#142 – Portion

Recently I’ve heard about this solution to children and cake a number of times. One child cuts and the other chooses. Amazingly I never encountered it when I was a kid. Maybe I just always got along with my younger brother. Or maybe neither of us were ever trusted with knives.

Today’s Biff feels the heat.

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16 thoughts on “#142 – Portion”

  1. das-g says:

    What if there are 3 siblings? Or more?

    1. ZackDark says:

      Whoever’s cutting just get the last piece. Easy as pie.

      1. Zenitram says:

        Easy as pie? but…this is cake…

        1. natemare says:

          THE CAKE IS A LIE!

  2. Horace S. Patoot says:

    I’ve known and used this procedure for about 40 years, but I never realized (until you pointed it out) that it also works in reverse; i.e. with something both people don’t like. Das-g, How about if #1 cuts once, then #2 makes the second or more cuts, #3 chooses, #1 chooses, and then #2 gets the last piece.

    1. das-g says:

      It’s a bit more complicated then that: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=envy+free+cake+cutting

  3. Baughbe says:

    My dad had the perfect working solution. Argument? Then NO desert for anybody. It went into the trash. We didn’t argue. However I can see it backfiring with the cook above. But isn’t the kids solution animal cruelty?

    1. Pierlala says:

      Sounds nice in theory, and not just for sharing cake. But I still remember all those times where my little brother got an unfair part or piece or whatever of something, and I wouldn’t dare start an argument because I’d be afraid of losing the little something I had left.. My point: one person can be a jackass and the other won’t dare complain.

  4. AA says:

    I remember this solution, but then we’d argue just as long as who’d get to pick which piece they wanted (as the slicer would get the smaller piece, even emotionally).

    1. Jake the Yak says:

      Yeah, it’s one of those solutions that seems really clever and perfect, until you actually examine it.

  5. pbarnrob says:

    So the slicer has a _strong_ incentive to cut carefully and evenly. As above, with three, hmmm… Tricky.

  6. Library Lady says:

    I guess being an only child wasn’t all that bad afterall.

  7. Slogra says:

    That is either a really small table or a really large mom! That’s probably why they’re too terrified to tell her about her cooking.

    1. das-g says:

      That’s not a table, it’s the next-lower cake layer. Below that, there’s a third –even larger– layer, that the kids are currently standing on.

      It all makes sense now, doesn’t it?

  8. Calvin K says:

    I always hated the “you cut, they choose” method. I’d almost always end up being the slicer, and sure enough one slice would be bigger, even if it was only by a small amount. Then my sister would inevitably pick the bigger piece, leaving me with a pathetically tiny amount of dessert. If my sister was the slicer, I’d try to be polite and pick the smaller piece, hoping that she would do the same in the future.
    That never worked.

  9. Ian says:

    .. um … the cake is a lie !

    When I was a kid we had ice cream cake. But we lived an hour from the nearest supermarket. SO it ended up being ice cream soup cake. My therapist said my irrational fear of melting ice cream could stem from this.

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