Reading the Mismatch

The smash bros boast only works when the face is genuinely out of place. A character that belongs in the ring kills the whole thing, because there is no gap left to sit in. The read is distance: how far does this face have to travel to ever be a fighter?

Where It Lands

• The office worker with a coffee. Zero business in the ring, maximum gap - the coffee is doing the deadpan for you.
• The hedgehog. A character from a completely different game, so the mismatch is the whole joke.
• The potato. The farthest of all. A vegetable delivering the kid's boast is the peak of the gap.

Where It Slips

Any face that is already a fighter, or that reads as cool and serious, closes the gap and the boast stops being funny - it just becomes a taunt. The read is proportion again: the bigger the distance between the face and the ring, the more the two symbols carry it. In the pick-the-least-likely game you get that read trained - three faces come up and you call, in the fewest seconds, the one that is the farthest away.