The Rules

  • 1) No repeating early methods of destruction/ countering. If you are uncertain if it is a repetition, mention so in the response.
  • 2)No altering the natural laws of the universe, such as laws of thermodynamics
  • 3) No moving the game to a different universe
  • 4) No going twice in a row
  • 5) No changing the general event or object currently being focused on to an event/object from more than five steps previous (if the focus has been on a certain method of destruction/counter to destruction for the last five posts, you can not go back and directly attack the potato, or any other focus not in the past five posts)
  • 6) The game always starts with a potato (hence the name)
  • 7) As a general rule, do not use magic. However, If you want a game set up with it, or any other questionable methods and/or alterations to the rules, contact me and I will set one up with the specific changes to restrictions mentioned.

Welcome!

For any newcomers, the rules are above. Please make sure to read them. Each post will be a seperate game, and I ask that you only use this site for the actual playing of the game. Any other comments, such as a questioning of the validity of a certain response, are to be made at my corresponding website at groups.yahoo.com/group/potatogame. If anyone has friends that they believe would enjoy this game, please bring them along. And I would also appreciate it, if you enjoy the game enough, if you would post a link with a short description of the game on any of your websites. This game is much more fun with more people. Welcome to the game.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

The Potato Game Begins!

125 comments:

Bob, Squirrel King said...

Now to start it off:

Potato

Benoni said...

The potato molds. It goes into the compost heap.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

someone sprays mold killer on the potato, so it lives

Benoni said...

They were out of mold killer, so the potato never got sprayed.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

His neighbor had plenty and let him borrow some

Benoni said...

His neighbor had a grudge against him, ever since he borrowed a hoe and never returned it, and therefore refused to lend any mold killer.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

They are old friends so his neighbor gets over it and gives him some mold killer in return for returning the hoe,

Benoni said...

He was never able to actually return the hoe due to a freak hoeing accident, resulting in broken noses, emergency plastic surgery, and ultimately, hoe destruction.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

he really loved his potato so he bought his neighbor a new hoe as a replacement, allowing him to make the trade

Benoni said...

His neighbors beautiful but blonde daughter lost the new hoe, making his neighbor think that it was never returned.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

he made the trade directly with his neighbor, so his neighbor knew he had received the hoe, and he already had his mold killer

Benoni said...

As he was receiving the mold killer from his neighbor, his neighbor's daughter caught his eye, and he was so mesmerized by her beauty that he dropped the mold killer, causing it to spill onto the (now mold-free) floor.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

the mold killer was in a capped, plastic spray bottle, so it didn't spill when he dropped it

Benoni said...

The capped plastic spray bottle had become brittle, and broke when it fell on the floor.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

his neighbor's daughter caught the bottle as it fell

Benoni said...

She missed, and it still hit the ground, and broke open.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

she's trained as a gymnast and in karate, so she has the reflexes of a tiger and does NOT miss it.

Benoni said...

As previously stated, she's a blonde, so all that expensive training went in one ear and out the other. Her reflexes are not that good.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

she is an exception to the dumb blonde rule and is, in fact, actually rather smart, so the training stuck and she caught the bottle.


Unrelatedly, if you know of anyone else who might enjoy this game, can you try and get them to check it out? That way, we don't have to stay on the same side the entire game.

Benoni said...

Unfortunately, though the training stuck, it wasn't martial arts training that she was really getting during those "training sessions", if you get my drift, so she did not have the skills to catch the bottle after all.

And unfortunately, no I don't know anyone.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

Since I'm having a little trouble countering the most recent post, I'm going back 3 posts to her being a dumb blonde and so missing it

She trips and lands on the ground under where it was falling, so it hit her instead of the ground and didn't break.

Benoni said...

I claim a point!

She was inadvertantly aiming four feet to the left of the bottle when she tried to catch it, so that she fell into the potato owner, whom for the sake of clarity I shall call Danny, although his name is actually Fred, knocking him down to the ground, so he couldn't catch the bottle, either.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

why call him danny when his name is fred? anyway danny(fred) inexplicably falls forward very far when she runs into him, instead of sideways in the direction she hit him towards.

Benoni said...

Like I said, for clarity, because his neighbor is also named Fred; therefore, I call him by his middle name.

Danny, having fallen inexplicably far forwards, falls atop the dropped bottle instead of under it, smashing it even harder against the floor. He now has a VERY mold free shirt.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

he walks around hugs the potato, and his shirt is soaked enough that enough mold killer gets on the potato to kill the mold

Benoni said...

It was windy that day, and his shirt was dry by the time he got home to his potato. Though he was wearing a mold-free shirt, it had no more mold-killing powers.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

since it was windy and he had a wet shirt on, he put a windbreaker over it, so it still had mold killing powers when he got to the potato

Benoni said...

The wind picked up after he initially left his house, so he didn't bring his windbreaker with him.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

since his neighbor was a good friend, he let him borrow a windbreaker

Benoni said...

We've already established that his neighbor only lends one item at a time, lest they be not returned. Until the mold-killer is replaced, he won't be borrowing any more items.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

since it was largely his neighbor's fault that the mold-killer bottle broke, his neighbor doesn't count it as a loaned item, and proceeds to loan him a windbreaker

Benoni said...

They couldn't find the windbreaker, because it had been lent out to his neighbor's other neighbor (on the other side).

Bob, Squirrel King said...

the other neighbor of the neighbor with the mold-killer is a jerk that no one would ever lend anything to, so the neighbor with the mold-killer had the wind-breaker to lend.

Benoni said...

The neighbor's neighbor who was a jerk had died a year ago from a fatal heart attack which came on suddenly during a shouting match he was having with his son-in-law. The new neighbor is much friendlier, and therefore was lent the wind-breaker.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

the friendly new neighbor was outside doing yardwork at the time and saw what happened, so he lent the guy with the potato a windbreaker

Benoni said...

The friendly-new-neighbor was indeed outside doing a spot of hoeing when he saw the commotion happen next door to him. He also saw the cause of the commotion, the neighbors very beautiful daughter. Being somewhat distracted, and torn between introducing himself to her and lending a wind-breaker, he had for himself what we might call, or in other words, a bit of a hoeing accident. This accident, of course, caught the attention of the other neighbors, the one in particular being rather sympathetic about hoeing accidents, and they rushed to his aid. Unfortunately, in the ensuing mayhem, nobody ever got around to lending anyone a wind-breaker, and with all the time spent outside in the wind, the mold-free shirt became dry, and subsequently mold-contaminated, in a very short space of time.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

the friendly new neighbor was, in fact, a woman, and so was not distracted by the aformentioned neighbor's daughter

Benoni said...

The friendly neighbor's neighbor who was a woman was tired that day, and sent her teenage son to do the hoeing, and he was the catalyst of the previously described incidents, and it was he who was distracted by the neighbor's lovely daughter; and being a teenager, he was distracted by her very feminine curves to a disproportionate degree.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

the neighbor's son who was doing the hoeing needed glasses badly but didn't yet have them, so he wasn't able to see the friendly neighbor's daughter and subsequently break the hoe,

Benoni said...

As everyone knows, teenage boys don't need to see a beautiful woman to know she's beautiful. This boy in particular, had been harboring a secret crush on the lovely young woman in question for many months now--taking an occasional peek through his binoculars in the evening, and engaging himself in other such naughty activities--so that despite his lack of needed glasses at this time, he knew her curves very well, and knowing that she was present was sufficient distraction for him to have a horrible accident, which may or may not have had all that much to do with a hoe, though everyone afterwards vehemently claimed that it did.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

the female neighbor who was tired and had her son do the work knew that he was prone to accidents and so sat in the shade to make sure he didn't break anything or irreparably damage the yard, so when he was about to break the hoe, his mother yelled at him and he snapped out of his fantasy world just in time

Benoni said...

The son was doubly surprised by his mother yelling at him, and by reacting on pure instinct (thinking that he was in trouble for something) he had the aforementioned hoeing accident when he bolted.

By the way, why is this looking more like "The Hoe Game" than "The Potato Game"?

Bob, Squirrel King said...

He was used to getting in trouble by then, and knew he would only get into more if he ran, so he kept his cool and paused to see what she wanted.

On the other note, two things:(1) the potato game rarely has anything to do with a potato after the first few posts, and (2) you have focused too much on this small section rather than expanding your choice of method, see

groups.yahoo.com/group/potatogame

for an example of a typical game with both creators (me and my friend) invovled.

Benoni said...

Oh, all right, all right. I'll go with a more "traditional" approach.

What the sons mother was really warning him about was a parade that was about to march through the street in which he was hoeing (don't ask why he was hoeing in the road (a dirt road?)), and the parade had a similar effect upon the other people present as the hoeing accident would have, should it have actually occurred.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

the parade was crushed under a flaming zeppelin that had fallen from the sky

Benoni said...

The zeppelin had been commandeered by a... "treasure hunter"... and flown to a more interesting locale, away from parades and things.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

a martial arts master was on the zeppelin, and when the "treasure hunter" tried to hijack it, he took out him and his friend who was helping

Benoni said...

The martial arts had been banned by the government that controlled the zeppelin, therefore they wouldn't have hired a martial artists to protect it against adventurers.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

he wasn't hired by the zeppelin company, he just doesn't like being forced to go somewhere he doesn't want to go

Benoni said...

The martial artist didn't like the idea of crashing on a parade, so he also took out the guys setting off explosives on board as well.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

the explosion was not caused by a bomb, but from a very small meteor, which was easily hot enough to ignite it by the time it reached the zeppelin

Benoni said...

The same oppressive government that had outlawed martial artists had also outlawed flaming meteors, and had set up a defensive grid around the planet to prevent any from destroying their precious zeppelins.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

oppressive government sadly oppressed most smart people, so the morons who set up the defensive grid accidentally set it to speed up rather than hinder

Benoni said...

An alien race that was secretly subverting the oppressive regime had developed an intelligence enhancement device which had been used on the engineers that designed the defensive grid, making the morons into geniuses.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

since they were subverting (overthrowing) the oppressive government, they would not make said government's scientists intelligent, quite the opposite in fact

Benoni said...

The aliens only had a tenuous grasp of the English language and thought "subverting" meant "strengthen".

Bob, Squirrel King said...

the alieans, incredibaly smart as they are, decide to hire an interpreter

Benoni said...

The aliens realized that in order to hire an interpreter they would have to reveal their existence to one of the humans, something they weren't willing or ready to do.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

they knew that certain people would just be ignored if they claimed to have been abducted by aliens, and so they abducted one of them

Benoni said...

The person they abducted was also convinced that the Book was the ultimate authority on everything, and so trusted its faulty translation.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

the book?

Benoni said...

That's what the alien's were wondering, too. He was obviously crazy -- but then, he'd have to be if he was the sort of person people would expect to hear about alien abductions from.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

the aliens are very logical, so they wouldn't trust any information from him without a reliable source that the information was gotten from

Benoni said...

The aliens were at war with another species who were trying to thwart their plans. They're the ones that provided the Book with the faulty translation, and being very subtle and crafty the alien's were completely fooled by the translation.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

the aliens they were at war with recieved directions to Earth from Bob, from accounting, who of course gave them the wrong address, so they ended up on the wrong side of the galaxy

Benoni said...

The P'Zell, the ones trying to subvert, I mean strengthen (or is it actually subvert?) the human government had already done away with the K'chrell's (the aliens who were attack them) accounting department.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

Bob (from accounting) is not from their accounting department, or any known accountinng department for that matter. He just travels the universe doing good, and whenever he is asked who he is, he just says "Bob, from acoounting"

Benoni said...

Bob, from accounting, was currently on the other side of the galaxy, and so was unable to give the incorrect directions to Earth.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

Bob (from accounting) owns the Heart of Gold, and, having calculated just how likely it would be that he would appear near some aliens bent on teaching the wrong definitions, activated the infinite improbability drive, arriving just in time to give them bad directions


On a side note, Bob (from accounting is all powerful and can do anything he wants, but as that is against the rules (as it is essentially unbeatable), he has decided to withhold most of his powers for the purposes of this game.

Benoni said...

I think using the Heart of Gold violates rule #2, but I'll let it slide this time, in exchange for the humor this makes possible:

Eddie slipped a digit in his computations and had accidentally calculated the probability that a burning zeppelin would fall out of the sky onto a parade that was about to march over a young man hoeing in the street...

Bob, Squirrel King said...

Bob (from accounting), being incredibaly good with numbers (as an accountant of great renown) decided to check over the numbers and correct the mistake.

And it doesn't violate rule 2 because the heart of gold has established rules. The incident that prompted that particular rule involved us actually changing the ideal gas law in which PV=nRT, so that pressure was directly proportional to volume or temperature inversely related to volume and/or pressure. It actually also promted rule 3 as well, because alternate universes could have different natural laws, and practically the only way to defeat that would be changing back to the original (or another) universe, which could result in a competition to figure out ways to change universes without copying previous methods. The only time using something like the heart of gold would be unacceptable would be if it would be in someway immpossible for both it and something in a previous post to have both happend in the same universe.

Another way to counter it (if it had really been against the rules) would be that, while that described the likelyhood of a flaming zepplin falling on a man leading a parade, it was not the likelyhood of that happening anywhere a potato was in a life or death situation (potatoes have much more influence over the universe than most people realize), and it happened to rather be the likelyhood of him arriving at afformentioned aliens at the right time if the results would save a potato from death.

Also, i like how you made it seem that no matter what i did, it killed the potato (by impling that the heart of gold was the cause of the zepplin crash)

Benoni said...

*Evil grin*

You have no idea how long I've been setting that lose-lose situation up. This was just the earliest opportunity I had to do it.

So what is your official counter for this one? It was a tad confusing.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

Bob (from accounting), being incredibaly good with numbers (as an accountant of great renown) decided to check over the numbers and correct the mistake.

Sorry for the confusion.

Benoni said...

It took Bob so long to perform the necessary probability computation by hand (having temporarily lost his slide-rule) that, inevitably, a life-insurance salesman knocked on his airlock door, interrupted a critical calculation (and, incidentally selling him a policy for any potato's he may or may not care about) that skewed his results.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

he had a anti-salesman defense system that vaporised the salesman before he could disturb his calculations

Benoni said...

The anti-salesman defense system was unable to distinguish between salesmen and non-salesmen, and so had been configured to vaporize anyone who might be an annoyance. Unfortunately, Wowbagger had been by the previous week to insult Bob, and had therefore inadvertently triggered the defense system, which had naturally failed to vaporize him. Bob had therefore taken the obviously broken defense system to be fixed, and it was currently out of operation.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

bob had an amazing in-ship technician who was ale to repair it just in time to vaporize the salesman who would otherwise have interrupted his calculations

Benoni said...

The technician had triggered the device himself prior to these events, and was no longer in a state the involved the ability to repair defense systems.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

he never left the ship, so he never went in range of the anti-salesman device

Benoni said...

The ship had developed an infestation of really loud creatures that looked like tiny men running around in overgrown babushka's. In order to eradicate them, the ship had been decontaminated -- necessitating that the people on board temporarily find other places of residence.

The accident with the security grid happened when the repairman was getting back on board.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

the repairman is deaf, so he doesn't mind the tiny men in babuska's

Benoni said...

But Bob, from accounting, is not. He insisted that they be exterminated.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

since Bob doesn't want to disturb his repairman (good spaceship repairmen are hard to find), he opts to use a swarm of squirrels to eradicate the tiny men in babushka's, allowing The Repairman to stay in on the ship,away from the anti-salesman defense system

Benoni said...

The squirrels turn out to be rabid, and one of them accidentally bites the repairman, necessitating a trip to Hospitalia, the nearest hospital planet for treating space-rabies (a horrible disease, as you should know, which causes its victims to turn into decrepit immortal accountants that can't seem to do anything right.)

Bob, Squirrel King said...

Bob, Squirrel King (close friend of Bob, from accounting) only provides the best, rabies-free squirrels for use against infestations

Benoni said...

The squirrel's weren't infected by normal rabies, but with space-rabies, a more rare form of the disease which happens to be impossible to diagnose in squirrels.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

how exactly did they contract space-rabies?

Benoni said...

They contracted it from Bob, squirrel king, who, though immune, is a carrier of this awful disease.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

though space-rabies is undetectable in squirrels, it is easily detectable in human carriers, as it causes them to turn bright orange every hour for 30 seconds, and so he decontaminated himself before exposing his squirrels

Benoni said...

Bob, squirrel king, is color-blind, and did not notice that he was turning bright orange every hour for thirty seconds.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

even if he was colorblind, he sould notice because, even in black and white, bright orange looks very different from tan

Benoni said...

These squirrel's don't associate with tan colored people. Bob's natural coloring is bright pink, which looks exactly the same as bright orange to the color-blind.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

I, as Bob,Squirrel King himself, can safely say that my natural color is NOT bright pink,although I admit it is quite similar looking to bright orange in black and white.

Anyway, normal squirrels don't associate themselves with tan people,Bob's genetically engineered super-squirrels do. (They are about ten times the size of a normal squirrel on the small end.)

Benoni said...

The super-squirrel's were too big to effectively eradicate the babushka mini-men, who found it rather easy to (and took much delight in) provoke the squirrels into a frenzied attack, and then evade.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

these super-squirrels were equipped with flame-throwers( and were quite smart enough to use them correctly), so while they couldn't always catch the babushka mini-men, they could eradicate them

Benoni said...

The squirrels also killed the repairman with an errant release from one of the flame-throwers.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

the repairman no longer matters, he is too far back (rule 5)

Benoni said...

Okay then...

The babushka men can withstand very high temperatures, so the flame-throwers melted the hull of the ship before eradicating the infestation.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

the babushka mini-men may be able to withstand very high temperatures, but the hulls of the ship, both inner and outer, are made of spray-spam, the most fearsome, resilient material ever to have been concieved by anyone, anywhere, anytime. And so the hull held.

Benoni said...

Spray-spam smells hideous when it gets cooked, and there was no way that Bob, from accounting, was going to tolerate that!

Bob, Squirrel King said...

For reasons known only to him, Bob (from accounting) likes to walk around with nose plugs in, and for this reason he didn't smell anything at all

Benoni said...

Bob runs his ship through a nasal interface, so he can't control anything while he has the nose plugs in.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

while the original set-up was a nasal-interface system, when Bob (from accounting) developed his odd obsession with wearing nose plugs, he had a second interface option set up so he could run the ship with his nose plugs in

Benoni said...

The engineers that originally designed the system were under such strict constraints that there was no possible way to upgrade the nasal interface to allow for nose plugs.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

WHen the nostril interface was first installed, it was a prototype, and by the time Bob (from accounting) developed his obsession with wearing nose plugs, the technology of nostril interface systems had devveloped enough that, if the old system was removed, a new nostril interface system could be installed along with a normal interface system

Benoni said...

The engineers still were unable to allow for nose plugs to be used in conjunction with the nasal interface because by that time they had all been hired to work on breading a new type of giant squirrel that's ten times larger than a normal squirrel on the smallish end...

After that, they were busy ensuring they had good trigger -- "claws" -- and teaching them how to use flame-throwers.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

do to the incredible complexity of the nasal interface system, the engineers who where able to do the neccessary work had not had time to learn how to do any other types of engineering, particularly in such an unrelated field as biogenetic engineering

And on a side note, if you don't mind I'd like to start another parallel game where you start it and I try to kill the potato. Just comment "potato" on the other post

Benoni said...

Due to the incredibly complex nature of the nasal interface, the most intelligent and accomplished engineers were required, who were so incredible at what they do, and who had learned so many types of engineering (and you would be surprised how much bioengineering was required for the nasal interface), that they were very easily able to transition to another problem in a mostly unrelated field.

And, if they hadn't been able to develop the giant squirrels, then the mini babushka-men infestation would not have been wiped out by the squirrels...

Bob, Squirrel King said...

going back to the post about not having the time:
in their experimenting with genetically engineered squirrels, they accidentally discovered a squirrel that could burrow holes back in time a few days, and so they were able to work on both projects simultaneously (after all, as you pointed out, they are the best)

Benoni said...

In their burrowing through time, one of the squirrels accidentally hit a pocket of anti-time, which as you know reverses cause and effect meaning that as soon as it was introduced to normal "active" time, the squirrels had yet to invent the engineers.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

the squirrel breaking open the pocket of anti-time was one of the last ones (they made about 1000 copies of each type of squirrel), and so the released anti-time only affected about 50 of the squirrels,leaving over 900 to "invent the enigineers" asyou put it

Benoni said...

The effects of anti-time within normal space-time propagate exponentially from the source, following an e^(i*n) formula. The causal anomalies cluster most greatly around things important to the space-time, and since "potatoes have much more influence over the universe than most people realize", there was a horrible tragedy on a remote planet called "Earth" where 5 people and a parade (not counting the crew of a zeppelin, an adventurer, his friend, a martial arts master, and most of a major countries military forces) were eaten by a giant killer potato, before it was destroyed by an orbital defensive grid that was being set up by a race of aliens that were manipulating that world's politics.

Incidentally, Bob was displeased and fired the squirrels and their engineers. He's a great lover of potatoes, after all.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

a few comments:

unless I'm mistaken, that goes a little bit too far back, since (as cool as potatoes are) the potato no longer really mattered after the first six posts, even to the point where I, despite being the one originally in defense of the potato, could have my defense method against your current post destroy the potato

ignoring that, how could a reversal of cause and effect result in a giant killer potato (unless there are other effects of anti-time that I don't know, in which case I would need to determine these effects before countering)

and discounting both those things, my response would be that the giant killer potato, being a tuber, would burrow back under the ground to avoid the grid (quick question, why would an orbital defense grid be attacking a giant killer potato, which, unless you're not telling me something, would not be able to get near the grid and would be no threat to said aliens, since fear of a giant killer potato would aid their mission)

and on a side note, as much as Bob (from accounting) likes potatoes, good help is hard to find, so he would not fire the squirrels (the engineers are another story, as good engineers are a dime a dozen, with some accomplished engineers among the squirrels), or at least not over one potato.

If you would like me to create a branching game for the two theorized outcomes (you having to come up with something else or responding to the burrowing of the giant potato), just tell me. Don't want to do it too much, though, or there will be tons of games running.

Benoni said...

1. My actual counter, in case you didn't notice, was "Bob was displeased and fired the squirrels and their engineers". It was cleverly tacked on at the end, because nothing before it was actually a valid part of the counter. I just wanted to revisit as much of the game as possible in one post.

2. You must not have followed the formula for anti-time propagation effects (e^(i*n)). The initial reaction between normal time and anti-time is to reverse cause and effect, but the propagation clearly shows that the effects of this initial reaction is to throw affected regions into "imaginary space" where time runs circularly. Thus, it was only natural that a potato should evolve into its final "giant killer" state instantaneously, while the rest of its environs were unaffected. The arrival of two cherry pies promptly brought the potato back into normal "real" space and time.

3. Seeing as your counter must involve the engineers (or squirrels), I assume that it is that Bob, from accounting, did not fire the squirrels because the potato was not actually killed, "but the giant killer potato, being a tuber, would burrow back under the ground to avoid the grid."

4. Incidentally, the orbital defensive grid is aimed inwards at the planet it is protecting as much as it is aimed outwards, so it is an easy matter for it to target virtually anything on the surface of the planet.

5. I'd rather not branch, either. I'll present my counter below:


The activity of a giant burrowing tuber caused significant tremors that set off a previously dormant volcano, whose eruption immediately disintegrated the potato.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

a small, natural magnetic field in the side of the volcano away from the potato with a small amount of antimatter suspended in it, and the tremors caused by the burrowing of the giant potato disrupted the magnetic field enough that the antimatter encountered the matter of the volcano, blasting a giant hole away from the potato through which the lava flowed, giving the potato enough time to get away without being vaporized

Benoni said...

The anti-matter had been detected and removed by the oppressive government in order to fuel a new anti-matter powered ray gun.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

due to the extremely weak nature of the field containing it (it's a natural field so not very strong), when the oppressive government tried to harvest it, it exploded and set off the volcano, so the lava flow still didn't touch the potato

Benoni said...

If the field had been that weak, the anti-matter would have been knocked out of place eons ago, back when the volcano was still active.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

Earth, as we all know, was built (paid for by some mice), and so, though it seemed to be a volcano that was once active, it has never erupted before

Benoni said...

It looks like I'm going back 5 posts to counter something, but it fits with the current thread and is legal, so I'm going with it:

The global engineers and planet designers of Magrethea would never have been so lazy as to leave any amount of antimatter suspended in either naturally occuring (though on an artificially constructed planet that term is meaningless) or artificially crafted magnetic fields.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

the chunk of antimatter in the magnetic field was part of the design created by Deep Thought

Benoni said...

The chunk of anti-matter was included in Deep Thought's initial plans, but after a few revisions it was found to be unnecessary, and left out of the final construction.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

due to a misunderstanding caused by government bureaucracy (which is inevitable), one of the earlier drafts was sent to Magrathea, rather than the final draft (which is why the question was so weird)

Benoni said...

Considering the importance of the Question, Deep Thought maintained an impeccable version tracking system for the plans for the greatest thinking machine of all space and time. There was no way that the earlier plans could have been sent.

Bob, Squirrel King said...

due to pressure on Deep Thought by the race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings who built it to get the plans out fast (they HAD just waited 7.5 million years to find out that the answer is 42, it had to focus all of its processing power on making the plans, while a normal computer (that sadly ran Windows) ran the impeccable version tracking system, and while the system is impeccable, the computer was not