I once heard of a story about a student who arrived late to class and saw three math problems on the board. He wrote them down, assuming they were homework assignments. A few days later he went to the professor and asked if it was too late to turn in the homework assignments because they had seemed harder than normal. The professor was confused because he hadn’t assigned any homework, then realized that the student had solved problems which up until that time were unsolvable.

I heard the story used in the context of the power of a positive mental attitude, illustrating the power of thinking positively. The rest of the students didn’t bother trying because they were told it was impossible, whereas the student who arrived late assumed they were a regular homework problem and was able to solve them.

I thought it was a nice story, but my skepticism didn’t believe it was true. I was surprised to find out that according to research done by Snopes, it’s true for the most part. Some people (ahem . . . Robert Schuller) embellished the story claiming Einstein hadn’t been able to solve the problem, but the essence of the story remains.

So the moral of the story is that if people claim something can’t be done, don’t listen to them and do it anyway (or maybe it’s that you should sleep late . . . )

Anyone who has played UNO is probably familiar with the phrase, “Oh, we play it like this.” For instance, some people say you can match a card with an exact duplicate at any time. That’s just one of the many variations people play by and it’s no big deal if that’s the consensus, but what if people have different rules? My preference is to play by the official rules because everyone should be familiar with those and you don’t have to relearn different rules every time you play with someone new.

Scrabble is another example of a game that has variations of rules. Some people say that you can put down any word you want, and if someone challenges it and it’s not a word, you just keep trying different words until you get a valid one. The rules state that if someone challenges your word and it’s not valid, you lose your turn. However, if the word is valid, the challenger loses a turn.

Yet another example is checkers. There is a long debate about whether or not you have to jump, and the answer is yes, those are the rules, yet many people play without requiring people to jump if they can but that can change the whole strategy of the game.

I’ve found that the problem doesn’t seem to exist with chess, and I’m not sure exactly why. I guess it would be confusing if when you play with Rupert, knights were to move three spaces, then two to the left or right, but chess seems to have avoided the make-your-own rule problem, for which I’m glad.

In the end, games are supposed to be fun, so if you like playing with the variations, more power to you, but if you end up playing with others, don’t be surprised if you have to explain your rules.

If you’re not a fan of playing with all sorts of variations, play by the rules and maybe, just maybe, next time you sit down to a game of UNO you can deal the cards and immediately start playing instead of having to discuss what the rules will be for that game.