Word of the Week: Truel

Truel: A duel involving three combatants instead of the standard two.

Used mostly in game theory, truel was coined by mathematician Martin Shubik in a 1954 article, ""Does the Fittest Necessarily Survive?" It's a portmanteau of trio (or perhaps "three-way") and duel that assumes that duel has a root meaning "two," as in "duo." However, "duel" in fact is a shortening of an Old Latin word for "war," duellum, and truel ambiguously suggests a root of true.

Contests involving an unspecified number of participants are called N-uels in game theory (PDF).

From a film-studies quiz in the Education Life section of yesterday's New York Times:

The duel provides the most classic ending for westerns. This film ups the strategic tension by introducing the truel, a three-man gunfight.

1. "High Noon"
2. "Vera Cruz"
3. "High Plains Drifter"
4. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"

(Answer after the jump.)

Truel is also a surname. A computer programmer named Bob Truel co-founded the Open Directory Project, Topix LLC, and Blekko.

 

Answer to film quiz: 4.

Comments

[Bob Cumbow]

In Italian westerns, such as THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY, we commonly encounter the word "Duello" for gunfight--as in the film titled IL GRANDE DUELLO. In THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY, Sergio Leone and his composer Ennio Morricone referred to the climactic three-way gunfight in that film as "il Triello." Don't know whether they got that from Shubik or happened upon it independently.

[Lee Bradley]

http://tobee-interpres.blogspot.com/2009/08/zee-da-gud-tobee-da-badd-and-luna-da.html

is a recent thread on a blog I contribute to which gets into the mathematics behind truels. I found your blog this morning when searching for a site I found yesterday (but couldn't remember) that provided a solution for the case of the weakest shooter hitting with probability 1/2 and the next stronger shooter hitting and with probability 4/5.

The currently last comment to the above post links to yet another blog which contains a screenshot of a simulation of the truel etc. etc.

I am a lover of words and look forward to seeing what's going on here in the coming days!