Blog: Defining Bubbles, Recessions and Inflation MAD style
How do you handle ambiguous rules?
Our family likes to play board games. We played them with our kids and now we play them with our Grandkids. A favorite is little known: The Mad Magazine "What-Me Worry?" Game. Boomers and some from Gen X probably remember Mad Magazine, which at its height in the 1960s was the paragon of satire in comics. The 1979 game is less well known but it kept to the Mad spirit. It was basically the anti-board game board game. It made fun of Monopoly, in particular. Which is even funnier when you consider both games come from Parker Brothers.
The objective of the Mad Game was to lose all your money. You also went around the board counter-clockwise and had to roll the dice with your left hand, or else you incurred a penalty. But what really distinguished the Mad Game was the way it incorporated ambiguity. In most board games the rules are laid out with great precision. In fact, the rules of the game are basically laws which are expected to be followed to the letter.