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Ron Hale-Evans
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While writing the latest article in my Game Systems series, I had occasion to research the origin of the phrase "shooting the moon" in the card game Hearts.
At the turn of the last century, "shooting the moon" was apparently used to mean something like "aiming high as a desperate gambit", and particularly to mean absconding in the middle of the night without paying the rent. Examples:
For a day and a half I had nothing to eat or smoke, and then, too hungry to put it off any longer, I packed my remaining clothes into my suitcase and took them to the pawnshop. This put an end to all pretence of being in funds, for I could not take my clothes out of the hotel without asking Madame F.'s leave. I remember, however, how surprised she was at my asking her instead of removing the clothes on the sly, shooting the moon being a common trick in our quarter.
--George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
What concentrated irony and imagination there is for instance, in the metaphor which describes a man doing a midnight flitting as "shooting the moon"? It expresses everything about the run away: his eccentric occupation, his improbable explanations, his furtive air as of a hunter, his constant glances at the blank clock in the sky.
--G.K. Chesterton, "The Red Town", Alarms and Discursions
How well the last passage describe the nervous attitude of someone trying to shoot the moon in Hearts.
In the Hearts variant I am designing, I considered replacing the phrase "shoot the moon" with "fly by night" as a contemporary phrase for a similar situation, but the old phrase stuck, so "shooting the moon" it remains.
Entered 12:07 [/games/game_systems] permalink
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