Henry Gribbohm, you're our Idiot of the Week

[VinylTurnip]

He may be a moron, but he’s also the first person in history to get a (partial) refund from a carny. That deserves a statue.

[Yllaria]

I have no idea what “Tubs of Fun” is. But I’ve heard that in a knock down the milk bottles game, there are heavy bottles and light ones. For the practice shots, they put the heavy ones on the top of the stack, where they’re unstable, and they knock down the lighter ones on the bottom when they fall.

For the shots for the prize, the heavy ones are on the bottom, where the force from the light bottles falling can’t budge them. When the heavy ones are on the bottom, each one can only be toppled with a direct hit. And you don’t get enough shots to directly hit all of them.

[Little_Nemo]

@sachertorte

The article I read stated that when given a practice shot, he often won; when playing for real and with money, he always lost.

It was a scam. Perhaps he should have realized it was a scam, but it wasn’t a fair game to begin with.

Apparently the trick is that when they leave the other ball in the bucket when they let you have a practice shot. If you throw a ball into an empty bucket it bounces out but the other ball deadens the bounce and the second ball will stay in. Then when you’re shooting for real, you have to do it into an empty bucket.

You’d expect most people would notice this pattern after the first few hundred attempts. But Henry apparently thought he was getting the hang of it and kept on playing.

[johnpost]

A novelty comb. Kings among men.

[Poysyn]

@Yllaria

I have no idea what “Tubs of Fun” is. But I’ve heard that in a knock down the milk bottles game, there are heavy bottles and light ones. For the practice shots, they put the heavy ones on the top of the stack, where they’re unstable, and they knock down the lighter ones on the bottom when they fall.

For the shots for the prize, the heavy ones are on the bottom, where the force from the light bottles falling can’t budge them. When the heavy ones are on the bottom, each one can only be toppled with a direct hit. And you don’t get enough shots to directly hit all of them.

If it’s like the basket toss game here, you need to arc the ball in…you can do it, but no one does it that way. You need to throw it almost at the ceiling and get it to stay in that way.

I know because when I was 14 the carny showed me - it was carny flirting.

[Gary_Robson]

“There’s a sucker born every minute.”
– David Hannum

[a35362]

@The_Hamster_King

This happened to my grandfather. He lost his entire paycheck trying to win a stuffed animal for his little girl (my mother). He’d been a minor league ball player and it was inconceivable to him that he couldn’t knock down a few milk bottles with a baseball.

My grandmother pleaded with him to stop, but he lost his temper and was determined to win. They finally left the carnival with my mother in tears clutching her consolation prize – a small chalk horse. This was during the Great Depression, so what followed was a month of real hardship until my grandfather got paid again.

Oh, how sad.