Benny is a card used in trick-taking games that automatically counts as the highest trump.
If no-trump rounds are allowed, the Benny is often considered to be a solitary trump, in a suit of its own.
Normally, the Benny is represented with a Joker or the two of spades.
The most common use of Benny is in a 25-card euchre variant. It is for this specific game that the Joker was introduced in the 19th century United States.
The following is a partial list of U.S. box office bombs, films with low box office revenue.
A film's financial success is often measured by its gross revenue. Studios expect that a film's "domestic" (which the American film industry defines as the United States and Canada) box office gross revenue will exceed production costs. This does not make the film profitable: typically, the exhibiting theater keeps 45% of the gross, with the remainder paid to the studio as the rental fee. However, if a film has a higher domestic gross than its production and marketing costs, it will almost certainly turn a profit once the overseas gross is included.
If a film recoups production and marketing costs, then it can be considered a success; otherwise, if it fails to do so by a significant margin, it is referred to as a box office bomb, even though international distribution, sales to television syndication, and home video releases often mean some films considered flops in North America eventually make a profit for their studios. For example, Head, a 1968 film featuring The Monkees, was a flop which became profitable for the studio years later when its cult film status led to its sale to Rhino Entertainment and its re-release in various video formats. The popularity (and profitability) of DVD sales has increased this trend signficantly, leading many to doubt the significance of domestic grosses as a predictor of a film's overall success.
Different genres of film are subject to different standards of success. For example, action movies typically have higher production and promotion costs than love stories. Typically, the most notorious flops are summer blockbusters, which often entail huge costs to produce and face a highly competitive market. Advertising costs are not included in a movie's production costs, and can make a bomb's failure all the more crushing for the studio.
In the most dramatic cases, a film's poor performance can push a studio into financial ruin, as happened with United Artists (Heaven's Gate), Carolco Pictures (Cutthroat Island), and Square Pictures (Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within).
During the 1980s the performance of a film on its opening weekend became crucial to its perception with a film suffering a poor opening weekend often being dropped by cinemas. With the growth of the Internet during the 1990s, chat rooms and websites such as Ain't It Cool News enable negative word of mouth to spread rapidly.
Most flops are not career-ending for the film's main cast and crew. Duck Soup, for example, a critical and box-office flop in 1933, got the Marx Brothers fired from Paramount Pictures, yet two years later, with help from Irving Thalberg, they starred in the successful A Night at the Opera and "Duck Soup" has since become one of the most highly regarded of the Marx Brothers' films. Ishtar was a notorious flop but both its stars Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman recovered their careers. Jude Law has appeared in a series of major flops including the 2004 remake Alfie and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, but is still able to be cast in leading roles.
Categories is a word game in which players think of words that begin with specified letters and belong to specified semantic categories. For instance, given the letters in "Sargon" and the category "U.S. states", one can list:
- South Carolina
- Arkansas
- Rhode Island
- Georgia
- Oregon
- North Dakota
A typical game consists of choosing five initial letters and five categories. These become the rows and columns of a 5×5 grid which the players attempt to fill within five minutes. If there are only two players, the one who fills more of the 25 combinations is the winner. If there are more than two players, the scoring usually discounts any entries written by more than one player.
Categories is related to the commercial games Scattergories and Facts in Five.
Categories is also a party game in which players have to think of instances of a specific category. The players sit in a circle either on the floor or at a large table and collectively establish a rhythm of six beats: slap slap (on the thighs), clap clap (with the hands), snap snap (by clicking their fingers).
The players must speak in turn clockwise around the circle on the snap beats, using the slap and clap beats to gather their thoughts. On a player's turn, he or she must name a new instance of the category or be eliminated. Eliminated players sit out, creating an ever-shrinking circle, until only one player remains.
Typically a category is not chosen in advance, but is specified by the third player to speak after the first player has said "Categories" and the second player has said "such as...". A demonstration game between five players will illustrate:
- slap slap clap clap - Player 1: "Categories"
- slap slap clap clap - Player 2: "such as..."
- slap slap clap clap - Player 3: "Diseases" (everyone now knows the category)
- slap slap clap clap - Player 4: "Cancer"
- slap slap clap clap - Player 5: "Chickenpox"
- slap slap clap clap - Player 1: "Measles"
- slap slap clap clap - Player 2: "Athlete's foot"
- slap slap clap clap - Player 3: "Mistletoe" (this is not a disease; Player 3 is eliminated)
- slap slap clap clap snap snap (Player 4 is laughing so hard at Player 3 she misses the beat and is eliminated)
- slap slap clap clap - Player 5: "Tuberculosis"
- slap slap clap clap - Player 1: "Schizophrenia"
- slap slap clap clap - Player 2: "AIDS"
- slap slap clap clap - Player 5: "Ebola"
- slap slap clap clap - Player 1: "Emphysema"
- slap slap clap clap - Player 2: "Herpes"
- slap slap clap clap - Player 5: "Hiccups" (getting desperate, but the other players accept it)
- slap slap clap clap - Player 1: "HIV" (this is considered a repetition of AIDS; Player 1 is eliminated)
- slap slap clap clap - Player 2: "Malaria"
- slap slap clap clap - Player 5: "Leukemia" (considered a repetition of Cancer; Player 5 is eliminated; Player 2 wins)
A common variation is to play each category only until the first elimination. After an elimination there is a short pause, after which the player who was due to speak next restarts the game by saying "Categories". In this variation, no category may be chosen twice. The advantage of this variation is that there is sometimes contention over whether a player should be eliminated, and the pause allows for calm discussion of whether, for example, hiccups is really a disease. The disadvantage is that players are less often required to speak several times in the same category.
Categories is also known as Clap Trap. In this version each round of the game starts with a "General Hover" [everyone holds their hands out and wiggles their fingers] before the slapping, clapping, and clicking rhythm is established. Then Player 1 chooses the category and the direction of play as follows, speaking as before [slap slap, clap clap] only [slap slap clap clap] on the [slap slap clap clap] clicks!
- slap slap clap clap - Player 1: "Give me..."
- slap slap clap clap - Player 1: "to my right..." [or left...]
- slap slap clap clap - Player 1: "names of..."
- slap slap clap clap - Player 1: "flowers!"
- slap slap clap clap - Player 2: "Daffodils!"
- slap slap clap clap - Player 3: "Roses!"
- slap slap clap clap - Player 4: "Pansies!"
- and so on.
The round stops when a player cannot think of anything appropriate to say or cannot get it out in time. This player then pays a forfeit and starts the next round, choosing a new topic and a new direction as before. If adults are playing, the usual forfeit is to take a sip of their (normally alcoholic) drink.
The game is funniest if the categories are really simple.
de:Stadt, Land, Fluss fr:Jeu du baccalauréat pl:Inteligencja (gra)
Snoopy (Born November 3, 2018) is an American Goldendoodle dog known for filming YouTube videos and also is a Guard dog. Snoopy was born in the Knight Family in 2018, originally named Sam Knight and was later adopted in early December 2018. When he was adopted he was renamed as Snoopy Sam, and was trained as a Guard dog in December 2018 at 2 months old.
Currently, Snoopy lives in a Single-family detached home in North Carolina.