Updated: Sun, 2006-09-10 20:18
Rock Paper Scissors (RPS for short) is a fascinating game. Every other game either gets in your way with permutations and combinations, like Chess and Go, and reduces everything to computing power -- or, even worse, introduces a random element.
Only RPS is free of these two factors. There is no randomness (except in special cases, such as a computer player) and there is no vast branching tree of positions to be number-crunched.
It's all game.
Updated: Fri, 2006-09-08 16:07
Slug -- the unsung hero of mushi-ken
Mushi-ken (虫拳) is the oldest Japanese Rock Paper Scissors like game, and was the most popular until the advent of janken (i.e. Rock Paper Scissors) during the last century. The three 'throws' are slug, snake, and frog.Problem
Snake beats frog in this variant, and frog beats slug. Such is the way of the jungle. This leaves us with slug beating snake, which seems silly. Why wasn't some animal that's actually capable of defeating a snake chosen?Incorrect Explanations
Various interpretations have been put forward over the years:
Updated: Fri, 2006-09-08 14:16
Foreword
This table sums up a selection (far from complete) of Jan Ken Pon / Rock Paper Scissors variants from around the world.Contributions
Please feel free to suggest additions -- I find them really interesting but I have to admit that sometimes I am a bit slow at adding them. By 'slow' I mean that several years may elapse between my polite 'thank you for your interesting Rock Paper Scissors' variant' email and any actual change to this table. Sorry.Appearance in Print
This table (with all the 4- and 5-element games removed!) appears in the World RPS Society's recent book on Rock Paper Scissors strategy and culture.
Updated: Fri, 2006-09-08 13:45
Origin of Janken
The modern game rock paper scissors (jan ken pon, or janken) is a relatively recent offshoot of a very broad and old family of games, some of which survive in various part of Asia and some of which are dead. This family is called ken-asobi (ken-games, in other words) in Japanese. By far the greatest density and variety of janken variants is to be found in Japan -- although it would be unwise to conclude from that that rock paper scissors necessarily originates in Japan. For a description of some Japanese variants, see here.
Updated: Fri, 2006-08-25 10:30
Translation
The following is a FAQ taken from the Japanese site www.janken.com. This site flourished during the jankenpon boom of the 80's. Unfortunately it is now long dead; some pointless and trivial realtor's homepage (or something equally banal) now occupies the 'janken' domain name. How ephemeral and vain a thing is Mankind! www.janken.com was almost the only place on the web that attempted to collect together detailed Jan Ken Pon information in a readable form. I doubt that whoever wrote the content will mind me presenting a rough translation of his work for posterity -- so here it is: