Jinx

• Double Jinx
  If both people call jinx at the same time, the winner is the first to call double jinx. If both call double jinx at the same time, they must proceed to call
• Triple Jinx
  Triple jinx is also called in the rare case of three or more people saying the same thing at the same time.
• Padlock
  Normally, if Jinx proceeds to triple jinx, the game is over and nobody loses their right to speak. However, in extreme cases "Padlock" can be called. Padlock takes one's linguistic capability until the afflicted's name is spoken ten times by ten different people.

Jinx is an Earth-sized moon of an extra-large gas giant planet, Binary, orbiting the star Sirius A in several of Larry Niven's Known Space science fiction stories. Niven never actually sets a story on Jinx, but he gives us a physical description several times.

Jinx is actually a bit bigger than the Earth, as it has a gravity about 1.5 times that of the Earth.

More interestingly, Jinx takes the form of a prolate spheroid (tending towards the shape of a rugby ball or American football). It was pulled into this shape during its formation by tidal forces from binary, then stayed that way when it cooled¹.

Near Jinx's equator, the atmosphere is a Venus-like soup (the oceans are concentrated there, too, but we'll get back to that). The two poles (known as the East End and the West End stick up out of the atmosphere. The midlatitude zones, however, are just right for human habitation, if you can stand the world's gravity.

Jinx was one of the first worlds detected by automated probes sent from Earth, and one of the first worlds colonized by humans (using slowships). By the time of Ringworld, Jinx was one of the primary centers of human civilization.

Around the shores of the equatorial sea crawl huge sluglike creatures known as bandersnatchi. These were put there by the psychic race of Thrintun, aka "Slavers", a billion years before the arrival of humans. Bandersnatchi were the principal food source of the Slavers before they were annihilated during the uprising of their technological slave race, the tnuctipun (who were also annihilated along with the rest of galactic civilization).

Bandersnatchi are intelligent; their initial commmunication with humans involved grazing to form huge patterns on the ground in Slaver writing. Although it is not explicitly stated, communication with bandersnatchi was probably eventually done via telepathy.

The bandersnatchi have an unusual economic agreement with the human residents of Jinx: money in return for the right to hunt bandersnatchi, a prestigious sport among the wealthy of Known Space.

Most dictionaries attempt to categorized a jinx as something that causes adversity citing one possible source that it may have been derived during the 17th century from Latin iynx, from Greek iunx, or maybe from iuzein meaning to call or cry saying that there is some anecdotal evidence related to the wryneck bird and its feathers being used to cast spells.

It's a member of the woodpecker family, a species that breeds across Europe and Asia. It has a strange habit of twisting its neck right round when it's alarmed or when it's watchfully at rest, hence its English name; it has an odd courtship ritual, in which the male and female perch opposite one another, shaking their heads about, and gaping their mouths to show the pink inside. Such curious behaviour made people think the wryneck was uncanny, and from the time of the Greeks there were superstitions attached to it, with links to witchcraft, divination and magic. Its Greek name passed into Latin and then into English, either as yunx or jynx. So it's not surprising that dictionary writers often suggest that jinx comes from this bird of superstition.

The inflected forms of the word are jinxed, jinxing, and jinxes. Jinx can be used as a noun as well as a transitive verb. Used as noun it can describe an individual or object that is thought to bring bad fortune or a jinx can also denote a circumstance or phase of bad fortune that seems to have been perpetuated by a particular person or thing. The noun appeared in 1911 and six years later jinx as verb hit the scene as a part of American vernacular following the Civil War when morals became more relaxed which led to a new sense frankness. Reflective of the era were the emerging popularity of story songs many of which were scandalous, one example is Little Brown Jug a drinking song form the 1860s. During the same decade in 1868 a celebrated vaudeville song entitled Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines was composed and sung by William Horace Lingard. It tells the story of poor Captain Jinks who was a dismal flop as a soldier and in the end drummed out of the Army. The British Lingard Comedy Company crafted a romantic musical comedy around the anecdote in the song and in 1901 the play made its way to Broadway where it marked Ethel Barrymore's début as a star at the Garrick Theater where a chorus of girls in military costume performed the theme song. Here is a sample of the chorus and third verse: (Chorus)
I'm Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines,
I give my horse good corn and beans;
Of course it's quite beyond my means,
Tho' a Captain in the army.

(Third verse)
The first day I went out to drill,
The bugle sound made me quite ill,
At the balance step my hat it fell,

Jinx (?), n.

A person, object, influence, or supernatural being which is supposed to bring bad luck or to cause things to go wrong. [Slang]

© Webster 1913