# In Defense of Quidditch **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 10, 2018, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871 "2018-12-10T02:29:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2018, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/41 "2018-12-10T20:07:37Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > Indeed. Rowling herself said she invented quidditch after a fight with her boyfriend, and is happy that the snitch [infuriates men](https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/books/740425/Harry-Potter-JK-Rowling-Quidditch-origin-Philosopher-s-Stone-Edinburgh-Writers-Museum)… “infuriates” might be a bit strong. I just think it’s stupid, and get on with my life. Either way, the linked article offers nothing: > [@JK Rowling;](#): > > Quidditch - was invented in a small hotel in Manchester after a row with my then boyfriend. > > It infuriates men, in my experience (why is the Snitch so valuable etc), which is quite satisfying given my state of mind when I invented it. What does that offer us? “Don’t write angry”? That she doesn’t like men? ---
**Author:** ![Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a183cd/32.png) [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barkis_is_Willin)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2018, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/42 "2018-12-10T20:44:08Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > **Barkis is Willin’** , the movies gloss over the details, but catching the Snitch is _not_ immediate victory. It’s 150 points, and the end of the game, but the other team might still win if they had a lead of 160 or more before that point. Which is quite plausible, given what we know about the game. Thanks for clarifying, although it’s not really any improvement. You’ve still got two players playing a completely different game from the rest of their respective teams. Other than that detail, I think it’s a pretty straightforward goal scoring game. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2018, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/43 "2018-12-10T21:33:05Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > **ebb** , there is in fact a gym class where they learn to play, or at least learn to ride broomsticks (which seems to be the primary skill involved in the game). That’s where Harry was when it was discovered that he had a knack for it: A Slytherin steals Neville’s Remembrall and throws it away, and Harry flies off and catches it. Don’t even get me started on how stupid a Rememberall is, which apparently just glows to remind you that you have something to remember, but does not actually remind you of any actual fact or date. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2018, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/44 "2018-12-10T21:49:50Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > #2, however, is my main complaint, it is a valid complaint, and renders the sport unworkable as a competitive endeavor. Catching the snitch is worth both 15x a normal score, and ends the game immediately. There are 6 other players on the team who are playing with the quaffle. Beating each other up, flying like madmen, all in the effort to score what is essentially a nit in comparison to catching the snitch, a job where exactly one player is assigned. A player, mind you, who is playing a game seemingly unrelated in any way to the game his 6 teammates are playing. Indeed. There is no other real life sport in the world where the point totals are so disparate. Now if the Switch was 50 points, it probably would make far more sense (even then a 5x disparity in points is also unheard of in real life sports). I’d imagine if Rowling cared about sports at all, the snitch would be worth 30 points (each time, it’d be released after being caught) and there would be some other way to end the game (maybe reaching a certain point total). ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2018, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/45 "2018-12-10T22:10:28Z")
running coach: > [@](#): > > That’s more like Driver’s Ed. No, Apparition Lessons (in Half-Blood Prince) are the Driver’s Ed equivalent. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2018, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/46 "2018-12-10T22:32:23Z")
> [@cmkeller](#): > > running coach: > > No, Apparition Lessons (in Half-Blood Prince) are the Driver’s Ed equivalent. Point taken. Maybe broomsticks are equivalent to bicycles since even small children are shown using them. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2018, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/47 "2018-12-10T22:47:02Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > “infuriates” might be a bit strong. I just think it’s stupid, and get on with my life. > > Either way, the linked article offers nothing: > What does that offer us? “Don’t write angry”? That she doesn’t like men? The JK Rowling comment is odd to me, as I find that women I know who follow sports (and that’s who introduced me to Harry Potter in the first place) also find the snitch scoring a bit silly. ---
**Author:** ![ebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c57346/32.png) [@ebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ebb)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2018, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/48 "2018-12-10T22:58:11Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > Point taken. Maybe broomsticks are equivalent to bicycles since even small children are shown using them. Given the elitist nature of wizard society, maybe broomsticks are most like ponies. Just because you’ve ridden a pony as a kid doesn’t mean you’re ready to play polo. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2018, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/49 "2018-12-10T23:00:01Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > Snip… > > Nah, that’s like saying learning to ice skate prepares you for hockey. Sure, it’s a necessary skill, but there’s a lot more to hockey than skating, and a lot more to quidditch than brooming. > > Besides, in the books at least, brooms are a pretty common means of transportation for wizards & witches. So everyone gets taught to fly a broom at Hogwarts, not just prospective quidditch players. That doesn’t bother me. It’s analogous to being on a track or crosscountry team. Almost every high school kid knows how to run; but the ones who can do it especially well can join a team that turns a quotidian activity into a sport. No, it’s the capture of the Golden Snitch being the automatic end of the game that makes Quidditch a nonsensical sport. As **ebb** pointed out, the Snitch being worth what it is, the proper strategy is to put one or two players, along with the keeper, in front of the goal to prevent the other team scoring at will, and using the rest of them to track and herd the Snitch to the Seeker. So long as you can keep the other team from scoring more than 15 times, you’re going to win. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2018, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/50 "2018-12-10T23:09:06Z")
> [@gaffa](#): > > Don’t even get me started on how stupid a Rememberall is, which apparently just glows to remind you that you have something to remember, but does not actually remind you of any actual fact or date. 😕 Not to hijack, but I thought the point of a Remembrall was to help with memory **training** , not to act like a personal calendar app that makes it unnecessary for you to do your own remembering. Remember [hee hee], Neville is given the Remembrall by his grandmother, who’s quite demanding and judgemental. She’s not trying to make his life easier, she’s trying to get him what she considers up to speed mentally and magically. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2018, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/51 "2018-12-11T00:01:59Z")
**gaffa** , have you never heard of people wearing a rubber band on their wrist, or the like, as a reminder that there’s something they need to do? A Remembrall is just the magical equivalent of that. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2018, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/52 "2018-12-11T00:19:47Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > No, it’s the capture of the Golden Snitch being the automatic end of the game that makes Quidditch a nonsensical sport. As **ebb** pointed out, the Snitch being worth what it is, the proper strategy is to put one or two players, along with the keeper, in front of the goal to prevent the other team scoring at will, and using the rest of them to track and herd the Snitch to the Seeker. So long as you can keep the other team from scoring more than 15 times, you’re going to win. I don’t think we can necessarily conclude that that’s the optimum strategy. If one team dedicates a few players to help the seeker, they’ll be outnumbered in the field. Maybe under those circumstances it’s easy to run up the score by 200 before the snitch is even found. The rules of quidditch are dumb, but I don’t think we can draw conclusions about strategy from it. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2018, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/53 "2018-12-11T00:38:13Z")
The Snitch should be a way to end the game, but not the only way. Like, have a time limit or a point threshold that has to be met. I believe they say in the books that matches have lasted days. I mean, come on. #cricket ---
**Author:** ![Petrobey\_Mavromihalis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bcef8e/32.png) [@Petrobey\_Mavromihalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Petrobey_Mavromihalis)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2018, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/54 "2018-12-11T01:44:59Z")
It’s almost as if the books aren’t really that well written . . . ---
**Author:** ![Yookeroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yookeroo/32/323_2.png) [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2018, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/55 "2018-12-11T02:01:33Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > **Sage Rat** > **Cheesesteak** , yes, any individual quaffle score pales in comparison to the snitch, but that doesn’t mean that _all_ of the quaffle scores pale in comparison. Quite the opposite: Usually you’ll have many times more points from quaffles than from the snitch. That’s not what’s important. How often will it occur that one team is 15 goals behind? > [@ebb](#): > > 1. Given the scoring system, it would seem to make more sense to take your team and split it between guarding all three hoops and running interference / surveillance for the Seeker. In other words, forget about scoring goals at all. Other than it seeming ‘unsportsmanlike’ there doesn’t seem to be any thought to doing this. Yeah. It wouldn’t take long before a team started using their resources to help the seeker. Might even end up with the goals being ignored completely eventually. > [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > I don’t think we can necessarily conclude that that’s the optimum strategy. If one team dedicates a few players to help the seeker, they’ll be outnumbered in the field. Maybe under those circumstances it’s easy to run up the score by 200 before the snitch is even found. I’d imagine you’d need three players to guard the hoops. The rest of the team could be committed to helping the seeker. If the score did get out of hand, say, a 10 goal deficit, you could go back to the “traditional” way. Of course it would probably only take a few days after the invention of the sport before this strategy was adopted, so it wouldn’t be a tradition yet. Quidditch is broken. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2018, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/56 "2018-12-11T02:41:20Z")
> [@Yookeroo](#): > > Yeah. It wouldn’t take long before a team started using their resources to help the seeker. Might even end up with the goals being ignored completely eventually. Do we know that that would even be permissible by Quidditch rules? I mean, sure, we can hypothetically think up all sorts of ways in lots of games for players to modify the action of play to increase their own advantage, like holding the ball and running with it in basketball or soccer. But players don’t do these things because there are rules against them, or in some cases even just “spirit of the game” conventions against unsporting play. So I’m not all that convinced by arguments that “Quidditch is a dumb game because players could just do X, Y or Z instead.” Maybe they could, and maybe they couldn’t. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2018, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/57 "2018-12-11T03:27:07Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > The Snitch should be a way to end the game, but not the only way. Like, have a time limit or a point threshold that has to be met. > > I believe they say in the books that matches have lasted days. I mean, come on. #cricket Even test cricket has a defined end based on outs and innings. ODIs and T20s are even shorter. Again, the problem is that it’s not a game designed to make sense. The same thing occurs with the monetary system. Setting aside the other obvious problems with the wizard economy, the crazy numbers are obviously meant to be a play on the pre-decimal pound. But the numbers make sense in a pre-decimal pound effectively based on an extended base-12 system (240 pence to the pound, 12 pence to the shilling, thus 20 shillings to the pound) and the weird names and subdivisions still made sense internally as part of the system, even if they’re not intuitive to someone used to a decimal system. 29 knuts to the sickle and 17 sickles to the galleon have no obvious relationship, and in fact both are prime, meaning that there can be no easy division. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2018, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/58 "2018-12-11T03:54:46Z")
A cricket Test Match can last for days. In a game which is designed to go that far. You have discrete events which mark points on the road to the ending of the match, and you can easily tell how a game is going to go. A Cycling Tour can last for weeks, and again the continuation of events is obvious. Quidditch? Yeah not so much. Losing 140-0 and the Snitch collides with your Seeker…you win. Both Seekerscsuck…it’s week 7 and score is 2750 to 2690. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2018, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/59 "2018-12-11T05:39:33Z")
> [@Petrobey\_Mavromihalis](#): > > It’s almost as if the books aren’t really that well written . . . Shh…that’s the Secret that Dare Not Speak Its Name. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2018, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871/60 "2018-12-11T18:30:04Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > **gaffa** , have you never heard of people wearing a rubber band on their wrist, or the like, as a reminder that there’s something they need to do? A Remembrall is just the magical equivalent of that. Equally stupid then? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-quidditch/825871.md?page=4)