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Archive for December 6th, 2006

Which is worse…

Wednesday, December 6th, 2006

My 11-year-old nephew loves the game Zobmondo. My family likes to play the game because it’s easy, can be played in large groups (and when you have as many siblings as I do this is key) and the kids can be included. Usually we don’t play by the rules. We just read the questions.

The basic premise of the game is to force you to choose between two equally bad choices. A typical Zobmondo question would go something like, Would you rather have 100 needles stuck in your eye or 100 splinters in your foot? Of course, in a perfect world, you could just say, “Ew! Neither.” But that’s not an option. The game forces you to choose and to use your reasoning and logic to convince the other players of the superiority of your position.

Today, as I was compiling the Web sites for my weekly A.L.L. column, I came across a site that is very similar to the game: Which is worse?. You can submit your own questions, which I suspect is where they draw most of them from. (My nephew really likes making up questions, usually they involve bugs — my one fear — or daredevil stunts he’s seen on Fear Factor.)

I don’t know if it’s because I’m on a Mac or what, but the vote forms don’t seem to do anything. Still, the point of the questions, at least for me, is to start a discussion of the merits of (to use the first example on the site) licking 500 payphones rather than licking a toliet rim at a gas station. Although the idea of either completely disgusts me, I’d take the payphones any day. But, Ryan made a valid point in that you only have to lick the toliet once, and licking (or even finding) 500 payphones would probably take a few days. Still, I’d take my chances on the phones.