I’d Like Clothespins for $100, Alex

The suggestophile returned yesterday. This time he suggested a game, perhaps based on Jeopardy, which would levy penalties and rewards. He suggested spanking as the punishment for incorrect answers. I suggested clothespins. We decided to give it a try last night.

Poor Lion. It’s the college championship so I thought maybe the questions would be easier than regular Jeopardy. Not so. They had the most obscure clues in the world. Even the easy ones were obscure. I knew some answers Lion did not, but only because I pay attention to extremely weird stuff in the world of trivia. Lion was accumulating a lot of clothespins. Here’s how we played:

1. Pause the screen once the question appears to allow Lion time to answer before the contestants on TV answer.
2. An incorrect answer earns one clothespin. A correct answer earns nothing, except no clothespin.
3. An incorrect answer in the Daily Double earns two clothespins. A correct answer in a Daily Double earns the removal of one clothespin.
4. Lion bets clothespins in Final Jeopardy. If he answers correctly, that amount of clothespins is removed. If he answers incorrectly, that amount of clothespins is added.

Of course, we’ll be revising those rules as we go along. I wondered afterward how it would work for swats. I can’t exactly undo a swat. And maybe Jeopardy isn’t the best game to do it with. I thought of trying it with Wheel of Fortune, but we couldn’t come up with a way to do it quickly. We’re in the test phase at the moment, but Lion likes the idea of rewards and punishment. We’ll do it every once in a while.

The final score was 27 clothespins. Not a record, but still painful. Most of them were the modified no-slip tape ones, but there were a few plain ones in the mix. He even had two on his boobies. We’ll have to play it a few times before we know if that’s a bad score or not. If he can get correct answers in his sleep, he should do better in the future. After all, his balls are at stake.