Transcription of my "A-Z" win at the Hamsphire Open

(The camera pans slowly across a well-lit room. Three men and one woman are seated at a square table, where a regulation map of the London underground a.o. 1992 is pinned down. Local audio is muted while the news-theme plays.)

Lou Hurr, commentator wrote:

Hello and welcome back to our ongoing coverage of the Hampshire Open. Speaking is Lou Hurr, leading commentator and four-time Hampshire ... runner-up. (laughter) Tonight's match features front-runner Emily Watson squared against foreign nationals Rohit Kumar and Anton Leibowitz, the table rounded out by fellow Brit Maxwell Murphy.

REFEREE: (Standing to the side, arms behind his back. His dress is reminiscent of that of the Buckingham guard, a classic fixture of the populist Hampshire Open. This venue is well-regarded as a tourist attraction.) Cameras are live now. Will the competitors speak plainly their names for the video record?

MURPHY: Max Murphy.

KUMAR: Rohit Kumar.

WATSON: Emily "Orthogonal" --

REFEREE: No appellations please, Miss Watson. (The referee maintains tourist-grade non-expression. Mixed laughter from off-camera persons.)

WATSON: Emily Watson.

LIEBOWITZ: ... Anton, Liebowitz.

(The tech crew appears on-camera briefly, wearing plain yellow t-shirts and very out-of-place derbies. Local audio cuts as the camera changes to the commentator's box, where Lou Hurr is sitting, smiling. In the background, the crew can still be seen adjusting mics and signalling lights for each player.)

Lou Hurr, commentator wrote:

There's a lot of personality on the floor tonight. It's cold and hot, ice and fire -- the chilling Liebowitz and the hotheaded Watson, local favorite and cult personality both in her hometown of Edinburgh and abroad. The mentioned nickname -- "Orthogonal" -- arose after a string of wins in Bristol where opposition consistently banked on her deviating from the same repetitive and base strategy that she swept day one with. Her playing style, then and continuingly, is sufficiently described by that: orthogonal. Straightforward. Liebowitz and Kumar, both technical players, know that they're in for a rough bout. Watson's strategy truly shines in situations like this; she, having effectively broadcast her plays on name alone, has become a non-factor for the other three players. They'll all be competing against one another to prevent capitalization on her -- ironically, creating a ripe environment for Miss Watson to knock them from contention one at a time, on the very basis of her own docility! ... some have called this, eh, a very ... womanly strategy? (laughter, both from Hurr and off-camera)

REFEREE: The starting station will be Fairlop. At the sound of the buzzer, regulation gameplay will begin. Any complaint or question raised before the buzzer will result in its delay. If there are no questions, the game will begin in thirty seconds with play from Liebowitz, as determined randomly prior to your being seated.

WATSON: Good luck, gentlemen.

MURPHY: You know they have to reset the clock because you said that? (laughter)

(Emily smirks, and rather elaborately rolls her eyes to-and-fro while waiting for the buzzer. She is the only player to respond when it blares, jumping slightly, and then assuming again her characteristic smirk. Liebowitz is already midway through his play by the time she appears to have refocused her attention.)

LIEBOWITZ: Lee.

MURPHY: Alrea -- ? Ah, ... Belsize Park.

WATSON: Fun! Let's go to Leicester Square.

KUMAR: Judge! (Kumar raises his hand, and the referee and another man from off-camera walk over to his chair. A timer on the back wall begins counting down from twenty.) Can I move to Hyde Park Corner from here?

Lou Hurr, commentator wrote:

Mister Kumar is doing something very unusual here. The judges are still conferring ... conferr -- oh! They've given him the go-ahead. Kumar motions Hyde Park Corner, not only negating Watson's move to Leicester Square but making Hell-of headway against Belsize Park as well!

LIEBOWITZ: What, do you want this to go on forever? Devons Road. (Liebowitz calmly folds his arms across his chest, looks to the side, and then suddenly scoffs, as the camera is panning away to focus on Murphy.) I hate loopers!

MURPHY: Go Croxley.

REFEREE #2: Croxley is out of play. Demerit, penalty is a warning.

MURPHY: (He raises his hand, starting the twenty-second clock in the background again.) What's the rule on that?

REFEREE #2: Motion to Hyde Park Corner cites precedent. The play predicates disaster controls and emergency detours are necessarily in effect. Part of 1992 disaster protocol closes the tube in question to accommodate detours like Mister Kumar's.

MURPHY: Loopers, right? (He looks disgruntedly to Liebowitz.) I hate them too. Go Gospel Oak.

WATSON: Croxley. (laughter)

KUMAR: I'm not a looper. You're looping, if anyone, Miss Orthogonal. Cross-town, let's do Blackhorse Road.

LIEBOWITZ: This is ridiculous. You're all loopers. I'm complicit in it too, at this rate. (Liebowitz pores over the map, disinterested. When the buzzer in front of him sounds, he disgustedly concludes,) I have nothing. Default ... what's close? Arsenal.

WATSON: Nothing? You missed it, then. Game goes to Orthogonal. I call Mornington Crescent, you're going to need your Tudor books for this one.

LIEBOWITZ: What? This is (beep). Judge!.. obviously. What rule is she using?

REFEREE: Care to expedite this, Miss Watson?

WATSON: It's a Tudor-era, like I said. Not a London underground path, but a London overground. It's a hunting path.

KUMAR: I'm not seeing it. I looked up the Tudor rules, we all did, we all knew they were going to be in play. I would've seen this if there was one. It's too fast, anyway. I've never seen anyone even try to end a game at this level of competition this fast. You're going to be nose-deep in penalties after this, Orthogonal.

WATSON: I'm not. It's on the books. Look -- what's a fast animal, Kumar? You hit the books hard. What's alacrity in Tudor-era England?

MURPHY: Hounds and horses? You mentioned a hunting path.

KUMAR: Don't talk in my place, Murphy! She asked me. You're wrong, anyway. The hounds and horses try to chas down foxes. She's playing at foxes, but I don't know any hunting paths named after foxes.

WATSON: The path isn't. The rule is. The rule is The Quick Brown Fox. It's published in the introduction to the Tudor-era reprint as an example rule of how Tudor-era rules can be integrated with modern ones.

REFEREE #2: "A canned hunting path used solely to entertain foreign nationals unfamiliar with the rigors of hunting, and who would not recognize its canned nature, the route in question was given the nickname of The Quickest Brown Fox. From this appellation is the rule and its text drawn -- if the circumstance of canning is met, then the path becomes active. In this interpretation, a recommendation for a circumstance is suggested: the utterance in previous stations of each letter of the alphabet, as the popular expression 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.'"

LIEBOWITZ: You're kidding.

KUMAR: This is ridiculous. It's in the introduction. That's not canonical, either way. It's just part of the preface!

REFEREE #2: It's been ruled that rulebooks are rulebooks. She's in the right on this one, though I have to admit I didn't notice it myself. I've skimmed over those "for the new player" sections before, even though I know that they're considered canon.

WATSON: Check and mate, boys. This takes me back to my chess days. Can we get a timer on that? Kumar was right, this feels like a record. (laughter)

Lou Hurr, commentator wrote:

And ... that's it, folks? Already, Miss Emily "Orthogonal" Watson has blitzed the competition in an unprecedented occurrence! In highly atypical fashion, the straight-shooter has outmaneuvered competitors known for their rules-lawyering and hoisted them, effectively, by their own petards! And yes -- yes, folks, you can see through the rear pane that the scene's turned wild! The judges have confirmed, this is a world record for sanctioned play -- fewest plays and shortest time to a legal Crescent! Miss Watson has truly outdone herself tonight, on what is only the third night of the Hampshire Open! Join us again, tomorrow, for the thrilling conclusion -- if any thrills could possibly outdo what we've already seen here tonight!

... Liebowitz is on the verge of throwing punches, people! Do you still have cameras on me? Put them back in the chamber, quickly! Miss Watson is flaunting herself as usual, and two very angry men -- and one rather jovial one -- are reacting rather, well ... it's a show. Get the cameras on this! No wonder she's got that cult following, you know? (laughter)

D0: Meditations on 'the rules culture'

I don't need to tell you that Mornington Crescent is a very complicated game. We have rulebooks -- note the plurality -- and those aren't even all-inclusive, as every sanctioned bout draws from one or more organizations' floor rules to boot. The game has, to be quite honest, become more about restrictions than about free play ... and, to a point, this is to be expected. The expansion of the tube network has ceased almost entirely in the 21st century, and variants expanding Crescent to include larger swaths of geography fail almost unilaterally as the majority of standing rules are rather regionalized. You can't apply a rulebook that goes hand-in-hand with civil planning to the flats of middle-Africa. It doesn't work.

That being said, whether or not it's actually gotten out of hand is a point of contention. While I played on the actual circuit under my Crescent-Hoppers International registry, speaking either for or against this was of course verboten -- I have a bit more editorial freedom now, though, and I might as well flex it, yeah?

I dislike the rules culture. I dislike the fact that now, and even towards the tail end of my own career, the majority of any particular game was decided in a board room before the judge ever called starting-station. It's disingenuous that a game which originated as the "end-all" of games of wits and off-the-cuff thinking has become, instead, a puzzler rewarding meticulous deconstruction and poring over rulebooks. I mean, I'll be the first to admit that many of my latter victories only came to me because the rules culture was only finding its legs and as many now-untouchables (the aforementioned Senjutsu, before his retirement) were being infracted/demerited out of game, after game, after game. I won at least a dozen matches on the back of my opponents being overzealous and getting themselves disqualified.

The really chilling part? They were ahead of their time. If the judges hadn't ruled so conservatively -- if they had, instead, ruled according to modern precedent -- I wouldn't necessarily have won a lot of those games. The Bristol series? My world record shattering "A-Z" run? Those would all have been contested further, possibly to my loss, if modern judging protocol was applied. It's a bit hard to admit, but my legacy is in part built on unfairly-dismantled prodigies. It's not hard to see why so many of them have it out for me in this exhibition match; there's a pretty popular undercurrent of "Orthogonal doesn't even deserve her fame" not just here, but in the community at large. A topic for another day, I guess ...

But, halting the digression and getting back to the rules culture, this is something which is now absolutely embraced. This exhibition match promises to be fielding at least six dozen rules and all of their corollaries and subchapters -- this is more than double of my final match at Winslowe Court, and precisely eight times as many as in my inaugural bout in London proper. It's rules creep replacing power creep, and it's not just coming from the judges; it comes from the players just as much, which is what really incenses me.

Most of these modern regulations are the progeny of "creative solutions" yesterday, where the regulating board felt the best approach was to codify their approval/disapproval of that particular scenario. Nothing in Crescent is wide-ranging -- as I mentioned before, this problem is what's preventing adoption of larger geographies in competitive play. All of these rules indexes are narrow and specific; they don't grow, and they don't accommodate new problems. Accordingly!, even though the rulebook grows ever larger, the impetus for new rules and regulations only grows larger at an even more accelerated rate!

It's the very definition of exponentiality, and it's a rather ruddy shame. I'll be honest: I pine for those days of off-the-cuff thought, where we had ten solid regulations and everyone knew them, and they were still a hazard because it was required to think on-the-spot and you might forgot one in the heat of the moment. There no longer is a heat of the moment. We've entered the era of a prevailing rules culture, where it doesn't even matter that most of the gameplay occurs before starting-station is called because every combination of plays is known anyhow. The actual starting-station is irrelevant -- no one will have an off-the-cuff response, but instead the formulaic "best" play or one that instead breaks the rules wide open if that one motion is unavailable.

Everyone but Emily "Orthogonal," of course. I earned my name for being straight-forward in an era where it was still a game of straight-shooters -- in this current climate, I doubt anyone will even threaten to run nearly parallel to me. I expect a field of curves, and they're probably entirely unprepared for how straightforward I am going to take this as I hoist them by their own petards,

and then drive them, per my namesake, straight into the ground.

Not to win, though -- but to prove that point. We don't need this rules culture, and I do not need to follow the "best" strategy, nor anyone else's strategy at all, to remain in the game and remain a competitive player. This might sound a bit schizophrenic in light of my statement-of-intent, but the two goals drive together here, in shining parallel; by demonstrating that Crescent can be won on the merit of a heart and a passion, maybe I can put the fear of God back into people again, both on the court and off it.

Stop using your rules as crutches, people! Open up to the world, and show your own face to it. The world needs the kind of humans it found and welcomed at its onset -- those who made a chaos into a system for good, not those who willingly subvert it to feed their own goals. You return order to chaos under the guise of law. You are a despicable people.

A roused and gentler giant

It's been a while, hasn't it, hoppers?

Yeah, I know -- that sort of tone isn't what you came to expect and love from Miss Emily "Orthogonal" Watson, the straight-burning fire of the Crescent circuit. She, who never paused for introspection, to wax on theory, or to so much as do any of her 'opponents' the service of looking them in the eye ... now posting introspectively on a blog that used to be nothing but an arena for mud-slinging?

Well, times have changed, hoppers. It's been years since my retirement, and the sort of bullshit that festered on this little slice of the Internet had far too generous an allotment as-it-was. That's all deleted now. I won't be restoring it. If you want inflammatory rhetoric, there's an entire generation of hoppers I inspired that will gladly spew it for you. This is the first page of a new novel; this is Orthogonal turning over a new stone and a new leaf, and the only person I won't be capitulating to as a matter-of-fact are my own hotheaded fans.

I love you!, I do. I love the time we had together, and the success you bought me, but ... something bigger is at stake here. Every hero and heroine's earned her swan song by virtue of turning heroic to start, and you won't take mine from me, oh no! So, ... let us enter that. Let's discuss the lay of the land.

It's an exhibition toss. The organizer is a no-name, but his two sitting judges are rather famous names. Senjutsu, of the Iron Officiators, more infamous than famous for his legacy of demerits; and Time Loop Gim, "The Motherfucker," whose career ended when his exploitations caused the collapse of the circuit and the ushering in of the fourth edition rules revamp. His career as a judge since then has been fairly lackluster, but it's still a name that inspires pause.

I'm not hiding my identity on this one, not that I could. There's a lot of hot-shot youngsters, as well as old faces (The Lady Elldren, the Dark Horse of Blackhorse Road) who would love to make a name for themselves by putting a dent in the front-runner. You know what? They probably have a better chance than ever, seeing as how I don't really have the fight in me any longer.

No, no, I don't. That fire's burnt out, if you can't tell already. I'm in this to make reparations, and I'm going to do it the only way I know how -- by blazing a trail through the tubes of our beloved London, and maybe even beyond. This is an exhibition bout, after all; there's no telling how far our travels will take us.

It's disquieting, honestly. I'm afraid to see how I'll perform. I never went into Crescent wanting to be the best -- I entered the field already standing atop it. I'm afraid that, even now, when I'd willingly throw the towel in if asked, I'll prove an insurmountable combatant. I'm afraid of proving -- finally and incontrovertibly -- that something really does set me apart, something really does make Miss Emily "Orthogonal" Watson the best of the best.

It's a scary thought. You can't lie about that. Not only would it prove all of my victory was more the result of deterministic happenstance in my 'creation' than effort on my part, ... it would prove, well, that that's what I was made for: to play Mornington Crescent.

I'm playing this exhibition match because I want to prove that I can do things other than play this game. I'm playing to prove to myself that there's more to who I am than a winding path through the dark.

If you still want to follow my performance, I welcome you to -- there'll be plenty of introspection and waxing on theory, this time. This is the last time: this is where I'll be making heads or tails of everything, and singing my swan song, and making as clean a break as I can muster. I'm going to learn not just about Crescent, this time, but about myself, all of you, and the rest of this mixed-up world that let a girl with the fire in her eyes become an international celebrity on the back of some tube stations' names.

Let's make it a good show. I'm going to show you all tricks that put even my own legacy to shame. Grab ahold of that safety rail, fans -- we're going to need it, you and I alike!