The New Pinball Dictionary

While you were typing this out, and before you hit the “reply” button, you had the opportunity to “resist”, but you did not.

Social penalty flag: 5 yard penalty on the defense for “attempted use of an emoji to deflect criticism.”

Automatic First Down.

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I was making a joke. Sorry if you missed it.

Obviously. I’m returning the volley.

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Cool. I’ll leave the emoji out next time.

I thought they were describing a legal form of collusion on the podcast. It may be a coordinated move, but would anyone ever admit to it? It’s unprovable.

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Let me be very straight forward. I don’t think this was appropriate to post. Period.

Now the long winded part. I thought about this a lot before posting as i read this post an hour ago as i was picking up my car before driving to work. I was hoping one of the more recognisable/respected people would comment more explicitly so I didn’t feel I had to. I also thought about just ignoring to not draw more attention to it, but couldn’t convince myself that was the right thing to do. I thought about contacting one of the mods and let them address it, but i felt open response was more useful.

I understand that this is a joke and I give you the benefit of the doubt that you have no bad intentions. However, i think as a joke it tends to downplay something that is a real issue that should not be downplayed. Re-read the Sexism in Pinball: Practical Examples this is one of the real world examples that happens to people. It is simply not acceptable. These types of actions do happen, and it can have major impact for those involved. It can make people feel nausiated, and fearful at events. It can put people off competitive pinball all together. For people who have experienced this kind of incident in their lives, even this joke can cause then real discomfort.

This behaviour is unacceptable. Any event I am involved in will have a zero tolerance for actions like those depicted on the joke. The player would be ejected from the tournament and if I had the authority, ejected from the venue.

I know there are many out there who are going to disagree with me, and accuse me of being too PC, etc. I have heard all this before. What I would ask is that you re-read the thread i linked above and ask yourself if this fits into the behaviour real people have said have happened to them and believe them when they say it is inappropriate. Now ask yourself if you think the joke makes for a welcoming community.

Thanks for reading and thinking critically about this whether or not you agree with me.

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Thank you for your open, neutral, and polite response. I really do appreciate that!

When I posted, I was quietly thinking “I’ll need to get that asbestos suit out of the cupboard, someone is sure to get upset.” But read it again. I said “inappropriate physical contact.” The joke is the double entendre of “tap pass”, not that inappropriate behavior towards women is funny.

I’ve read that thread and have contributed. And I absolutely agree with you. I see inappropriate behavior play itself out at almost every meet I go to. Not from the majority of participants, but there are always some men who exhibit sexist behavior. The problem is continuously being swept under the table, and men are very rarely called out for it.

It’s easy (and correct) to throw someone out of a tournament for inappropriate physical contact. It is impossible to do the same for sexism that is subtle and expressed in ways that are open to interpretation. Subtle belittling remarks, ignoring women who speak up during a discussion and choosing to address the concern of another man instead, etc. (There are many more ways to put down women that, overtly, are not sexist, but are sexist nevertheless.)

Partly, I posted the joke because I think the problem needs more attention. And partly because it might become a meme:

Woman 1: “That guy just made a tap pass, can you believe it?”
Woman 2: “What a fossil!”

And partly because it’s a reverse dig at the men. Because, if such behavior did not exist, there would have been no joke to make.

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I’m not sure I like assigning a cute name to the behavior. It feels like that only encourages it.

Plus as an avid fan of older games, I hate to see the term ‘tap pass’ associated with this sort of behavior.

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This makes me really proud to be part of a community that addresses and discusses these issues in the healthiest of ways… Well done everyone!

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Hello everyone. Not sure if there is already a word for this. And sorry, I haven’t read this entire thread, but I’ve been meaning to submit this for consideration for ages.

I would like to submit ‘Klungseth’ as a term. This is what it would mean. You are playing in a three or four person match on a game. Player A (you) has 300 million on South Park. Player B has 240 million. These are final scores as player C walks up to the game with 100 million. Player A needs player C to beat player B’s score but not pass player A’s score. If player C does not pass player B’s score or passes player A, player B has enough to win the match (as there were other games played in the series)(player C might also have a chance to win in certain scenarios). What it breaks down to is that player A needs player C to ‘Klungseth’ player B. The ‘Klungseth hole’ is a number between 240 and 300 million, the size of the hole in this example being 60 million, but obviously the Klungseth hole can be any size, large or near impossibly small.

I’ve been using this term locally for a few years now, seeing as the person I’ve named this after has unintentionally helped me win a league and a tournament or two. It’s caught on in Minnesota, anyway, among the die hard participants.

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A few I’ve heard multiple times locally:

Chopsticking
The appearance of attempting to pin the ball between two raised flippers as it drains. This is generally a novice player flipping both flippers simultaneously during a center drain, but can also be a very-fast double slap save or applied to any situation where the ball contacts the raised tips of both flippers. Usually negative - “Oh man, gotta stop chopsticking”.

Cradle To The Grave
Having control of the ball and then flipping it directly into an outlane, often a failed cradle separation.
alt: used in place of a an Up-and-Over inlane to outlane drain.

DDT
It’s toxic. Short for Danger-Danger-Tilt.

Street Ball
Playing through (or exploiting) the weird issues that crop up on location games. Broken lock? Soggy Flippers? No Tilt? Bring it on.

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Re Klungseth, since this has happened in many places to many people, and is not even pinball-specific, I’d recommend a more general term than the use of someone’s name. {I’ve been on both sides of this myself.} From player A’s perspective, if C succeeds, they’ve been “Sweet-spotted” to victory. From the loser’s perspective, the closest pinball term might be getting “mini-whizzed” [referencing mini wizard modes vs. full wizard mode]. But it still feels like there’s a term for it just waiting to be found that clicks and people go, “yeah, that’s what to call it.” I’ll let my subconscious work on it.

I like “Cradle to Grave,” especially having seen it all too often in competition. [I’d drop “the”.]

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If you haven’t seen, I’ve been finally posting more on the “NPD Main Page” again. The next few are to promote more of @DEADFLIP 's sweet flipper animations. Also, I need to get more of the obvious “how could that entry not be in the NPD already” entries listed.

I thank TILTForums for being a great way to do some quality control for these entries. Unfortunately, I am still posting entries on the main page by fiat. I’d rather find a way to involve as many people as possible like the Urban Dictionary does it. I just don’t know how to pull that off.

However, now I will be going through the ones that were posted on reddit and pinside, so I can finally close out those chapters. Since Reddit and Pinside also use upvotes, I had hoped I could use those as a way to do more quality control. However, there is not enough activity on those pages to justify watching over them anymore. I believe some of the suggestions I extract from those places will be good entries. Others, maybe not so much.

The ones here on TILTForums I feel I can leave for last since this page has been the most active. Plus I’ll bet people see this forum page more often than the “Main Page” on FWB anyway. :slight_smile:

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Cradle to Grave :fire::fire::fire:

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I would also accept something like “an errant tap pass that gracefully arcs the ball into the outlane.”

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I see one phrase missing from the list that I hear often enough.

Ball returns to inlane from a ramp or wireform, drops to inlane carrying some spin, rolls up the inlane and down the outlane. It moonwalked.

I’ve heard it enough that I assume it’s not a regional thing. Anybody not from the west coast familiar with the term?

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What about a blown live catch that goes into the outlane or SDTM? Happens to me often enough. I submit for you approval, the “Live Drain”.:grin:

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Same thing with a blown drop catch. The Drop Drain.

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“Glass Wedgie”

Getting the ball stuck between a playfield item, e.g. a toy or ramp of some kind, and the glass.

Re the tap pass to the outlane, I’d call that a gutter ball, since it’s about the same as such in bowling, i.e. you throw the ball directly into the out channel.

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Yes, heard with some frequency on the East Coast. The term is also used in the unified PAPA/IFPA ruleset. (As in: moonwalking to the outlane is NOT a major malfunction.)