Knifey Spoony Strategy Guide

It seems that my blog is building up a bit of an international following.

Since I feel like Australia gets a bit of a bad rap, being famous for having tons of dangerous animals, and bad internet, I thought I'd write about an interesting and unique cultural phenomenon we have - Knifey Spoony.

Knifey Spoony first appeared in the Aussie doco An Australian in America, which was released internationally as Crocodile Dundee. If you haven't seen it, it's a pretty good primer on what life in Australia is like, and some of the cultural challenges Australians experience when travelling overseas. Here's a snippet where he plays the game with a stupid American: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POJtaO2xB_o

It also makes an appearance in season 6, episode 16 of The Simpsons - Bart vs Australia. Despite how ignorant about Aussie culture the show makes Bart appear, it's interesting to note that it's Bart and not Lisa who seems to know the rules of Knifey Spoony.

For my international guests, the rules of Knifey Spoony are quite simple.

1. One player goes first, and presents a knife. If somebody is playing with a knife in the open, they are free-game to be challenged, and are considered the first player.
2. If the second player is able to produce a bigger knife, the second player wins. If the second player is unarmed, or only has a smaller knife, the first player wins.
3. However, if the second player happens to have a spoon, they are able to present it instead of a knife. Regardless of the size of the spoon, a successful spoon reveal always beats a knife.
4. The third player is allowed to counter a spoon reveal by correctly identifying the utensil as a spoon. If they do so, they are instead declared the winner.

The history of the game started with John and Leslie Davidson, a wheat farming couple who had grown quite frustrated during the Emu War in 1932. With the local pollies only protecting the farms in their electorates, there were large swarths of land where emus were allowed free rein. John and a few of his mates decided they were going to take matters into their own hands and began using guerilla tactics to try and stem the emu epidemic.

Lacking the guns that the army were equipped with, the ragtag band had to make do with what they had around them. John led the kitchen army, who had taken the 13" chef's knives and were making night time raids on the emus, when they took advantage of the emus' poor night vision. They managed to take out approximate 55 emus in two weeks of fighting, sustaining heavy losses. Two brothers, Dazza and Thommo, who were big advocates of bush bashing, took a smaller band armed with machetes. They attacked in broad daylight, and the larger knives gave them longer reach against the long-necked birds. They cleared close to 100 emus.

Leslie, not wanting to be shown up, prepared a large stew outside the emu stronghold. Within 3 hours, she found herself surrounded by curious emus, drawn in by the smell. The emu general sent a lieutenant to parlay with Leslie, who produced a spoon. She spooned up some of the stew and offered it to the lieutenant. He loved it, and soon the emus were lining up to get spoonfuls of the stew. Many lining up for seconds. By nightfall, the entire encampment, of over 400 emus, were dead - poisoned by the stew. The game knifey spoony is an homage to Leslie's noble war contribution.

As a general rule, unless you are a vego, it's always recommended that you travel with a knife in case you are attacked by drop bears (and don't have any Vegemite), or there's a dead kangaroo on the side of the road and you want a slice of steak for tonight's supper. Fun fact: Kanga steaks are full of iron and great for bodybuilding. Of course, different dress codes will restrict what kind of knives you can carry at any point in time. It's particularly frustrating that women's clothes have crappy pockets, or the belts are far too thin to support a good sheath. But knives are becoming thinner and lighter these days, so it's not that inconvenient to have one strapped to your thigh.

Strategy #1: Size up your opponent. Are they wearing formal clothes? Are they less likely to be able to conceal a large knife on their person? In particular, look for form fitting clothing. It's quite hard to conceal a long blade in a pair of skinny jeans. Be careful: if it looks like they don't have space to hold any knives, then it's highly likely that they have a spoon concealed, so be ready to identify a spoon.

Strategy #2: Carry a smaller knife on your belt, and have your real knife hidden inside your vest or coat. This one is a bit harder in the Summer months, where you're not likely to have a vest or a coat, but by presenting a smaller knife as a decoy, you may lure an inexperienced player into thinking you're an easy target. Good Knifey Spoony players will have multiple decoy knives to throw off the scent.

Strategy #3: Look at the posture of your opponent. The best place to store a long knife is flush against your back, as clothing tends to be quite loose around the back, and people are less likely to see the outline of a knife. However, having perfect posture is usually a giveaway that you have a knife helping you stand upright. People with nice posture probably have quite large knives, so keep that in mind before challenging them.

Strategy #4: If you do have a spoon concealed, eat ice-cream with a knife (eating with a knife isn't considered playing, because we don't play with our food in Australia), or if you are feeling particularly bold, with chopsticks. This will give a false sense of security that you don't have a spoon hidden on you. The fact that you were eating your ice-cream with a knife might also confuse your opponent and they won't identify your spoon correctly, so you don't need to worry about losing to rule #4.

Strategy #5: If your opponent looks like they have a bigger knife, just claim it's a spoon. You've really got nothing to lose at this point.

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If you have any Knifey Spoony tips, feel free to leave them in the comments. Personally, I've never lost a game of Knifey Spoony, but I haven't been to the Northern Territory, where they take that game a lot more seriously.