Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2015 December 30

= December 30 =

Logical paradoxes of God
E.g. can god make a stone so heavy even he can't lift it? Basically this is the law of excluded middle, and people argue because of this god can't exist. But then think about what happens in quantum mechanics, classical logic is wrong when applied to it, especially the law of excluded middle goes out of the window. I think it's reasonable to assume god/supernatural beings obey a similar non classical logic. Are there any texts that discuss this? Maybe when we can see down to the plank length we'll find god LOL — Preceding unsigned comment added by Money is tight (talk • contribs) 01:52, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * The Catholic response is that positing logical contradictions is a failing of the human mind, not a challenge to God. I don't have a specific quote in mind, but you can look at the Aristotelian theology of Thomas Aquinas and at "Omnipotence" at the Catholic encyclopedia.  It tends to be Protestants of the evangelical sort and Islamists who insist on both textual infallibility and that God be entitled able to contradict himself.  You might also want to look at the Sacrifice of Isaac which asks whether it is good to follow a command of God, even if the command is to do evil. μηδείς (talk) 04:14, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * If you're worrying about this stuff, the "omniscience" claim also causes some logical problems: Can God create a rock that's so perfectly camouflaged and/or hidden that he can't find it again? Any time there are infinities in a system, mathematics, logic and reason tend to fly out of the window.  God is claimed to have at least three infinite powers, so there are bound to be problems with reasoning about a universe that might contain such a being.


 * Religious leaders have to carefully dance around these very clear logical problems in order to avoid looking like complete idiots - but in the end, the system of claims that have been made for the judeo-christian god are incompatible with logical reasoning - which is probably why they came up with those claims in the first place!


 * I should point out that I'm an atheist - but for the sake of logical reasoning, let's take the Catholic point of view on this stuff and work from there:


 * The Catholic encyclopedia (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11251c.htm) says "Omnipotence is the power of God to effect whatever is not intrinsically impossible." - this (surprisingly) does place limits on God's powers - but merely pushes the immovable-rock problem to defining what "intrinsically impossible" means. They have a rather wonderful get-out-of-jail clause that says that "intrinsically impossible" includes "Any action on the part of God which would be out of harmony with His nature and attributes;" - so if it's not in God's nature to create a stone that he can't lift - then he can't do it! (Another wonderfully circular argument!)  So catholic view seems to be that he can't create a rock that he can't lift because it's not "in his nature" to create logical paradoxes...Hmmmm.  But the second clause says that God is also incapable of "Any action that would simultaneously connote mutually repellent elements, e.g. a square circle, an infinite creature, etc."...which seems to confirm my reading of the first clause.


 * It it interesting that the Catholics do place limits on the power of God. These are very interesting limits - and worth exploring.  "Mutually repellent elements" seems to suggest "Things that break the laws of physics/mathematics that he created" - which would place extraordinarily tight limits on the power of God - and indeed prevent him from doing many (if not all) of the things he's claimed to have done in the Bible.  But since the Catholics reserve the right to define what they mean by "Mutually repellent elements" and only give scant examples - we can't know for sure what they have in their heads here.  " God cannot effect the non-existence of actual events of the past, for it contradictory that the same thing that has happened should also not have happened."...OK - so God doesn't do time-travel.


 * God made the rule that we all have "free will" - which means that he no longer has the power to affect our free will...otherwise he could could indeed create that rock that he can't lift and then lift it.


 * I would like to argue that since God would have had to have created the laws of thermodynamics - he ought to be no more capable of breaking them than for him to be able to lift some rock that he created to be intentionally immovable. (Or, put another way "Can God perform some act that violates the laws of physics that he created?")  If God obeys thermodynamics then he can't just go around making things poof into existence - rocks or otherwise.


 * The existence of God is (in scientific terms) "unfalsifiable" - meaning that it is utterly impossible to disprove the claim by any means whatever. If someone could ever come up with a clear, logically perfect, proof of the non-existence of God - then the religious folks can just claim that God planted that into his brain as a way to test his faith (or some such lame excuse).  Trying to disprove claims like this is a pointless waste of everyone's time.   It's very simple to come up with unfalsifiable claims - and the claims for the existence of God is no more valid than the claims for the existence of the Invisible Pink Unicorn (mhhbb).


 * On the other hand, the existence of God could hypothetically be proven somehow - there seem to be no reason why that proof couldn't theoretically be made. But over several thousand years, no such conclusive proof has ever been constructed - and as science pushes ever closer to understanding the origin and operating principles of all things - it seems ever less likely that such a proof will ever be made.  However, the lack of a proof is not proof of a lack - so if you want to continue to believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn (or God) - then nobody can ever tell you that it's not true...only that it's really, truly completely unlikely in the face of the evidence we see.   The principle of Occams Razor suggests that believing in such things is not generally a good idea - but that's not a cast-iron rule, just a very, very common observation that seems to work most of the time.


 * SteveBaker (talk) 16:26, 2 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I am also a (Catholic) atheist, full discosurewise. The issue, User:SteveBaker, really comes down to the questions, "Can God deceive Himself?" or "Can God defeat himself?"  The answer is that God is not the sort of entity (i.e., "by his nature") to which the attribute "defeatable" or "deceiveable" can be applied.  To do so would be a category mistake, like asking, "What does the number three taste like?" or "Why is French so triangular?"


 * The theological question is no different from asking the cosmological questions, "What came before time?" or "What is outside of the universe (broadly construed)?" Humans are capable of cognitive dissonance; this places no limits on reality.  Questions of this sort ultimately come down to asking whether colorless green ideas sleep furiously. μηδείς (talk) 17:08, 2 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Medeis, don't be a Catholic atheist.  Next time you're passing a Protestant Episcopal church on a Sunday morning, go inside.   I'm reading a travel guide to New York and I see that the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church occupies an entire block.   I'm sure the priests they train are well able to answer your questions and they won't quote you the Catholic nonsense.   My question to you and Steve as logicians is this:

"How do you explain away Jesus Christ?" 80.44.166.220 (talk) 18:01, 2 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Well, in two possible ways:


 * The guy didn't exist. As Historicity of Jesus says: "One of the chief problems confronting scholars interested in the historicity of Jesus is that there are no contemporary records of his life or existence.".  So it's perfectly possible that this person simply never existed.  The Romans were notoriously careful at creating and preserving records of all kinds - and it would be truly astounding if someone of the claimed influence of Jesus hadn't been noted in ANY of the many surviving records of the time.  Looking back at similar god-like figures from 100 BC and earlier - there are many with suspiciously similar attributes and stories to those claimed for Christ that would comfortably explain how such a mythic figure might have come to be described from a mish-mash of earlier beliefs and fables.  At any rate - there are zero contemporary records of his life....none, zip, nada.
 * There was a real man with no magical powers who became a cult leader and was widely written about generations later. Before he was first written about, these would be word-of-mouth stories.  We know that such things are routinely changed and exaggerated over each re-telling.  Stories of his life would have grown following his death - gradually transformed from fond memories of interesting (but certainly not paranormal) events into god-like powers, magic tricks and so forth.  Finally these would have been fixed in written form a hundred or more years later...and all we know are the hugely exaggerated versions of the truth.  c/f King Arthur...magic sword in the stone, lady of the lake, magician who lives his life backwards...yadda, yadda.


 * Jesus only has to be "explained" if you take literally what's written in the bible by people long afterwards. That book is sufficiently self-contradicting and demanding of "expert" decoding by people whose lives seem to revolve around it that we cannot take it as any kind of evidence.


 * I really don't see any special need to explain anything away here...but that's a different question from the one that was asked here. SteveBaker (talk) 02:15, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Along those lines, the IP could just as easily have asked how one "explains away" Moses and Muhammad. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:22, 3 January 2016 (UTC)


 * According to our article Hadith "Traditions of the life of Muhammad and the early history of Islam were passed down mostly orally for more than a hundred years after Muhammad's death in AD 632."   In contrast, there are four eyewitness stories in the Gospels consisting of accounts by the evangelists who wanted to make sure that what they had seen was accurately recorded before they died.   Nobody suggests Muhammad didn't exist, so why the hostility to Jesus?   Islam accords reverence to the Kaaba and the black stone, which bear no testimony of Muhammed's existence.   Catholics revere the Shroud of Turin, which is irrebuttable evidence of the existence of Christ. 80.44.166.220 (talk) 13:58, 3 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The trouble is, the Hadith article also says "Much of early Islamic history available today is also based on the hadith and is challenged for lack of basis in primary source material and contradictions based on secondary material available."
 * The four eyewitnesses you refer to couldn't be bothered to write down (or have written down on their behalf) these stories that they were so concerned about until they were improbably old - not one of them could have been written within 30 years of the events they describe. Matthew dates to 70 to 110 AD, Mark dates to AD 66 to 70, Luke dates to AD 80 to 100 and John to AD 90 to 110.  If they were so concerned to get this stuff right - why the heck didn't they employ a scribe and get it done immediately?
 * If you still think the Shroud of Turin is any kind of proof of anything - you should definitely read our article about it. "The Catholic Church has neither formally endorsed nor rejected the shroud"..." In 1988, a radiocarbon dating test dated the shroud from the Middle Ages, between the years 1260 and 1390, which is consistent with the shroud's first known exhibition in France in 1357"..."In the Church's view, whether the cloth is authentic or not has no bearing whatsoever on the validity of what Jesus taught or on the saving power of his death and resurrection." - so Catholics who believe that the shroud is irrebuttable evidence really need to read the churches' pronouncements - and look rather carefully at the science. Far from being irrebuttable evidence - the shroud has been very, very carefully rebutted - it's a medieval fake.
 * We also have an article Historicity of Muhammad which digs in deep into the available source material. But Muhammad is a far less controversial claim - he's said to have been a prophet, he didn't perform any miracles (water into wine, etc), he died from a simple illness - he seems pretty much to have been a normal man.   Whether he is portrayed accurately or not, I don't know - but his existence isn't anything particularly surprising.  Jesus, on the other hand, is claimed to be a literal incarnation of God - he's claimed to have almost unlimited paranormal abilities (including raising the dead, and transmutation, reincarnation - all of which violate the known laws of physics).  If Jesus really existed and did all of the things that are claimed of him - then that would indeed be proof that the world as science understands it is incorrect - and almost certainly god exists.  If Muhammad did all the things claimed of him - then all we know is that some great public orator and leader emerged - which is interesting, but doesn't of itself prove the existence of God or that miracles are possible and science is wrong.
 * I suspect that if Jesus existed (and I concede that he may very well be a historical figure) - then he was very likely another ordinary man who (like Muhammad) became a great orator and leader. What he did has been hugely exaggerated over the years - to a vastly greater degree than has the claimed life of Muhammad - which is all pretty believable.
 * I don't know why you're attributing "hostility" to my responses. I simply pass on the facts as are known...I linked to a couple of articles you should probably read if you care about the available facts.  My only objections are when you claim things that are known to be false.  So, no - there is absolutely zero evidence that Jesus existed or did any of the things that are claimed by Christians.  No, the Shroud of Turin is not proof - it's very clearly a medieval fake.  These are verifiable facts...all you have to do is to open your mind and read them.  (Your next step will be to claim that I don't have an open mind...you should note that I have literally read the Bible from cover to cover - starting at page 1 and reading through to the end.  I have yet to meet a Christian who claims to have done that - which utterly bewilders me.  When you read that book - as a book - you see that it's bursting at the edges with ridiculous self-contradictory junk.  God comes over as a petulant and annoying jerk.  But you have to read it all to know this - not rely on the little snippets that get quoted to you by priests and other religious nuts.)   I also started to read the Quraan the same way - but it's painfully hard to read and I was forced to abandon the project about a quarter the way through it.
 * SteveBaker (talk) 16:38, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
 * There is on this board a discussion of how facts are established in the context of Crown Court cases.  It's done by giving evidence.   In order for Christianity to get off the ground, the people who witnessed the resurrection would have to have testified to others what they saw, and their testimony would have had to be convincing.   The new Christians would have spoken to the two Marys and no doubt looked at the empty tomb to verify that Jesus' body was no longer there.   Then the disciples would have spoken about the appearances of the risen Christ before the Ascension, and why should they lie about that?   People don't join a religion unless they feel it has meaning for them.
 * The fact that it was some time before the events were recorded is a point in favour of them being true.  They were so well known that there was no immediate need to keep a record.   As they receded into the distance, it was necessary to make a narrative so that the information could be passed to later generations.   If all this was a fabrication, what was the motive (a very important consideration which a court will have regard to in arriving at the truth)?
 * Today Catholics celebrate the Epiphany of Our Lord.  Herod slaughtered the children under two years old and he wouldn't have done that unless he was afraid of something.   There is so much unbelief in the world.   There are holocaust deniers - how do they explain away Auschwitz and the testimony of the survivors?   There are people who say the moon landings are a hoax - I saw them on television.   If the Shroud of Turin was forged, how did the forgers paint the anatomically correct details of a crucified man?   As for the dating, the Pope didn't want to damage the cloth so the Vatican selected for analysis a section of fabric which was used to repair it after a fire in the middle ages.   Its provenance is attested right back to the earliest times when it was referred to as the Holy Mandelion.   The "Historicity of Jesus" article says that the crucifixion is a proven fact, and returning to the court analogy, on the balance of probabilities so is the resurrection. 80.44.166.220 (talk) 17:53, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Your line of reasoning relies on too many assumptions, and too many "would haves" and "must haves". You assume the Gospels are eye-witness accounts, when they most likely aren't. Matthew and Luke certainly aren't, because they are rewrites of Mark. Your arguments about what witnesses would have said and done assume the truth of the accounts. "Why would they lie?" is special pleading, and is never a valid argument. I used to work in public liability claims, and I know from experience that anyone who says "are you calling me a liar?" is certainly trying to use emotional blackmail to dissuade me from looking too closely into their claims, and very likely lying. And claiming the resurrection is true "on the balance of probabilities" cannot overcome the fact that it is inherently impossible.
 * I agree with you that the "why aren't there contemporary records?" argument against Jesus' existence is weak. The survival of documents from antiquity is actually pretty poor. To have sources from within living memory of the person concerned, especially when the person concerned is an obscure provincial with no connection to the Roman elite, is pretty good. We do have to examine those sources for quality, reliability and interdependence, just as we do any other sources, but if we are to conclude that, because we have no contemporary sources, Jesus did not exist, we'd have to throw out an awful lot of ancient historical figures, including Socrates and Alexander the Great. I think it very likely that Jesus did exist, but the length of time between his existence and the sources is more than long enough for a lot of untrue stories to become attached to him in oral tradition. --Nicknack009 (talk) 18:42, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
 * So the nub of it is that the resurrection "is inherently impossible".  Without God, isn't our being here "inherently impossible"? 80.44.166.220 (talk) 19:09, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I think so but 2016 science doesn't know the cause and effect for what happened before a time that would be 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000005391 seconds after what might or might not be the start of reality or how we got from primordial soup to life, so whether those were natural or supernatural processes hasn't been disproven yet. Also, why the Big Bang's had less antimatter than matter, why the Big Bang didn't collapse back into nothing and why the universe is is organized. Those are the most extraordinary claims I think and maybe they might never be known (especially the very first two). If science ever discovers the mechanism of all those then God could not explain why we exist.


 * If there is a God He might allow our existence after death but that too is both unprovable and undisprovable unless it happens to you. Near death experiences prove nothing and the Universe seems like too much of an "indistinguishable from non-supernatural" universe for those to be real. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:32, 3 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Why did God wait such a long time before Jesus was born? Does that mean he did not care about all the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and others that were born before Jesus, or were alive at the same time but thousands of miles away? Widneymanor (talk) 19:52, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Scrabble - first player advantage?
Wy wife and I have been playing a lot of Scrabble over the Xmas holiday - and we seem to be perfectly evenly matched.

In every one of the dozen or so games we've played, the first person to play always wins...100% of the time...not one exception so far!

After a dozen games, this seems unlikely to be a matter of chance.

So, the question is - is there any solid data to show that there is a significant advantage to playing first (or not) under the standard rules in two player games?

As you can imagine, this got kinda tedious - so we instituted a "house rule" that the double-word square in the center of the board is no longer a bonus square. This halves the first player's score - which you'd think would precisely even out any advantage they have. Over the couple of games we've played since, we do seem to be getting much closer end-games and the outcome seems less unpredictable...although this is hardly a statistically valid sample.

We also played one game with a variation of rules in which both people simultaneously play the same hand of tiles and the person who comes up with the highest scoring word gets to play the tiles and score the points (in the event of a tie, the person to come up with their word first gets to play it)...this removes every possible element of luck from the game and gives both players a precisely level playing field. Sadly, it also removes a lot of clever tactical play because (for example) it doesn't matter if you leave open a triple-word square because you have as much chance of taking advantage of it on the following turn as your opponent. In this version of the game, my wife completely annihilated me - I mean, just completely demolished me! Evidently, she's much better at selecting high scoring words - and I'm better at the tactical elements of the game - which is an interesting result!

SteveBaker (talk) 07:48, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Apparently so, to the tune of 14 points. shoy (reactions) 15:31, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Yeah - looking back over our last few games, I'd estimate the value of playing first to be more like 20 points for Renee and I - but we're not remotely 450-point players! It's interesting to note their conclusion: "One feature of the board is that since the player who goes first has no tiles on which to build their words, their first play receives a double score.  It may be time to consider a tournament board where this bonus is removed, or at least adjusted so that this advantage is nullified."...which is precisely what we started doing - and immediately found the game to be a much closer match.  So I conclude that casual players should seriously consider the "No double score for the 'star' square" house rule.  It makes Scrabble much more exciting for closely matched players. SteveBaker (talk) 17:59, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * You can play Words with Friends online. It's essentially Scrabble with some minor variations.  There is no automatic opening double-score per se, but if the word is at least 5 letters long it will occupy a separate Double Word Score.  But be careful: people playing random opponents have been known to get acquainted via the Chat feature, and even marry.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:39, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Wouldn't eliminating the bonus encourage the first player to just trade in their bad tiles and force their opponent to take no bonus, instead of them ? You could even have this go on indefinitely, since nobody wants to go first, and set up their opponent.  Maybe the first to form a 7-letter word would go. StuRat (talk) 01:24, 31 December 2015 (UTC)


 * The obvious answer if you are going to remove the automatic double score is to let the winner of the draw go second, after the loser of the draw has placed a word of at least two letters. If the loser of the draw cannot do so, then the winner goes first, and keeps the double score bonus. μηδείς (talk) 03:45, 31 December 2015 (UTC)


 * That seems like a rather complicated rule change. If one simply eliminates the double-word bonus for the square with the star in it, then the person who plays first is already at liberty to choose NOT to play (or to swap tiles) and thereby have the other player take a shot at playing the first word.  But the advantage of going first is more than just that double word square.  You're free to play ANY word from your hand without having to fit in with any other words - which dramatically increases the chance of getting a 50 point "bingo" bonus for playing a 7 letter word - and simply going first is always a net win since you can win having played one round more than your opponent.  The only real downside is that you can't add on to any existing words (like tacking an 'S' on to make a plural).  Giving the first player an automatic double-word score (and probably a double-letter to go with it) seems like an unnecessary incentive. SteveBaker (talk) 09:15, 31 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Your suggestion is no less complicated than mine, although better for the one who goes first, since you simply switch the choice to go or pass to him, whereas I penalize the loser of the draw by giving the winner the double score if the loser refuses the first move. The benefit of going first is negligible if the double score is eliminated.  Th second player will almost certainly get the triple letter score, and neither will it likely handicap his ability to play a 7-letter word. μηδείς (talk) 18:21, 31 December 2015 (UTC)


 * You can only form a single word if you go first, while you could form multiple words (up to 8 !) by going 2nd. StuRat (talk) 07:33, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Job sectors
Why is public and charity sector work often see as more stressful than private sector work? 82.132.216.220 (talk) 15:01, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Who are "seeing" it like this? I always thought public and charity sector work is less stressful, works fewer hours, and gets paid more for the amount of work actually done. And I bet many people who have had to deal with an inefficient bureaucracy anywhere feel the same. Here's one analysis of the differences, although it does not assess which is more stressful. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:38, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Pure speculation here, but it might have something to do with accountability. Those working in the public and charity sectors are constantly having to show stakeholders how the money is being spent.--Ykraps (talk) 18:20, 30 December 2015 (UTC) That is just my experience. Here is someone else's []. This woman blames the combination of difficult working environments, compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma []. Top reasons in the public sector include job insecurity and the sheer amount of major change and restructuring [] --Ykraps (talk) 21:04, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * How odd. It's as if they think private sector works can just go around being unproductive and wasting money without a care in the world. It's like they think there's something inherently wrong about accountability in the public sector. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:37, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Or maybe it's because there's a larger objective in the corporate world, with measureable goals which might be fuzzier in the public sector. Or, maybe the OP's premise is incorrect. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:19, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Cluedo rule query
Unlike SteveBaker above, in our house it's been Cluedo all the way this Christmas. I have a query regarding the rules. I was playing against two opponents. They both made suggestions which resulted in no cards being shown to them. They were both sure enough to make an accusation, but having listened to the suggestions, so was I. Now, in the version of the game we were playing, you have to go to the central area to make an accusation. So, it was my turn, and since I was lucky enough to be close to the central area at that time, I quickly hopped in there and made the same accusation as they would have done, which turned out to be correct. Is this allowable under the rules, or is there something that says that an accusation can only be made by a player who has previously named the same suspect, weapon and room in a suggestion? Many thanks, --Viennese Waltz 16:00, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I think the rule is a good one. Look at it like this:
 * If by pure luck (rather than deduction), you happen to get the correct three-card combo - then you probably have no more "right" to win the game than anyone else - so a race to the center is a reasonable way to end the game.
 * If by deduction, you're fairly sure that you have the right answer, you should avoid "checking it" by asking it as a question that you know will get no cards shown before announcing your deduction.  If you know the answer before anyone else, then moving to the center to announce it is a reasonable task.  This also provides a natural penalty for anyone who incorrectly accuses.
 * If you think other players are going to rely on the "no cards being showed" result to jump to a conclusion - you can spoof them by asking questions relating to cards you have in your own hand - so you can be 100% sure that no cards will be showed. I like doing this because it throws off inexperienced players!


 * For example, if you have Col.Mustard and the Kitchen in your hand and you already know that Prof Plum did the murder, in the Library - and you're trying to find out about the weapon, DON'T ask questions about Prof Plum or the Library...ask them about Col.Mustard and/or the Kitchen instead. Doing this with care will cause naive people to assume that Col.Mustard is the murderer - and won't hurt your ability to make deductions.


 * There is a definite skill to asking questions that will help YOU but either won't help other people - or will tend to confuse them. If you ask too many questions that help other people - then you don't deserve to win!


 * SteveBaker (talk) 18:18, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Our house rule has always been that anyone can make a formal accusation at any time by announcing "I would like to make an accusation". If multiple players want to accuse simultaneously, we grant the right of first refusal to the person whose turn was just completed, followed by the person to their left if they don't want to accuse.  We don't require them to be in any particular location because that would reward luck and happenstance rather than deduction.  And Steve's strategy about always including cards from your own hand in any suggestion is pretty elementary.  I've never played with anyone who didn't do it, so much so that it is almost expected.  -- Jayron 32 21:44, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Getting back to the original question: yes, you were playing under house rules that required you to move to the central area to make an accusation. The official rules just says, "When you think you have worked out which three cards are in the envelope, you may, on your turn, make an Accusation and name any three elements you want ... you may name any room (unlike a Suggestion, where your character's pawn must be in the room that you suggest).". And there is no stated official requirement that "an accusation can only be made by a player who has previously named the same suspect, weapon and room in a suggestion". However, it does say that a player can make a Suggestion followed by an Accusation in the same turn. Zzyzx11 (talk) 08:50, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * By the way, the official rules have changed over the years. Older sets (1970s) allowed players to stop the game at any time to make an accusation; more recent sets (2010s) require the player to move to the central room (the pool) during their regular turn to do so. The rule quoted by Zzyzx11 are the 1970s ones. --Xuxl (talk) 09:09, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Then Cluedo probably needs to be updated, as that is the same citation used in that section, and it is primarily focused on just the traditional game. Because it was originally unclear to me if the OP was actually playing the revised "Cluedo: The Classic Mystery Game" 2010s version (which is instead listed under Cluedo). Yes, in that version you must get to the center to make an accusation (and there is still no official rule that restricts what suspect, weapon or room you can list in your accusation -- its just the race to get to the center first) Zzyzx11 (talk) 09:28, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I was playing the Classic Mystery Game version. I don't know why that was unclear to you, since I specified that I was playing the "get to the centre" rule. --Viennese Waltz 11:39, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

grindelwald badged walking cane
i have been given one and can't find out anything about it--123.2.251.96 (talk) 19:40, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * From a New Orleans antique dealer:
 * This remarkable and rare German climbing cane boasts exceptional craftsmanship and intriguing details that make it an extraordinary collector's piece. Crafted of solid wood, the cane is surmounted by an ebony horn handle joined to the shaft by a fur and hoof collar. Four applied metal medallions depicting animals and the names of German cities adorn the shaft, which is engraved with the name of the German mountain town Grindelwald. Circa 1934. AllBestFaith (talk) 20:40, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Grindelwald is of course in Switzerland though! 165.120.165.131 (talk) 23:51, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The antique dealer is mistaken and Switzerland is indeed correct. One should keep to Potter's reliable sources and not rely on a Muggle for such information. The cane may even be a Wand once owned by Gellert Grindelwald c. 1882-1998 a dark wizard who in 1945 was imprisoned at his fortress Nurmengard possibly near Germany or Bulgaria. AllBestFaith (talk) 03:02, 31 December 2015 (UTC)


 * It's always instructive to check eBay to see what such things are fetching to get an idea of value (value being what something will actually sell for - not what everyone thinks it ought to be worth). There are two "grindelwald badged walking sticks" currently on offer there that meet your description. One at $9.99 has received zero bids and another at an asking price of $224.99!  The first seems like a very plain wooden walking stick - albeit antique, with Grindelwald badges, 'floral carving' and a rubber tip.   The second has a goat horn handle and an iron tip and is perhaps similar to what is described above.  So the nature and value of your find clearly depends critically on what KIND of Grindelwald walking stick you have...and it may take an expert to look at the features it has and tell you whether you have something that is truly of value, or something that nobody wants for even $10.  SteveBaker (talk) 08:57, 31 December 2015 (UTC)