Like many small businesses, we struggle daily with one of life’s most difficult issues: who’s turn is it to make everyone’s hot beverage of choice??

After many meetings, and some consultation, we elected to adopt the ancient method of Nümberwang to decide. Many of you will already have heard of the Nümberwang in it’s modern adaptation as a maths-based quiz, but it actually has roots far back in the mists of time.

History of the Nümberwang

The original concept was developed for everyday use by an ancient Tibetan Monk called Gampopa; he proposed it as a solution to the all-too-frequent border and property disputes of the local populace. In it’s original format, Nümberwang was enacted over several days in a long and convoluted ceremony.

Widespread use of the Nümberwang was initally supressed, mainly due to the losing party’s attitude that the process was “really unfair”. Eventually, enough time passed for the process to be considered traditional and people travelled from far and wide to have their grievances decided by the Monks of the Nümberwang.

By this time, casual, bootleg versions of the Nümberwang process were in use in isolated villages and towns; local leaders would use shorter ceremonies to manage the local residents and decide difficult legal cases.

The Nümberwang can be found in use in many social situations in more recent history; for example, Victorian schoolchildren would use the Nümberwang as a playground game when conkers were out of season. The most notable recent adaptation was used in the trenches during the Great War by german soldiers (mostly to decide who would go up and check for neraby enemy forces), which is where the process adopted its modern-day umlaut.

Rules of the Nümberwang

There are only a few rules for the historical Nümberwang:

Rule #1 – You do not talk about the Nümberwang.

Rule #2 – The leader (originally known as the ‘Chosen’ or the ‘Wanger’ chooses the condition for the current iteration (highest even, number announced 3rd in sequence etc).

Rule #3 – The decision of the Chosen/Wanger is final and binding, on pain of death.

Daily use of the Nümberwang

In honour of the original process, we have tried to stick as close as possible to the original code although we have made two major amendments: the process is slightly shorter, normally lasting a maximum of 30s; and we have dropped the death penalty for disputing the outcome and replaced it with a healthy barrage of insults.

Disclaimer:

Most, if not all of the above is completely untrue (apart from us using it to decide the tea/coffee round). Numberwang is actually a fictional gameshow from the popular tv show ‘That Mitchell and Webb Look‘.

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