Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks by Ken Jennings Page B

instruction and the beginning of the next—seems like a simple concept, but in practice it requires a set of four tiebreaking rules of decreasing priority, each so complex that even the word “on” comes with its own Clintonian three-paragraph definition. Even punctuation matters: a place-name without quotation marks refers to the place itself, but with quotation marks, it refers to the map text labeling the place. And so on.
    This level of precision can sometimes make the Massacre seem airless and technical to clueless newbies like me, but Jim insists that’s not the goal. “We try to make the rules correspond to reality,” he tells me. “We try to keep as much verisimilitude as we can, to have people actually feel like they’re on the road, going from this point to that point. They’re seeing landmarks along the way. They’re watching for turns.” For longtime participants, much of the fun lies in the in-jokes and regular “characters” that pop up en route, adding some color to the otherwise legalistic proceedings. The most beloved such regular is the Old Maltese, a grizzled coot often spotted near his cabin in Malta, Montana. The Maltese is Jim’s alter ego in the yearly contest, and the Sinclairs still get phone calls at home every February asking if “the Old Maltese is there.” (Participants are encouraged to call or write if they don’t understand the rules.) “I always say, ‘He’s not in, but can I help you?’” says Jim.
    These recurring traditions have kept the same players comingback to his contests for decades. They are a devoted bunch. Nancy Wilson, a retired ER nurse from Petaluma, California, has been playing in the Massacre for more than thirty years. She once scheduled a trip to Liechtenstein just so that she could postmark her Massacre answer sheet from the tiny Alpine country. (Jim makes sure to recognize the top score submitted from each state and country.) Bart Bramley is a professional bridge player from Dallas (the American Contract Bridge League player of the year in 1997, in fact) and a four-time winner of the Massacre. His nearsightedness has been getting worse of late, but he’s put off getting the LASIK surgery that would cure his myopia in minutes. Why? Because now, without contacts, his vision is clearest when he’s looking at objects practically touching the tip of his nose—the perfect distance for map rally purposes. “I can examine the map from about one inch away and see everything,” he says. “If I got LASIK, I wouldn’t be able to do that anymore.”
    But time has winnowed away the faithful. Around three thousand players entered the Massacre each year at its early-nineties peak; last year fewer than five hundred sent in answers. It’s tempting to point to this decline as another apocalyptic sign of How Americans Hate Maps, but instead Jim blames the death of road rallying, the sport whose fans made up his core audience. “We used to ask them their age,” he says, “and in the seventies the answer would come back in their midthirties. Then the next year it’d be late thirties. Then it would be close to forty. It was obvious that we were keeping the same cohort.”
    “Every once in a while we’ll hear from somebody saying their father or their mother has passed,” Sue adds. “I think they’re letting us know, not only to stop the mail but to say their late parent really enjoyed it.”
    “It’s bittersweet,” Jim agrees.
    “Or we’ll hear from someone who says, ‘My eyesight’s not good anymore.’ “
    “We don’t dwell on it.”
    “But it is sort of nice, that somebody thought enough of us to take the time to write.”
    Sometimes a caller will even tell the Sinclairs how much they enjoyed finishing the contest with Mom or Dad one last time. Most solvers play alone, but others evidently make the Massacre a February family tradition. As a map lover, this sounds like an idyllic way to spend quality time with the kids. I imagine three or four