According to Hofmann: Yahtzee and crime
They say curiosity killed the cat, but they also say cats have nine lives.
With those two statements placed side by side, I now find myself anxiously curious if curiosity takes the last life of a cat’s nine lives or just one of them. Was the person who made either statement aware of the other statement when they made their statement? How much research was actually done for both statements — did someone measure the danger of a cat’s curiosity as well as determine how many lives a cat truly has? I know sticking a metal fork in an electrical outlet will electrocute me, but what about a plastic fork?
As you can see, such things make me go down the rabbit hole of questions to a true wonderland of, well, additional questions.
A case in point was a recent headline I saw on social media that read, “Florida man, 37, arrested for kidnapping 27 people and forcing them to play Yahtzee for 36 hours straight.”
As you can guess, some questions popped in my head, but I didn’t question why it was a Florida man because of that state’s track record of, uh, “eccentric” villains.
So the questions I had included, but were not limited to:
How can one man kidnap 27 people? Is there a hijacking of a bingo bus involved, and the guy says to everyone, “Okay, people, put down the daubers because we’re going to play a new game today!”?
How can you get 27 people to play Yahtzee, let alone force them to play Yahtzee?
Why choose Yahtzee to be a part of the kidnapping plan?
Why play Yahtzee for 36 straight hours?
Where do 27 people actually play Yahtzee? A pavilion in the park or a large meeting room at a hotel or a community center?
How does that all work, like is it 27 people playing one game of Yahtzee or are they broken up into groups to play like five or six different Yahtzee games at once? Do they take turns?
However, as I further investigated the story, I found out that none of it was true, just a made-up fantasy with an old mugshot of a rough looking guy.
One fact-checking website stated the tweet supposedly sent by CBS wasn’t real and then another fact-checking website stated the claim of CBS sending the tweet wasn’t real and yet another fact-checking website run by nihilists stated that nothing is real.
I thought the whole thing was over, but then an interesting thing happened when I noticed what else came up in the other search results on the subject, and that happens to be the different articles related to crime and Yahtzee.
For example, one man stabbed and killed another man while playing Yahtzee and another man wound up choking his wife during an argument while playing the game.
Oh, yeah, both incidents happened in Florida. I know, I was as shocked as you are to discover that.
While there’s nothing funny about either incident, it just goes to show why the Yahtzee kidnapper story was believable as it used the following formula: Florida man/woman + Crime + Yahtzee = Headlines. Anyone reading that would believe it’s totally plausible.
But the big question remains, why is there so much anger surrounding Yahtzee?
If you’ve never played Yahtzee, the players roll five dice three times to achieve a scoring category like a three of a kind or full house, and the player with the most points from those categories after 13 rounds wins.
While I normally feel the need to violently lash out at friends and family during all kinds of board games (the Chutes and Ladders Massacre of 1989 is still a blur to me), I never felt any more rage against opponents during Yahtzee, which is why the violent news around the game is so puzzling.
You’d think a game like Monopoly would generate more violence. You invest time and Monopoly money into buying properties, building some houses, generating some revenue, and then you’re wiped out by a developer with hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place because a lucky roll caused them to win the Free Parking lottery.
Anyway, like I previously stated, the big question of why Yahtzee is the most violent of board games still remains unanswered, but like the cats and the curiosity and the nine lives, maybe there’s no answer, just a bunch of questions that lead to more questions that lead to the wonderland of insanity, Florida.
According to Hofmann is written by staff reporter Mark Hofmann of Rostraver Township. His books, “Good Mourning! A Guide to Biting the Big One…and Dying, Too” and “Stupid Brain,” are available on Amazon.com. He co-hosts the “Locally Yours” radio show on WMBS 590 AM every Friday.