scorn. Jesse brings the case. He and his friend Jessica frequently play a word tile game online. Recently, Jessica found herself stumped and threw in a set of letters that she believed, quote, looked like a word, unquote. The game accepted the word and Jessica was delighted. Jesse, quote, looked like a word, unquote. The game accepted the word, and Jessica was delighted. Jesse, however, was vexed. Isn't submitting random words until one of them is accepted cheating? Only one man can decide. Please rise as the Honorable Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom.

In my court, you may prove your innocence via the power of your argument, or if you are of noble birth, you may choose trial by combat, specifically trial by scrabble. Therefore, I look forward to hearing this case. Jesse, square them in. Please rise and raise your right hands. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God or whatever? We swear. I do. I swear, too. Wait, who's that? Who's that? This is the moral support.

First of all, Jesse, can we give these people credit for a live standing up? Yes, that was not laid in in post. That's not a sound effect standing up. That's a live standing up that you just heard, podcast listeners. They appear to believe that this is a literal courtroom. All right. So wait a minute. Bailiff Jesse, what's the name of the complainant? The complainant is Jesse.

And what is the name? Not me. What is the name of the defendant? Jessica. Again, not me. And then so who's this other dude? I couldn't tell. Sir, what is your name?

My name is Scott. All right. I keep him here for support because I must admit, Judge, I get a little nervous around celebrities. So is this Jessica speaking? It is. All right. I'm just going to refer to you both as Jess. Okay.

All right. And I'm going to refer to Scott as Joss. So Jess and Joss, what is your relationship? Oh, you're married? I see. I'm Jess E. Jesse. All right, Jess.

No cut on the end. We'll call you Jess 1. Okay. Jess 2 and Joss are married, correct? Correct. That is right. And Joss? Yes, Jess 3?

If I might suggest a solution, perhaps we could ask Scott the moral support to shut his pie hole. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Done. I just am not sure why Joss, a.k.a. Scott, is in the room at the moment. Moral support? Are you providing expert testimony? I can supply silent moral support. He did witness the original argument.

He witnessed the original argument? All right, so we can call him as a witness then? It's highly unusual, but I'll allow it. Please return your right hands to the raised position. Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that he has repeatedly cheated at tile word games by having the word queegee bow tattooed on his knuckles? I do.

I do. Very well. Judge Hodgman. Eventually, that will be a real word. The longer I have it tattooed to my knuckles, which is to say forever, the more likely it's going to work its way into everyday usage. And that, after all, is how our living language works.

Joss, will you take a special oath to me that you are truly here to provide moral support for your wife, Jess, too, and not to wisecrack because you love the sound of your own voice on podcasts? Do you so solemnly swear that? I so solemnly swear that. Do you further solemnly swear

to not buzz market your meat-in-a-cone business or Facebook? Totally swear it. All right, very well. You may be seated. Okay, Jess 1, tell me the nature of the complaint. Okay, I quit playing the original Scrabble-like game because my friends would use the fact

that this is a computer-based... Like, in my mind, I feel like we're playing a very similar game to Scrabble, just on the computer. But they would spam the engine trying to find words. They put their most valuable tile on the double word score or the triple word score or something like that. And then just try to fill in the rest of them, spamming it over and over again with different combinations. I like this. Now, see, this is perfect because spam the engine.

That's great. Is that a term you made up? Yeah. A great non-sports, one of the rare non-sports metaph engine. That's great. Is that a term you made up? Yeah. A great non-sports, one of the rare non-sports metaphors. I like it. Okay. So let me,

I'm going to ask you to stop. Stop, stop, stop talking. Cause I need to understand this and make it clear to the poor podcast listeners who are now confused by the parade of Jesse's and Jess's we've had and the 13 different weird word games you guys are playing so here's here's what i understand you're playing a game where you receive a certain

ambiguous number of tiles letter tiles you are then charged to form a word which the other player guesses hangman style is that more or less what we're talking about here yes okay now is the dispute did it arise around this particular weird abomination of a game, or did it arise around Scrabble specifically? No, it arose around the Hangman variant. Okay. And so what happened? She was building her word, and she saw a combination of letters that she thought, quote, looked like a word. Whom are you quoting? Jessica. Based on? Based on what she told me afterward.

Based on your vellum scroll of everything you think and do during this game that you keep as a record? Based on testimony that she gave you afterward? Yes. I see. It actually supports a little bit of chat between us too, which unfortunately we don't have a record of that because it happened too long ago.

Online chatter? It's built into the game. I see. Well, if you don't have evidence for it, then don't say that you have evidence for it. But what stops... No, no, no. Here's the thing.

If you interrupt me again, I will find automatically for Jess, and you'll never know who it was. You may have won. You may have lost. I may have mispronounced Joss. You don't know. Jesse the Bailiff might have won.

But don't interrupt me anymore. Do you understand, sir? Yes, sir. Thank you. I'm trying to get to the bottom of this. You may be right. Now, listen. You say that Jessica, also known as Jess 2, put down a word that, and what was your quote?

That she said looked like a word. To her. To her. Okay. Jessica, also known as Jess 2, did you say those words? I think I said it intuitively felt like a word. Okay. So she understands already that I feel like it is cheating if you don't understand that what you're playing is a word.

What was the word? The word was harmines. Oh, you're talking about the hallucinogenic alkaloids composed of carbon-13, hydrogen-12, nitrogen-2, oxygen, whose distribution in plants and use in medicine is similar to harmoline? Yes, that is what I'm referring to. Well, that's definitely a word. It's not part of your parlance?

Well, I know the word now. All right. But that is a word that you obviously did not know when you put it down. That is technically true. Okay. It felt intuitively like a word to you? Yes.

And I will say, Judge Hodgman, that I wasn't randomly just pecking at my letters and submitting and submitting and submitting until— You weren't spamming the engine? No, I wasn't spamming. What I refer to as random pecking. Random pecking. I spent quite a lot of time arranging words that to me had a certain flow. And then spontaneously I hit submit, which I was very surprised to see that it accepted it. And I immediately looked up the word and I pretty much knew that I was going to be forever in the ranks of Jesse's spammers.

Are you suggesting that you were guided by some extrasensory perception, some etymological spirit guided your hand? Was it automatic writing? Is that what you're saying was happening here? Maybe that's what I'm saying. Were you under the influence of a hallucinogenic alkaloid whose distribution in plants and use in medicine is similar to Harmaline that allowed you to suddenly know words that you didn't know before? They put you into a trance, a linguistic trance? I have to say that, no, that's not the case. All right. Why is that

not cheating? First of all, I just don't agree that you have to know the meaning of every word that you play. I didn't randomly peck and submit and submit and submit. I feel like it was a little bit of a gray area, certainly with Jesse, who feels like you should know the definition of every word that you play. Although I feel like even in our day-to-day speech, there are certain words that we use that if someone were to just randomly ask you the definition that you would be hard-pressed to come up with a definition. Oh, while scoffingly. I feel that limiting yourself to words you know is unnecessarily handicapping yourself.

Did either of you think to look up the rules to this game? I have not. I didn't look up the rules. And in some ways, I feel like, or it seems like these days, games don't even really have rule books. You just kind of get thrown into it. We are so far. We're so far beyond the wall at this point with as far as these games go. Games don't even have any rules anymore.

They give you tutorials at the beginning and then just let you go. is there a rule prohibiting people from playing a word that they do not know the definition of? And or is there a rule prohibiting people from playing a word that they do not even know is a word? I do not know the answer to those questions. So now, do you create your own side rule, a la the free parking rule, a completely invented, crowdsourced rule for Monopoly that has now been accepted in some official versions of the game. Do you have a gentle person's agreement that you will only play words that you know? I feel like we've come to that understanding. Great. Why are you arguing in front of me then?

First of all, I feel like if you were to place your letter tiles on a board game, I mean, there's no spell checking. I mean, someone would have to know off the top of your head that your word was misspelled. I mean, it's not uncommon to have a dictionary or even use a smart device to check the spelling or even the legitimacy of the word that you're playing when playing a board game. I'm sorry. What did you just say? Are you suggesting that when you play physical Scrabble, you check the spelling of your word before you put it down? It's not uncommon.

Is that what you're saying to me? It's not uncommon. Neither is murder, madam in certain parts of the world. If it's kosher with everyone around. Neither is magic beyond the wall. I think I've heard everything I need to hear. I am going to go into my chambers and throw up for a while,

and then I will make my decision. Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom. Okay, you can sit down. Jesse, Jessica. Yes. Did you ever stop to think that other people have your name? Yes, I have thought of that before. Did it ever occur to you that there might be consequences for other people

when you embarrass yourself on one of the world's most popular podcasts? Other people who might be public figures whose names frequently appear in magazines such as Design Bureau. I haven't decided whether you make me want to vomit tears or cry vomit. Do you have anything to say to defend yourselves for this pathetic display? I'm going to rename my cat Jessie. I'm renaming mine Hermines. Please rise as Judge John Hodgman reenters the court.

Well, you really gave it to them there, Bailiff Jesse. I'm upset. I can tell. You want to sit down for a little while? Thank you. I didn't hear a live sit down. Sorry, maybe I'll just rub two pieces of wood together. Okay, good. And also, will you ring a cowbell? Yes, thank together. Okay, good.

And also, will you ring a cowbell? Yes, thank you. Okay, thank you. And will you play an old-fashioned calliope? I will, yes. Thank you. Now do you feel better? I don't know.

I would probably feel better if I was in a bustling market in exotic Istanbul. Oh, with a man falling down the stairs? Exactly. Yeah, now I feel fake too. A man? John, you know what they say. If a man falls down the stairs in your home, it's a tragedy.

But if he falls down the stairs in a market in exotic Istanbul, it'll make you feel a lot better about things. That's true. Oh, stoppingly. Joss? Yes, sir. make you feel a lot better about things that's true awesomely joss yes sir here you are as moral support before i render my verdict do you have a statement you wish to make to this court seeing is how i live with one party and live next door to the other party i just hope that they are able to play together peacefully in the future.

Actually, no, I don't have anything else to say. By moral support, do you mean that Jess, too, is sitting on your lap? Close to it. I see. All right, look. I have very strong opinions about word games, particularly those that are Scrabble, because those are word games. And those that are not Scrabble are monstrous imitations, and I will have nothing to do with them. even online versions of Scrabble, which I have played the computer on Scrabble from time to time, and I am disappointed by it because of this simple thing that Jess1 points out. There is no natural check within the game, no enforceable prohibition to just trying out crazy combinations of letters and hoping that the computer accepts them.

And it does cheapen the game. Now, just to what you are suggesting about a live Scrabble game is very offensive to me. If you are playing with little baby children, you may wish to keep a dictionary nearby in order as a teaching tool, right? So that children will learn new words and they can look up words against their letters and put together words that are real and make sure that words are well spelled.

And that is a good pedagogical tool for teaching little baby children how to learn words, but not how to play Scrabble. Do you understand what I'm saying? Scrabble is not teaching children how to spell, nor is it words with friends. It is Scrabble with opponents. And the reason that I am so hung up on this is because it is an extremely subtle and beautiful and elegant part of the game, which is the challenge. In the game of Scrabble, there is zero prohibition for you putting down a word that you have made up

or that you are not sure is even a word. Whether you know it's a false word or whether you don't know that it's a false word, there is zero built-in prohibition in the game. You may do it, but, and here's the wonderful but of it, you are playing a live opponent who may then challenge you and call what may be a knowing or unknowing bluff that you have made. Bluffing makes every game more interesting. And I'm talking about table games such as poker the beautiful sports of the sedentary asthmatic man you know what i mean yes and so uh if you are challenged then and only then may you look up the word in the dictionary that you have pre-arranged and stipulated to be the dictionary for the game and see if that word exists and And if it exists, you, just to get not only the points,

but the bonus of getting to go again while your other player who challenged skips the turn. If the word does not exist, then you must take your tiles back and you get no points for your turn. And then the other player goes. There are stakes involved, built-in checks and balances that prevent people from faking words for fear that they will be challenged successfully. And prevent people from challenging unnecessarily. And it adds an element to the game which I think is just beautifully devious and causes many fights between spouses in fun ways, as I know, because I play Scrabble with my wife. And all of that is erased. That whole element is erased from online play because they have this automatic feature whereby the computer will vet your word and reject it. But you get no penalty for putting down that word.

So that is why you must not play with dictionaries, okay? And when you're playing live Scrabble in a real world environment, which I believe is really the only correct way to play the game called Scrabble. In these many, many, many imitations of these games, if you must play, I absolutely agree jess one that it completely distorts the purpose of the game to spam the engine a term that i'm going to use forever and and as off-stoppingly as i can and uh it is is poor play it is poor games men or games womanship uh and it's just it's it becomes as just one you said playing against the computer basically that's not what you want to do you want to play against another person so my verdict is makthumta look it

up you will see it's a very little used verdict uh one that was first used in the 1500s to describe this very problem which is you will be surprised to learn, I'm finding in the favor of Jess 2. Jess 2 made a valid word. It is absolutely part of the game to try to make words and even to try words that you're not sure are words. In Scrabble, of course, you have the risk of a challenge. And in this case, had Jess1 challenged, Jess1, unfortunately, would have discovered that Harminds are a real hallucinogen, and the game would have resumed. I don't agree with Jess1's opinion that to properly play the game, the other person has to know the meaning of the word and have it be part of their parlance. Scrabble is a strategic game in which vocabulary

plays a role. But if you are playing real Scrabble, you know the way to win the game is to learn more words. And there is that moment, that almost harmonic, hallucinatory moment when you see before you something that you are pretty sure is a word, and you decide you're going to put it down and guide it as if by an invisible hand you put down something that looks is a word, and you decide you're going to put it down and guide it as if by an invisible hand, you put down something that looks like a word to you. And gosh, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. But that's what makes the game fun. Since your intention was not to spam the engine, it doesn't sound like you're an engine spammer, as far as I can tell. Thank you.

And because your intention was fine, and it ended up being a word, I find the play in this particular case to be fair. And furthermore, I also find that going forward, you guys should become to a firm gentleman and gentlewomanly agreement about this issue. gentleman and gentlewomanly agreement about this issue. I think that it is absolutely correct to prohibit spamming the engine or pecking the tiles or sending out ravens without messages. That's fine. But I don't think that you can enforce, nor should you enforce, the kind of persnickety rule that you have to know the meaning of the word. If it weren't for this bluff that you made, you would never know about this wonderful hallucinogen. So I want the two of you to make up, go home, have a Harmeen party, play some wild games,

continue the bizarre polyamorous three-way arrangement that you have with Joss. I don't know what's going on and why he's here and who's sitting on whose lap at this point. And live your crazy lives, kids. But Harmeen is a fair play, and I stand by it. This is the sound of a gavel, a man falling down the stairs. Judge John Hodgman rules. That is it. Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Jesse. Jessica. Jessica. Stop. Stop it. Stop it with the chairs. I want everyone to sit down on the rug in a lotus position, drop some Harmeen, and listen to what Bailiff Jesse is going to lay down on you now. Jessica, what you did has been demonstrated to be illegal,

at least by the laws of Hodgman. Do you believe that it was immoral as well? Wait a minute, you Harmeen head. No, that's not what I ruled at all. It is legal. That was a legal play. By the rules of the game and by the rules of Hodgman. What's wrong with you, Jesse?

All of you, Jesses. Goodbye. I realize that it's definitely a shady area, although I still want to make the point that I was not spamming. I wasn't randomly punching in words. I came up with an assortment of words that randomly felt like a word. Perhaps I will use that extremely sparingly.

But perhaps not. Jesse? But perhaps not. Jesse. All right. Well, I came back because I realized that there's a, there's a fault in my ruling that you just brought up just to, if you make up three words and they're all rejected on the third word that you were, that is rejected. It's the reigns of Castamere for you.

That I think is fair. You came before me and you saw the King's justice and you have it. Maktoufa. Hello? Anybody? What happened to Jesse Thorne? What's the matter? What's the matter, Jesse? I'm tired. Okay. You know, I think Jesse had a little bit too much of the hallucinogenic alkaloid. So I'm going to let him go sleep it off in my chambers. Thanks all you guys for coming by today on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Thank you, Judge Hodgman. Thank you, Judge. It's been an honor. Here, Jesse, just have a seat on this couch. I know you have a little bit of a harming bad trip right now. Thanks, man. Can you tell those snakes to cool out? Snakes cool out?

Well, they sounded like men falling down stairs for some reason. John, they're upset that we haven't cleared the docket. Can we take care of it so I can take a nap? Yes, go ahead, please. Here's something from David. He writes, My complaint is with the growing number of people who use the phrase step foot in place of the correct set foot, as in I've never stepped foot

in a Walmart. I have heard step foot on several cable documentaries and most irritatingly in my local grocery store announcements where I am invited to save money every time I step foot in the store. Okay. The fact that you had difficulty even saying the phrase should point out how incredibly wrong it is. If you say, I have never stepped foot in a Walmart, it makes no sense. The correct phrase is set foot.

Because to set is a transitive verb. You may set your foot into a place, but step is intransitive. You cannot step anything. You just step, period. I hope that settles it. David also writes, if you have the time,

please let everyone know. I'm supposed to phrase these in the form of a question. One, it's champing at the bit, not chomping at the bit. And two, if you don't care about something, you should say, I could not care less. When you say, I could care less, you are implying that you still care a little. I don't have time. I'm sorry, David. I don't have time for your orders., David. I don't have time for your orders.

Next question. Here's something from Danielle. My friend Vaughn recommended that I contact you to get to the bottom of an important debate that my partner Ryan and I have been having. Thanks, Vaughn. Yeah, thanks. Nice little name check for Vaughn. Here it is. What makes something ironic? I think the Alanis Morissette song is correct when she sings things like, an old man turned 98, he won the lottery and died the next day. That's ironic! He waited his whole life for something, and once he got it, he died and couldn't enjoy it. My partner seems to think that that has nothing to do with irony.

That's just a coincidence or bad luck. When I ask my partner, what's irony then? His response is, I don't know what irony is, but I know what it's not. What does that even mean? Uh, I certainly have no idea what that means, but I gotta say, uh, what is the name of this young woman, Danielle? Correct. Danielle is extremely bold to be bringing this up. After all, it is essentially a settled argument in culture that Alanis Morissette's song, Isn't It Ironic, is not ironic,

and that Alanis Morissette does not know anything about irony, because the things she was describing, such as it raining on your wedding day, were a completely different rhetorical term that language pedants and literature majors call bummers. Also, for some reason, she was prone to having weird seizures in the backs of moving cars. It's such settled science among know-it-alls that for you, Danielle, to offer Alanis Morissette's song isn't ironic, as your very definition of irony is itself ironic, as it is exactly the opposite of what you would expect to happen, which is, in the strictest

sense, the definition of irony, an expression that clearly represents the opposite of your intention and, by extension, what is known as situational irony, which is incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result, that is to say, a surprise at the end, but an incongruity that is a reversal, that is to say, again, the opposite of what is expected. At least that is the definition of situational irony provided to me by Corey Stamper, who is an editor at the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and a colleague of our friend Emily Brewster, who is, at this very moment, it turns out, preparing a video on the subject of, guess what, irony. Isn't that ironic? No, it is not. That is coincidence. As is an old man dying after

he wins the lottery, as that is not a reversal of expectation. Winning the lottery does not connote sudden immortality. I mean, look at me. And in fact, dying at 98 or whatever it is, is kind of a sad but fairly predictable fate. However, Corey pointed out to me in a phone call that we had that unfortunately did not record very well, that the history of conflating situational irony with simple disappointing outcomes is long. Merriam-Webster has in its database examples of this misuse going back at least 100 years. In fact, F. Scott Fitzgerald, a pop songwriter of his day, used the term in a similar debased form when he wrote, it is an ironic thought that the last picture job I took yielded me $5,500 and cost over $4,000 in medical attention. Personal letter, 1939.

According to Corey, as you can see, quote, this isn't situational irony, it's just really unfortunate, unquote. Now, through this kind of usage, the definition of irony has grown vague and arguably more nuanced. So the language pedants kind of don't have the same kind of argument they think they have. And semi-ironically, Alanis Morissette's song, now debated for 16 years, might ultimately change the meaning of the word forever. But for now, is a 98-year-old man dying ironic? Probably not true situational irony, according to Corey. But she did suggest that it might be situationally ironic if the old

man had had terrible luck his whole life and couldn't keep a job and just everything went wrong for him. And he was never lucky. But every day he bought a lottery ticket claiming that his luck was going to change. And then he won, proving him right. And then he died, proving him wrong. Which, to be fair, is pretty much the same thing that Danielle said in her letter, in her interpretation. She said he waited his whole life for something, and once he got it, he died and couldn't enjoy it.

But Danielle wrote that. Alanis Morissette didn't write that he had waited his whole life to win the lottery. So I'm ruling in Danielle's favor. Neither she nor Ryan may be able to define irony, but she was able to write it back into a song where it didn't exist. Isn't that ironic?

No, it's not. Oh, more Harmeen sickness? I myself am a medical oddity this week. I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you'll feel better next week. I'll try. Okay, good. Well, John, it was a pleasure.

We'll talk to you next time. I'll try. Okay, good. Well, John, it was a pleasure. We'll talk to you next time. Goodbye. The Judge John Hodgman Podcast is a production of MaximumFun.org. Our special thanks to all of the folks who donate to support this show and all of our shows at MaximumFun.org slash donate. The show is

produced by Julia Smith and me, Jesse Thorne, and edited by Matt Gorley. His great podcast, by the way, is called Super Ego. You can find it in iTunes or online at gosuperego.com. You can find John Hodgman online at areasofmyexpertise.com. If you have a case for Judge John Hodgman, email us and be sure and include your telephone number. The email address is hodgman at maximumfund.org.

If you have thoughts about the show, you can always comment on it on our message board, forum.maximumfund.org. We'll see you online and next time right here on the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.