Notes and queries

The difference between games, sports and muck-pushing; Why are some placebos more effective than others? Rurning in their urns
ronnie o'sullivan snooker games sport notes and queries
Ronnie O'Sullivan iplaying snooker ... does that make him a sportsman? Photograph: Keith Williams/Action Images

When does a game become a sport?

Games and sports are overlapping terms. Chess is a game but not a sport; horse-racing is "the sport of kings" but not a game; football is both a game and a sport; snooker is certainly a game but only questionably a sport. Characteristically, sports require players' physical participation. Football does so. Unlike chess, you can't play it by post, phone or online, so football is a sport where chess is not.

Another possibly defining characteristic of sports is that players must keep constantly in motion – they are time-bound rather than time-free, or analogue rather than digital. Snooker is therefore a sport in that it requires physical participation, but a game in that, like chess and unlike football, it gives players time to pause and think between moves. The same goes for darts and other traditional pub games.

But any proposed definition will throw up uncertainties and anomalies. Is hopscotch a game or a sport? What about marbles, fivestones or bagatelle? There are also other semantic overlaps. Is solitaire a game or a puzzle? Is doing the national lottery a game or a gamble? Perhaps, after all, the simplest answer is that a game becomes a sport when some people pay to watch it while others get paid for playing it.

David Parlett, London SW16

With east London local authorities gripped by the Olympic follies three years ago, my allotment site was threatened with sale by the council, partly to fund a leisure centre.

My fellow allotment holders, exhausted by unloading manure, wondered if they would suffer the same treatment if gardening was designated as a sport. I therefore wrote to the International Olympic Committee and to the UK Olympics body to ask if muck-pushing could be included as an Olympic event. For some reason the UK body failed to answer, but the IOC replied that if there was no national body, muck-pushing could not be included.

I suggest the answer is that a game becomes a sport only when it has a governing body. In other words, it is only recognised when it has a bureaucracy.

Roger Backhouse, vice-chair, Seven Kings and Goodmayes Allotment Society, Ilford

My boyfriend and I have discussed this issue, and came to the conclusion that if you cannot play something to a reasonable degree of competence while smoking, it's a sport. If you can stand a chance of winning with a fag on the go, it's a game.

Joanne Sheppard, Salford

Sport requires physical exertion. A game becomes a sport when you break sweat.

Peter Lowthian, Marlow, Bucks

I don't know, but I do have problems with journalists calling golfers athletes.

Alan Saunders, Yattendon, West Berks

Now that Ben Goldacre has educated us all on the need for randomised clinical trials to prove the effectiveness of any treatment, can anyone cite the clinical trials that proved a placebo treatment is superior to no treatment?

A placebo is a medicine or treatment that suddenly helps a patient after using evidence-based medicine for weeks or months without success. Of course, the patient must be gullible enough to believe the placebo will work after months of well-tested medicines. Sometimes placebo A is the wrong one but placebo B miraculously does the trick. Randomised controlled trials cannot resolve this irony.

R Newman Turner, Letchworth Garden City, Herts

Interestingly, the size, shape and colours of pills affect their effectiveness. Multiple pills are better than single pills. Injections of salt water are more effective than pills. Larger injections are more effective than small ones. You get the point.

Sophie Machin, Cambridge

What do people who have been cremated do instead of turning in their graves?

When discussing anything that my lovely late dad would have objected to I always say, "Dad would turn in his urn". 

Jill Fay, Rowlands Gill, Co Durham

Churn in their urns.

Louise Summers, Oxford

Smoulder with indignation.

Mike Starke, Chale Green, Isle of Wight

Rake over the ashes, presumably.

John Belcher, Norwich

They don't do anything much. They just look ashen.

Ben McCrory, Manchester

Will the human race ever evolve beyond religion?

Given the disparity in birth-rates between the religious (whether they be Orthodox Jew, Catholic, Christian fundamentalist or Muslim) and the irreligious, maybe this question needs to be reversed. In other words, given its puny success rate in persuading humans to reproduce compared to people of faith, is atheism itself an endangered offshoot of an otherwise habitually spiritual species? Could Richard Dawkins and his ilk be themselves an evolutionary dead-end?

John Cotter, Ferrybank, Waterford, Ireland

Why don't slugs eat grass?

The slugs of Chorleywood are also fond of courgettes (N&Q, 11 August), but know them as zucchini.

Richard Barlow, Chorleywood, Herts

Any answers?

What makes classical music classical music?

Tom Fewings, London

Having turned 50, I find myself struggling to remember the names of famous people and even work colleagues. Friends (I forget who) say they have this problem too. Why does it happen and what can we do about it?

Nick Rozanski, London NW9


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