They are the Jets and Sharks of surgical specialisms, glaring menacingly across operating theaters, shaking fists at each other in the hospital corridor, spontaneously bursting into song in the emergency room. That sort of thing.

Anyway, one day Matthew realized an opportunity had come up to humiliate his nemeses. "The nose surgeons were doing an experiment," he says. "But their randomizer had broken, so they said they were going to revert to randomizing by flipping a coin." Fools! That's typical ignorant nose surgeon behavior, and Matthew was quick to pick them up on it.

"We said, 'That's rubbish. It is possible to cheat at coin tossing; it's not random.' They said, 'Don't be silly.'?" Things, as you can tell, were getting serious: think the Balkans, 1914. It was game on, and this time Matthew would end it for good. He was going to defeat them in the most devastating arena of all: the peer-reviewed journal.

To begin, he needed minions. "We got a load of trainee doctors," he says, "and gave them free pizza to keep them behind after work." Next, he gave them their instructions. "We told them they were to toss a coin, and catch it, and try to get heads every time."This was not the first experiment in coin tossing. A seminal Stanford paper, "Dynamical Bias in the Coin Toss," had found that all coins are, in fact, biased, not so much by the slight disparities in weight and air resistance that arise as a consequence of different designs on different sides, but by the simple fact that one side starts facing up.

"We prove that vigorously flipped coins are biased to come up the same way they started," the Stanford mathematicians write, in a paper that models the flip of a standard coin, taking into account the fact that it can wobble relative to its spinning axis. They found that their equations implied that just under 51 percent of the time, a coin will show the face it initially started with. Unfortunately, to prove this experimentally, to a statistical level that would satisfy a peer-reviewed journal, would require 40,000 coin tosses, so the researchers were fairly confident that the result would never be verified.

They didn't count on Priscilla Ku and Janet Larwood, undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley.

Actually, Priscilla and Janet explained, in a write-up of the most dedicated coin-tossing experiment in history, 40,000 tosses isn't that much. "It works out to take about one hour per day for a semester."

They got to work-the only concession they made to the scale of the task was, "To avoid tiredness when standing up, the partic.i.p.ants sat on the floor." The result? Of the 40,000 tosses, 20,245 landed the flipping side up-a little under 51 percent. The paper was validated.

Matthew's experiment was different, though. He wasn't interested in the intrinsic fairness of a coin toss, so much as whether you can make it even more unfair through manipulation. The only advice he gave the trainee doctors was to practice tossing coins repeatedly, and see when doing so if they could always get the same number of flips.

"It's not that difficult to make it spin the same every time," he says. "Pretty quickly people can learn to make it spin three or four times-enough for a convincing toss-and catch it the same way up." Every single one of the trainees managed to get more heads than tails. "Some people were getting close to 80 percent in their favor. That's after just a few minutes of practice." It seemed the way to reliably bias a coin is just to get the pizzas in and practice flipping it the same amount every time.

The paper was duly published in the Canadian Medical a.s.sociation Journal . The ear surgeons were vindicated; the nose surgeons were vanquished. And that was the end of that.

Except, it wasn't quite over. In fact, several years on, it still isn't. "As a surgeon, you have to do research to progress your career," says Matthew. "You need good research on your CV ." The way research is normally judged is by the number of its citations-the number of people who have referenced the research in their own studies.The problem for Matthew is, no matter how much quality surgical research he has done, his most- cited paper is on a subject that is tangential at best. "I've been interviewed on radio. I made the front page of The Telegraph. I was in six Indian newspapers. It really seemed to catch people's imagination-it has almost certainly beaten my proper papers." Which must be interesting to explain in interviews. Still, at least he defeated the nose surgeons.DRINKING GAMESWHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, if you can down a pint from a still- warm sneaker without gagging, if you can remember to point only with your elbow . . .?when the pressure is on-then you have probably been on one too many spring breaks.

HOW DO YOU PLAY?.

The games are many, the rules are various. The consequences though are, oddly, universal: an empty wallet, a half-remembered dalliance with a traffic cone, and an extended period of self- loathing.

HOW DOES IT END?.

In a police station, a hospital, or a toilet. Or a police-station toilet.

a.n.a.lYSIS.

"Attempts to develop a rat model of alcoholism have repeatedly foundered," lamented a 1978 research paper, "on the rat's unwillingness to drink alcohol."

There are three problems with getting decent scientific advice on succeeding at drinking games.

The first is that ethics committees are oddly reticent about approving alcohol consumption experiments involving human subjects.

The second is that professors of physiology and addiction tend to look rather dimly on those who consider their role as being to give advice on, say, fuzzy duck strategy. "I think this is irresponsible,"

said one, in response to polite queries about drinking games tactics. "Drinking games kill and should be outlawed." He didn't want his name in this book. Emphatically.

Then there is the third problem: rodent abstemiousness. Most people know the basics of succeeding at drinking games. Line your stomach beforehand; build up tolerance in advance; try, just the once, not to wake up with a kebab on the pillow. But if we want to learn more sophisticated techniques-such as how to maintain enough coordination to rub your belly and tap your head while downing a yard of ale, or how to avoid oversharing in "I have never"-then we are left, as with so much research that has yet to go mainstream, with rats. But what if the rats don't drink?

Thankfully, after that initial difficulty, scientists overcame the problems of rats' natural propensity to teetotalism. "Learned safety increases the rats' willingness to drink ethanol," the paper proudly announced. Over the course of a series of experiments, the rats had been tricked into thinking drinking was safe: they had "learned" safety. This was done by feeding them alcohol, then immediately draining their stomachs, to get them used to the taste without the attendant nausea. Skull and Bones isrumored to take a similar approach.

The path was at last open to scientists who wanted to get rats drunk, and drinking games' tactics would never be the same again.

In the decades that followed, we have learned much about drunk rats. They exhibit what is referred to as contextual tolerance. If you continually give a rat a drink in one set of surroundings, the rat will be better at staying sober in that room, exhibiting fewer signs of intoxication compared to when it is moved to another room.

A subsequent experiment validated this effect in humans. When people drink identical amounts of alcohol, either in a pub or in an office environment, they perform a hand-eye coordination task better in the pub. For those preparing for drinking games, the conclusion is obvious: scope out the location in advance, go drinking in it, and don't compete in your office. The latter condition is probably advisable even without the research.

That is not the only way in which preparation can help. Scientists weren't ready to leave the rats alone just yet-the next batch received not just a drinking room, but a drinking maze. The rats were split into two groups. Half practiced navigating the maze while sober, then had a drink; the other half practiced navigating it while drunk. The drunk rats, unsurprisingly, performed worse.

However, the researchers still weren't finished. They then got all the rats drunk and put them in the maze-and those who habitually navigated the maze drunk suddenly had the edge, even though both sets of rats had had the same experience of traveling in it, and both had previously been given the same amount of alcohol.

The message from this experiment is that whatever the drinking game in question, it is not enough to practice it in advance, you must also do so in context. Before a big night you need to go to a pub on your own, sit in the corner, and down tequila slammers while performing mental and physical tasks.

And if that doesn't make you reevaluate your social life and choice of friends, then, well, let's be honest, you're probably a student.MUSICAL STATUESWHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

It is 4:00 p.m. on the longest Sat.u.r.day of your life. The cake has been eaten, the presents have been distributed, and there are still ninety minutes of screaming, shouting, running, and breaking valuable ornaments to go until you can hand out the goody bags and offload responsibility for twenty hyperactive six-year-olds to their parents. What do you do? Well, you make them play a game that involves standing motionless for extended periods of time.

HOW DO YOU PLAY?.

If you are the child? Stand still when the music stops. If you are the parent? Pretend not to notice the fact that children are very bad at standing still; the longer you can keep them playing, the less time you have to fill before you can sit on the sofa staring aimlessly at a blank wall with a large gla.s.s of red.

HOW DOES IT END?.

Hopefully, never.

a.n.a.lYSIS.

After about ninety seconds of not blinking, Chris Clarkson goes through a pain barrier. "The eyes sting, they fill up with water, and a little tear rolls down your cheek." This is a good thing: afterward he finds the urge to blink lessens considerably. "You train the eye. Then it's not exactly comfortable, but it doesn't hurt so much. I still blink, but a lot less."

Most people, even "living statues" like Chris, don't hold themselves to such high standards. "There are statues that wear sungla.s.ses," he says. Although he doesn't really consider they have the right to call themselves living statues. "To me, that's a ma.s.sive cop-out." Chris is a purist, when it comes to standing still.

Chris is semiregularly employed to cover his exposed flesh in spray paint, put on clothes stiffened by layer upon layer of masonry paint ("Whoever saw a statue whose toga billowed in the wind?"), and pretend to be carved out of stone.

Generally, whatever the gig, the routine is the same. "You stand still long enough to give theillusion of being a statue. The people around you start talking to each other. 'Is that real, Deirdre?'

one will say. 'I'm not sure, Moira.' When they look at each other, and turn their focus away, you move slightly. Even just your eyes. Then they turn back, and go, 'Whoa!'?"

Chris is very good at making the world's Deirdres and Moiras go "Whoa!" In 2009, while dressed as a silver James Bond, he won the popular vote at the World Living Statues Festival in Holland.

While such an ability might seem esoteric, it is actually a transferable skill, because not only is Chris extremely talented at being a suit of armor or a section of the Elgin Marbles, this also makes him a formidable musical statues player.

For those who wish to emulate him, his chief advice is to know your body's limitations and find ways to circ.u.mvent them. "Imagine yourself standing in a bar after a hard day's work. You are constantly leaning on something, putting your weight on one leg or another. It isn't in human nature to stand still; your muscles aren't used to it." So the trick is to find ways to move your muscles without making them do so visibly. "Scrunching your toes up and down is a very good way to get circulation going in your feet."

He prefers a technique that is even harder to spot. "Imagine you have both feet flat on the floor. Put all the weight on the left heel and right ball, then slowly shift it to the right heel and left ball. It's pretty much imperceptible to people watching, but you have completely changed your stance. Little things like that keep the muscles from quivering."

Standing around in a semirigid toga is not completely a.n.a.logous to musical statues, though-largely because of the "musical" bit. Here, he says, dancing style is key. "Finding yourself in a comfortable position when the music stops is crucial. If both your arms are in the air doing the Y of YMCA, that could be difficult to hold. Think more along the lines of a dad dancing at a wedding. Then whenever the music stops you are pretty much guaranteed to be in a position you can hold."

Where one might need to depart from an imitation of a dad seven pints down at a wedding, though, is in facial expressions. "If you have a ma.s.sive grin on your face, holding that is remarkably difficult.

Facial muscles are not used to holding a position for a long period of time."

But even if Chris is impa.s.sive on the outside when working, that doesn't mean he is sad on the inside. "I really enjoy it. Stillness is a very powerful thing to have." At least, normally it is.

"People sneak up on you." He always tries to position himself with his back against a wall; unable to move his head or eyes, he has just his peripheral vision to rely on. "Parents say to their children, 'Go on, tickle him, it's funny,'?" he says. "It's not funny."SNAIL RACINGWHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

Ah, race day. The antic.i.p.ation, the excitement. The carefully prepared track, the carefully prepared hats. And that one perfect moment when the starting pistol fires, the compet.i.tors streak away, and the wind ruffles slimily in the tentacles. Yes, it can mean only one thing-snail-racing season is once again upon us.

HOW DO YOU PLAY?.

All you need is a snail, a circle, and a lot of patience.

HOW DOES IT END?.

Slowly. Very, very slowly. And slimily.

a.n.a.lYSIS.

At one point in every serious snail-racing career there comes a watershed moment, a time to demonstrate true dedication. This is when the dilettante snail-racing James Hunts are separated from the coldly calculating snail-racing Niki Laudas.

More specifically, this is the point at which you are required to lick a snail. "I've heard rumors,"

says Jon Ablett, curator of molluscs at Britain's Natural History Museum, "that the best thing is to lick the soles of them."

A happy snail, you see, is a moist snail. A happy snail is not, though-and this is crucial-a very moist snail. "If you cover them in water they are not too pleased," he says. So the dampness has to be just right. So too does the temperature. "Think when you most often see them out and about-after rain, when it is not too hot and not too cold."

And this is where licking comes in, providing the perfect mix of warmth and moisture. "It gives them the edge," says Jon. The only slight problem is that snails also harbor a parasite-not one that normally finds its way into humans, but then humans don't normally lick snails. "I suppose," he argues, "it all depends how badly you want to win."

The reason snails need to be wet is that they get around by using slime. A study in 2013 followed a group of snails around a garden for three days, mapping their activity. It estimated that a third of all snail food intake gets used up making snail trails. That job is made considerably easier for the snails if it is already wet underfoot. Indeed, in extremis, a dry snail will simply disappear into its sh.e.l.l and wait for it to get wetter.

This was especially relevant to one of Jon's predecessors who, in 1846, received a desert snail sh.e.l.l to add to the museum's collection. Four years later, after a leisurely period convalescing from its transcontinental adventure, the mollusc decided to wake up-the sh.e.l.l contained a live snail afterall. It lived happily for another two years.

So even if you are the sort of fair-weather snail racer who balks at bringing the fair weather with you, so to speak, through the application of a warm wet tongue, it is still a good idea to make sure your snail is well watered by other means.

That is not the only way to maximize miles per gallon of slime. The 2013 study also noticed an interesting technique employed by some of the savvier snails. Like Tour de France riders slipstreaming each other, it seemed the more perspicacious gastropods were using existing slime trails by following in the path of other snails. Depending on whether there have been several rounds of snail racing on the course already, it might be worth choosing a starting point at the head of another slime trail, especially if it is relatively straight.

Having released your snail, is that it? Do you then, like a racehorse trainer at the Kentucky Derby, just watch nervously, powerless, and hope they make the running? Absolutely not. Now is the time to motivate, and protect, your snail.

"Most snails have very limited eyesight, so you can't tempt them with colors and shapes," says Jon.

The best many can do is sense shadows-which could be threats-and retreat into their sh.e.l.ls. So keeping people from blocking their sun is important. Where snail sense really is impressive, though, is in smell. "They have olfactory organs all over their bodies. You want to use smell to pull them quickly toward the edge." In the laboratory he favors mashed-up carrot or cabbage. But also, as many gardeners would attest, "snails do love beer."

Jon came into snails only upon joining the Natural History Museum. "They offered me worms or molluscs." Some might consider that the zoological equivalent of a rock and a hard place, but not he.

"I've been here eleven years now and I love snails." He has also come to appreciate their variety- finding niches in almost every land and sea habitat-and has suggestions about how that range could be used to the nefarious racer's advantage. "There's a snail, streptaxis, that is carnivorous. It feeds on other snails," he says, darkly. It looks much like a garden snail. "If you could find one of those you could use it to k.n.o.bble the compet.i.tion."

And if it does, if his advice precipitates a great snail-racing scandal, the one upside may be that people could come to understand that snails are more than just dull vegetarians apt to ruin their hardy perennials-and are worth saving. "There have been more land snail extinctions in the last hundred years than in any other group," he says. "When something doesn't have whiskers or pretty feathers it is hard to make a public case for funding conservation, but they are a really important part of the ecosystem," he says. "They are fascinating creatures, sadly ignored."

Nevertheless, even his love of snails only stretches so far. He has raced them just once in his life and, an embarra.s.sing admission for a snail expert, he lost. Did he lick his snail, though? "No I did not." Well, there you go then.COMPEt.i.tIVE EATINGWHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

Your reaction to all-you-can-eat buffets is crucial. When invited to go to one, do you: a) Think, "This boyfriend isn't a keeper. . . ."

b) Carefully consider whether or not your current level of hunger justifies the expense. No one wants to be one of the fools who subsidizes it for everyone else.

c) Prepare yourself for battle.

HOW DO YOU PLAY?.

In the case of an all-you-can-eat buffet? Well, you try to exceed five and a half pounds of a.s.sorted food in twelve minutes-the current buffet record, held by solid all-rounder Crazy Legs Conti.

HOW DOES IT END?.

Probably with indigestion. Possibly with worse. Certainly with a total loss of dignity.

a.n.a.lYSIS.

Dieters have long relied on a particular physiological quirk to control their appet.i.te. "The brain does not receive word from your stomach that it is filling up until ten or twenty minutes after you start," says Crazy Legs Conti. This means that by eating slowly, you are less likely to overeat. Crazy Legs is not a dieter. People called "Crazy Legs" rarely are. But he still finds this advice helpful.

"It tells me that you have got ten minutes of really frenzied eating before the brain knows what's going on," he says. "That's how you get one over on the lucid, rational part of the brain." Crazy Legs spends a lot of time thinking how to get one over on his brain or, in his words, push it "past the point of society, of sanity." Because, since 2002, Crazy Legs has been a compet.i.tive eater.

It began for him in a bar in New Orleans while his friends were watching the Super Bowl. He was trying to console himself after having not gotten tickets. It was an oyster place. It was also, perhaps, less cla.s.sy than that description sounds. "They had a record for oyster eating-33 dozen. If you beat that you got them all for free."

Now, this seemed like a challenge. Crazy Legs had always enjoyed seafood. Indeed, "it's as if my stomach is a beacon welcoming the ocean's creatures." So he sat down to see if his stomach could welcome in 400 of them in one sitting. It was difficult, but he did it. And word spread; a new talent had entered compet.i.tive eating.Even now, after more than a decade, several world records, and consistent success in the extremely specialist corn-on-the-cob discipline ("It's strange to think of my parents saying, 'Eat up your vegetables,' and having it lead to being four-time corn-on-the-cob champion of the world"), he is not a big man. Winning, he says, is less about body ma.s.s than about a positive mental att.i.tude. "It's almost always unpleasant at some point," he says of his job. "Ultimately, success is about mind over stomach matter."

Some of his colleagues ("My brothers in stomach") use sports psychologists. One "attaches marshmallows to a string and hangs it in his mouth to try to control the gag reflex." Another, Joey Chestnut-the biggest name in hot dogs-likes to use hot water. "He thinks it loosens the internal sphincters. All but one, hopefully."

Crazy Legs just believes there are no shortcuts. As in any sport, it is about hard work and discipline. Each food requires a particular technique (see box on page 146), and he tries to learn it.

"Are great eaters born or made? I only got better at basketball by playing on the court by myself with a ball and a basket-by instilling muscle memory so I don't need to think. The same is true with compet.i.tive eating. You have primed this human machine to become a woodchipper, to break down food and perform Tetris in your stomach."

Eventually, it should become automatic. "If you don't need to think about the next bite, about the next hot dog-that's the mental state you need to be in. With corn on the cob you could be halfway through your meal, 25 cobs down, and think you are doing great-but the moment you pause to look at it, that's when it's over."

Between compet.i.tions he eats sensibly and exercises. "I work out: I jog, I run marathons. I used to do yoga. I'd imagine true yogis would probably feel pretty repulsed that I do it so I can eat more hot dogs." Then in the run-up to a big contest he modifies his diet. "I have a lot of j.a.panese soup-it is easy to digest and fill up on." Finally, on the day itself he doesn't eat at all and instead works on getting himself in the right mental state. "Your stomach needs to get ready. The big intestine needs todrop anchor to the lower intestine." Then he is ready to go.

He knows that the hours that follow will be crucial. Recently, he lost a hot dog eating compet.i.tion by a quarter of a bun. It was in his mouth, but he couldn't swallow. "What is in the mouth at the end counts but you have to finish in a timely manner." He couldn't.

This does seem a little extreme. "In terms of physical feel, you almost always feel like you are bursting," he admits, "but you have to hold it down." Major League Eating, being a civilized family activity, frowns on onstage vomiting. "By the time you are finished, have done some interviews, and spoken to fans it is a few hours later and it has had time to settle. It's the next day, when you wake up, that you really realize what it is you've ingested. Sometimes I'll wake up and think, oh, that's right, that's what 100 chicken wings feel like."

This is when, perhaps, he has a brief moment of introspection. "It's a little strange to think my mind could be doing other things. It could be working on a cure for HIV , or creating an opera. But no, it's going to focus on eating 100 chicken wings." A pause. "But the world has got plenty of operas."

THE DISCIPLINES.

Hot dogs Target: 69 in 10 minutes "Most people separate the bun and dog, and dunk the bun in water. Some people do two dogs in one, and some eat them together with the bun. That's a bit strange-it's called 'picnic style.'

Basically, it's about getting into a rhythm, ignoring the guy beside you, and making every chew and swallow work. You want to have dogs left at the end-because you can stuff them in easily.

Buns are a problem."

Corn on the cob Target: 46 in 12 minutes "I use the manual typewriter approach. Left, right, left, swallow, repeat. I try to get it in five rows or, if it has been a bountiful harvest, six. Swallowing is important-I don't make a dinging noise like a typewriter would but I do flap my arms. You have to remind yourself to swallow.

Largely, it's about jaw strength and focus."