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Shave and a Haircut

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Re: Shave and a Haircut

#111

Post by WalterBright »

samatman wrote: post #79
mkmk wrote: post #7

> The former prisoner of war and U.S. Navy seaman Doug Hegdahl reports fellow U.S. captives in the Vietnam War would authenticate a new prisoner's U.S. identity by using "Shave and a Haircut" as a shibboleth, tapping the first five notes against a cell wall and waiting for the appropriate response. With the mass export of western culture, I wonder if there are any songs, tunes, or patterns like this that would still…

For the US, "where does the shortstop play" is a pretty good one. Some people might get through K-12 without learning that, but surely not many.

During the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans infiltrated the American lines with ersatz officers sowing confusion by giving conflicting orders in perfect English.

The GIs hit on the idea of asking them baseball questions. Failing to answer them correctly got the fake officers shot on the spot.

My dad (WW2 vet) told me I would have been shot on the spot. My utter disinterest in baseball distressed him.

Re: Shave and a Haircut

#113

Post by [deleted] »

WalterBright wrote: post #82

Two bits meaning 25 cents came from an early practice of cutting a Spanish silver dollar into 8 pieces with four cuts. That's also where "piece of eight" as a reference to the Spanish dollar comes from.

[deleted]

Re: Shave and a Haircut

#114

Post by sam_bristow »

gerdesj wrote: post #107
mkmk wrote: post #7

> The former prisoner of war and U.S. Navy seaman Doug Hegdahl reports fellow U.S. captives in the Vietnam War would authenticate a new prisoner's U.S. identity by using "Shave and a Haircut" as a shibboleth, tapping the first five notes against a cell wall and waiting for the appropriate response. With the mass export of western culture, I wonder if there are any songs, tunes, or patterns like this that would still…

A British or Irish person might kick off with an approved weather discussion (appropriate with strangers, for the use of) opening gambit and await a sanctioned response. Another option is "fork 'andles". The correct response is a repeat followed by childish giggling but the rubbish assumed accents are also part of the shibboleth. This one may be gradually dying out. A final option is to surreptitiously start a queue.

Pretty sure you could identify anyone who grew up in New Zealand just by saying "Tutira mai nga iwi". You'd either get an almost immediate involuntary response from a kiwi or just confusion from anyone else.

Re: Shave and a Haircut

#116

Post by elihu »

I've been playing Beyond All Reason (an open-source RTS) lately, and noticed that if I want to build a handful of some unit, I'd unconsciously click five times in a "shave and a haircut" pattern.

Re: Shave and a Haircut

#118

Post by esposito »

toxik wrote: post #44
miniatureape wrote: post #5

A made a little “secret knock” authentication demo. Shave and a haircut is obviously the secret knock used in the demo https://miniatureape.github.io/prohibition/ (Nb: I’m sure this doesn’t work great on some devices)

It just always says scram no matter what I do, I can record a single knock and it will still say "scram". Latest Safari on latest macOS.

I couldn't get it to pass on my phone, but "scram"/"get out of here" is equivalent to a password rejected/401 response. A single knock does not match the expected pattern, so you would expect it to be rejected.

Re: Shave and a Haircut

#119

Post by Fb24k »

QuercusMax wrote: post #81
InitialLastName wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pronunciation of Chili, NY is an immediate way to ID anyone from the Rochester area.

...of course it's pronounced "Chye-lie". I can't talk, though, I come from Ohio where we have a city named "Versailles" that's pronounced "vur-SAYLES".

Illinois also has a Ver-Say-Lees as well as a Kay-row (Cairo)
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