For some reason, the two nerdiest variants of Rock Paper Scissors/Rochambeau (henceforth “RPS”), namely Ahyoheek and Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard, have never been combined, or at least such efforts have not been documented on Al Gore’s internet. Today, we fix that problem.
Pineapple Apple Pen, but for Ahyoheek and Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard.
- How many points should be required for victory?
- How should players keep track of how many victory points everyone has received?
- Nobody is going to play this.
Ahyoheek-Spock-Lizard is a game for two or more players. To begin, the players decide how many victory points are required to win the game, then arrange themselves in a circle so that each player can see what figures are thrown by every other player.
A reasonable default number of required victory points is one less than the number of players, to a minimum of two points.
Ahyoheek-Spock-Lizard is played in a series of rounds. To begin each round, the players start a countdown in the manner of a game of RPS. I prefer the chant “two, one, go” to clarify that the game being played isn’t RPS, to disambiguate when figures are thrown, and for its brevity (which, as you may suspect, I value conditionally).
On “go”, each player throws a figure, again as RPS. However, there are two additional figures that may be thrown: Spock and Lizard. Both are thrown with the palm perpendicular to the ground, as with the traditional Scissors figure. Spock is the Vulcan salute—the fingers held flat, and parted between the middle and ring fingers. Lizard is a shadow puppet animal’s head, or a shallow bowl of water—the fingers slightly curved, and the tip of the thumb against the side of the index finger.
Once the figures have been thrown, round points are applied. Check each combination of two players. If one player’s figure beats the other’s, the winning player receives one round point, and the losing player loses one round point. If it helps, you can think of this as the winner taking a point from the loser. If it doesn’t help, don’t.
To know which figures beat which, refer to the Precedence section below or the official RPSSL website; all verbs in the precedence listing can be replaced with “beats.”
The winners of the round—the player or players with the most round points this round—receive one victory point of the type that that player threw this round. E.g., if the player with the most points threw Scissors, they get a Scissors victory point.
Additional rounds are played until someone wins the game.
The first player who, having received at least the agreed-upon number of victory points of any one type, ends a round with more victory points of a single type than any other player wins the game.
Scissors cuts paper covers rock crushes lizard poisons spock smashes scissors decapitates lizard eats paper disproves spock vaporizes rock crushes scissors.