A Purely Hypothetical Question

Allow me to ask a hypothetical question. Let’s suppose that there is a quiz (a hypothetical quiz) on a Thursday night (a hypothetical Thursday night) in a rugby club in Port Talbot (a hypothetical rugby club). Since the end of lockdown, the procedure at the (hypothetical) quiz has been that (hypothetical) movement will be limited by each (hypothetical) team marking their own (hypothetical) papers. Alright, so let’s take the hypothetical thing for granted, shall we? So we have one of the teams who have been stuck in the bottom half of the table for decades before covid, suddenly becoming the second best team after covid, whose scores are miles better than all of the others apart from the top team.

Okay. Now in our quiz, the organizer institutes a new procedure whereby every team swaps with a nearby team for marking in a clockwise direction. The first week that it’s trialled, the suspect team are absent. Then the next Thursday, they turn up. Let’s say that the question master is a hypothetical (sorry) me. I give out the answer sheets and scrap paper to the team. Not a word to discourage me from doing so. I give out the picture hand out sheets to the team. Not a word to discourage me from doing so. Then I announce that we’re going to be using the new marking procedure again and say which team is going to be switching with which. I deliberately do not look at them while I am doing this, so can’t be sure how they react.

I know how they react when I ask the teams to swap at the end of round one, though. ‘We’re not playing.’ they say. And they don’t.

Now, before I ask the question, I think you should be in possession of all the facts. The team normally consists of 4 or more players and there are only two there this night.

So let’s get to the hypothetical question. Bearing in mind the suspicions that have been felt about the team, what hypothetical conclusions would YOU have drawn about their decision not to participate last night?

I know what I think.