Saturday, February 13, 2016

Lady-Hunter-Tiger

Daivik and me were preparing to watch the Australian Open semis between Federer and Djokovic. I had given sufficient build-up and Daivik was quite gung-ho about it. We were ready before the toss and waiting. The two players were warming up when the referee walked in with a little girl.
"What does she do in the match", asked Daivik. The little girl tossed up a coin for the players to call heads or tails.
"Why does she do that", asked Daivik. "To decide who gets to serve first", I said and went on to explain the idea behind the coin toss. I didn't quite know when to stop and started rambling about the concept of randomness.
He listened quietly for a while and asked, "So, it is like rock-paper-scissors". "Yes, Daivik, that's great. It is very similar", I exclaimed. Daivik got carried away and suggested, "Appa, they can also do Lady-Hunter-Tiger".

This was new for me! "What's that", I asked. Daivik started explaining, "Appa, look, hunter kills the tiger, so he is wins; tiger eats the lady, so tiger wins ", and in the same non-chalant vein added, "lady is powerful than hunter, so lady wins".  I waited for a while for some explanation on the last part, none was forthcoming. I considered this for a second and agreed to its faultless logic.
"So, Appa", Daivik wanted to know, "why don't they do Lady-Hunter-Tiger instead of toss". It was a good question, I had no answer.

But I amused myself for the next several seconds imagining Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic playing Lady-Hunter-Tiger to decide who gets to serve first.