Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2020 September 11

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September 11

Number 11 upside-down

Can the number 11 be a differant number if it's upside-down? Because in the Father Ted episode Think Fast, Father Ted, Ted asked Dougal to shout out that number to win a car in a raffle. When he didn't, Dougal said it was because he was looking at the ticket upside-down. 86.128.234.79 (talk) 21:18, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

I guess the script writers' joke is that Father Dougal is such a dolt that he does not realize that for this number this excuse for failing to announce does not work. It would have been more obvious if the number was 96. Alternatively, if the numbers were written with Roman numerals, XI upside down becomes IX. I don't know if the figures on the face of any ticket were shown, but I think this is not a likely explanation.  --Lambiam 22:51, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

And Ted never even asked "What do you mean it was upside-down?". And what would Dougal's answer be? 86.128.234.79 (talk) 20:01, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

One ingredient of the formula of the sitcom – next to the absurdity of the situations the priests work themselves into and the contrast between the sacred vows of these holy men pledged to serve the Lord and their dissolute behaviour – is a rapid succession of dumb-ass jokes, each hardly worth more than half a second of laughter. The situation at the raffle was hardly one where Father Ted could sit down Father Dougal for an extended interview in order to understand what was going on; but, also, milking this lame joke may not have been considered worth the effort.  --Lambiam 11:04, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I think you were supposed to get the joke without any further explanation - the audience knows that the number he is going to call will be 11 because they had "fixed" the raffle. For the curious, a synopsis of the episode is here (the upside-down ticket gag is given top billing in the "quotes" section). Alansplodge (talk) 14:22, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

So when the number 11 is upside-down, it's still the same number? And the reason Ted and Dougal chose that number for the raffle was because it was an easy number? And Dougal's reason of not shouting out the number was written as a joke? And that's why Ted didn't ask the meaning of his reason? 86.128.234.79 (talk) 20:43, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes. That's how jokes work. Jokes depend on incongruity. Because 11 reads the same upside down as right side up, when he says "I couldn't read it correctly because it was upside down", then humans laugh at that because it's silly: since it reads the same both ways, the incongruity is that he should have been able to read it. --Jayron32 12:55, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

If ya have ta explain it... That reminds me of one of Bob Newhart's visits to the Carson show. He was talking about how it's difficult to do comedy in Germany because they are so literal. "Vhy do you call zis man Curly vhen he has no hair?" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:27, 18 September 2020 (UTC)