Now that I've more or less mastered the 3 x 3 Rubik's cube, I've realised that anything I set my mind upon doing is more or less attainable, provided that my physical and intellectual limitations are taken into account. If I wanted to, I could master the 4 x 4 Rubik's cube.
Maybe. Maybe not. It's a question of where I want to focus my concentration. A post I made on Thursday, 1st February 2018 stated that:
2018 is shaping up to be a year where I make some decisive improvement in my grasp of musical theory and proficiency in playing the guitar. I've began with the minor pentatonic scale which the beginning point for everybody and have been practising consistently.
That post is over two years old now. Well, it's true that I did make some progress but hardly enough. I remain disappointed in my musical development. Perhaps this is the area on which to focus next. However, I must be specific in what I want to achieve. For example, it's rather pointless and vague to say that I want to improve my guitar playing. Instead I should say that I want to master Travis picking. This is a goal that is realistic and that can be achieved in a reasonable short space of time. Mastering the 3 x 3 Rubik's cube was a good example of this sort of specific goal. There's nothing vague about. I either mastered the steps to solve the Rubik's cube or I didn't. Similarly, I'll master Travis picking or I won't.
Figure 1
I'll use old LickNRiff to get me started on the Travis picking. Figure 1 shows the Tabs for this lesson. Staying with music for I while, I have great difficulty remembering the lyrics and chords to songs. This is a source of frustration to me because I'd like to have a repertoire of songs that I could sing without the need to reference notes, physical or electronic. I've managed it for some songs but not many. It would be nice to know more. I have my Ultimate Guitar Tabs website of course but I'd like to know my favourite songs off by heart. Only practice of course will make that possible. Although I concentrate on guitar, I can play the harmonica and, at least to some extent, the tin whistle. Sadly, I quite neglect these two instruments which is a pity because they are both quite portable. Apart from music, I'm still keen to memorise the first 100 prime numbers. I succeeded in memorising the first 50 and so I know that 100 is an achievable goal. I've made some starts toward it but have not followed through. Figure 2 shows a list of the first one hundred primes taken from Wikipedia:
Figure 2
I've made a series of 100 slides using Google Slides. Each contains a prime, starting with slide 1 (2) and finishing with slide 100 (541). This way I can practise until I get it right. Without creating and using reinforcement tools like these, no progress is possible.
For some reason, after all these years, I decided that I would teach myself how to solve a 3 x 3 Rubik's cube which I've succeeded in doing. However, I need to practise so that the steps become automatic and so for this reason, I'm summarising the steps here. I used a YouTube video that outlined a number of algorithms to follow in order to solve the cube.
The first step is understand the notation and Figure 1 shows the four terms for the four faces that will be used in the solution (D for Down and B for Back are not used):
Figure 1
Figure 2
STEP 1: the first step is to create what is called the Daisy. See Figure 2. This is quite straight forward and doesn't require any special algorithms as will be needed later. It can be completed simply by careful inspection.
We then rotate the bottom two layers so that one of the centre square colours matches that of a white edge. Once this has been done, the face is then rotated through 180°.
This is repeated for the other three faces. Figure 3 shows an alignment of the green centre square with the corresponding green/while edge. The face is now ready for the 180° twist. This completes the first step where we have a white cross.
Figure 3
STEP 2: the idea in this step is to complete the white face. For this we use what is called the RIGHTY ALG where ALG stands for ALGORITHM. This algorithm involves a right face clockwise turn, an upper face clockwise turn, an anticlockwise right face turn and an anticlockwise upper face turn. This is depicted as R U R' U'.
The white cross is placed face down and the corner whites are first positioned above where they need to be and the righty alg is applied repeatedly until the white corner pieces are in their correct positions. At the end of this step, the while face is now complete.
STEP 3: in this step we complete the bottom two layers. Additionally, this will involve the use of the LEFTY ALG which is characterised by L' U' L U or, in other words, a left face anticlockwise turn, an upper face anticlockwise turn, a left face clockwise turn and an upper face clockwise turn. In addition to the use of the lefty and righty alg, the cube will need to be spun clockwise or anticlockwise. See Figure 4:
Figure 4
To move an edge to the right, the steps shown in Figure 5 must be followed where R stands for the righty alg and L stands for the lefty alg:
Figure 5
To move an edge to the left, the steps shown in Figure 6 must be followed:
Figure 6
At the end of this third step, the bottom two layers should be complete.
STEP 4: this step involves creating a yellow cross, assuming one has not already been created accidentally. There are two possible scenarios that need to dealt with. The first occurs if one arm of the cross is already complete. See Figure 7 for the algorithm to complete the cross in this scenario (note that the already completed arm needs to be held horizontally as shown):
Figure 7
If neither of the two arms of the cross are complete and there is more than the central yellow square uppermost, then the algorithm show in Figure 8 can be used (note the empty corner must be in the bottom right position and care needs to be taken with lower case f which means the front two faces are rotated not just the first face):
Figure 8
Sometimes only the central yellow square is uppermost. In this case, complete the algorithm for the line: F R F'. This will produce the corner and the f R f' can then be applied.
STEP 5: this step involves getting the corner pieces of the last layer into their proper positions. Sometimes, two adjacent corners will need to be interchanged. In this case, use the algorithm described in Figure 9 (note that the corners to be swapped must be positioned on the right):
Figure 9
For a diagonal swap, the previous step needs to be completed once in any orientation (provided yellow centre is uppermost) to be produce a situation where an adjacent swap is required. Position the corners to be swapped on the right and repeat the algorithm again.
STEP 6: now that the corner pieces are correctly positioned (but in some cases twisted), we want to complete the yellow face. The first step is to flip the cube so that the white face in uppermost. See Figure 10.
Figure 10
Next, identify a corner that needs to be twisted and place it on the bottom right. See Figure 11.
Figure 11
Finally, carry out the RIGHTY ALG until the corner is correctly positioned. See Figure 12:
Figure 12
After doing this for one corner, rotate the bottom layer so that another yellow sticker that needs twisting is in the bottom right position. Keep doing this until the yellow face is completed.
STEP 7: now the edges on the last layer need to be positioned correctly. There are two possible cases to deal with. The first is when one edge is positioned correctly and the second is when no positions are positioned correctly. The first case algorithm is shown in Figure 13 (sometimes this needs to be done twice).
Figure 13
For the case where no edges are correctly positioned, carry out the above algorithm to get an edge that is correctly positioned and then repeat the algorithm with the correct edge facing forward. And that's it. These moves should lead to a completed cube.
For a mathematical examination of the Rubik's cube, the following Numberphile video is recommended viewing:
I need to keep practising how to embed chess games into my blog. I've done it before using chessbase but recently I played a game on lichess.org and I'm hopefully going to embed the game below:
At first I was disappointed because the game wouldn't display but then it clicked. It was a problem with the browser. I was using the Brave browser and when I switched to Chrome there was no problem. Even though I like supporting Brave, this is not the first little glitch that I've noticed with this browser. One can also download the game as a pgn file and open it in another program like ChessX (that I have installed on my computer). Another interesting alternative offered by lichess.org is to turn the game into a gif (see Figure 1):
Figure 1
There is quite a good computer analysis offered of the game. A screenshot is shown in Figure 2:
Figure 2
One can also posts studies that lichess.org provides. Here is an example of one such study involving the fried liver attack that I have discussed in an earlier blog (Chess: The Fried Liver Attack).
These studies are a valuable resource and one that I should take advantage of. In the past, I've posted on chess a number of times but I hadn't really realised how much until I decided to collate them. The links to these posts are:
I should play online chess more frequently. I watch one or more of agadmator's Chess Channel videos most days but often go for days without playing a game. I should try to develop a rating on one or more of the available chess sites so that I can set some rating goal for myself.
For whatever reason, I decided to be a little more rigorous in my understanding of the phonetical symbols used in English. I realised that this is a good way to help non-native speakers come to grips with the vagaries of pronunciation in the English language. Firstly I located a table (link) showing the most common symbols (see Figure 1). How does a non-native speaker who is relatively new to the English language pronounce a word like theatre? I located an online keyboard that contains the phonetic symbols shown in Figure 1. Using this, it is then possible to represent the word in phonetic format as θɪətə (link). This is shown in Figure 2. Familiarity with the pronunciation of the phonetic symbols allows the word to be pronounced easily and accurately. However, there are problems with relying on the keyboard symbols because mistakes can be made in selecting the correct symbols. For this reason, an online converter is an even better idea.
One such converter I found at toPhonetics. It has the added advantage of allowing the user to hear how the word is pronounced. Mercifully there is a choice between British and American spelling. This is shown in Figure 3.
From time to time, I need to remind myself how to embed games into a Blogger post and so here I am again. This game I played in October of 1981 on the occasion of a match between two clubs, one of which (Rooty Hill) I belonged to at the time. I was lucky enough to win. It's a comedy of errors on both sides really once you analyse the moves carefully. I've added some annotations based on the Stockfish Engine suggestions.
[Event "Rooty Hill versus Smithfield"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "????.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Sean"]
[Black "Lazaridiz"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C86"]
[TimeControl "40 movies in 90 minutes"]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Be7 6. Qe2 b5 7. Bb3 d6 8. c3
O-O 9. Rd1 Na5 10. Bc2 c5 11. d4 Qc7 12. d5 Bg4 { The best approach for Black
is to reposition the Knight on f6 to b6 via d7} 13. Nbd2 { It's recommended
that White play h3 to drive off the Bishop and then play b3 followed by c4.}
13... Nb7 { Recommended here is the Knight manouvre h5 to f4, striking at the
Queen and establishing a strong outpost.} 14. Nf1 c4 15. Ng3 Nc5 16. h3 Bc8 {
Bd7 would seem preferable here, although the plan is to position the Bishop on
b7 presumably.} 17. Be3 { The best here seems to be b4 to drive the Knight
away. If the pawn is taken en passant then there is still a pawn on b3 that can
be moved to b4 to drive the Knight away.} 17... Rd8 18. Rd2 Ncd7 19. Ng5 Nf8
20. f4 exf4 { This definitely seems to be a mistake because it allows a Knight
to later settle on d4. Best is still the Knight manouvre to f4 via h5.} 21.
Bxf4 Ng6 22. Be3 Ne5 23. Nf3 Nfd7 24. Qf2 Nxf3+ 25. gxf3 Re8 26. Nf5 Bf8 27.
Qg3 Ne5 28. Nd4 Qd8 29. Rg2 Qf6 { Advancing the pawn to g6 would be the best
way to blunt White's attack.} 30. Bg5 Qg6 31. f4 { This is actually a blunder
as White's previous advantage evaporates. However, Black does not take
advantage of it by playing 31...f6.} 31... Nd3 { This move is inexplicable and
completely disastrous as White completely regains the initiative.} 32. f5 Bxf5
{ If 32...Qh5, then 33.Bd1 traps the Queen.} 33. exf5 Qh5 34. Bxd3 { 34.Bd1
doesn't work now because of 34...Re1+ but the recommended move is 34.Rf1
preparing to snare the Queen. However, Black would then have had time to
manouevre the Knight to e4 via c5 to attack the White Queen.} 34... cxd3 35.
Qxd3 h6 36. Bf4 { The far more aggressive 36.Bf6 is needed here.} 36... Qh4
37. Rg4 Re1+ 38. Rxe1 Qxe1+ 39. Qf1 Qe7 40. Bxh6 Qf6 41. Bg5 Qe5 42. f6 Re8 43.
Ne6 { 43.fxg7 is crushing but this Knight move is far less effective.} 43...
Qxd5 { Black should close up the position with 43...g6.} 44. Nxf8 Qc5+ 45. Qf2
Re1+ 46. Kg2 Qd5+ 47. Kg3 Qd3+ 48. Kh4 Re2 49. Qd4 Qf5 { Black should have
exchanged Queens here.} 50. fxg7 f6 51. Qxf6 $155 { Engine stockfish-8-64}
1-0
I remember the prelude and the sequel to the match well. There were three other team members in a car that was being driven to the venue. One of the members was a Englishman with a thick Lancashire or similar accent. He worked as a plumber. We must have talking about what jobs each of us had and when he learned that I was a working as a psychiatric nurse at the time, he was not shy about expressing his disbelief that a man (a "real" man I guess he meant) could work in such a job. I could feel the two others cringe as he said this but I didn't get annoyed and went on to explain that males were necessary in psychiatric hospitals because sometimes patients became physically violent. He kept on mumbling about this till we go there. As it turned out, I was the only team member to win out of the eight who competed on the night. Another team member drew his game, so the final score was 1.5 to 6.5. Returning home in the same car, this guy was reluctant to give me credit for scoring the only win of the night. I never saw this guy again but I well remember him just because he was so unapologetically rude.
Figure 1 shows a copy of the original score sheet. It's surprising that it's survived after almost forty years.
Figure 1
Of course, it was played so long ago that's the moves are recorded in the old notational system that I grew up with and with which I'm still more comfortable with. Anyway, the algebraic system replaced it and that's that. There's a couple of moves on the other side of the sheet but I'll only show the first page here. In the sixties and early seventies, I used to play correspondence chess but none of those games survive.
As I read on my Kindle, I always look up words that I'm not familiar with and the Kindle stores them in an app called Vocabulary Builder. Far too infrequently, I have a look at the words that are stored there. I should access this resource more often, perhaps I should make it a weekly activity and include a reminder on my calendar. Currently, there are 1307 words stored there, in chronological order it seems. There's also a resource called Flashcards that present the words individually and seemingly randomly by usage and by definition.
incubus as in Privately he wrote off Trumbull as the dead hand of the past - "an old man", he told a friend, "in an institution formed for the promotion of the arts, but which has been an incubus on them." The definition is a male demon believed to have sexual intercourse with sleeping women but also a cause of difficulty or anxiety, the latter being the sense in which it's used in the example. See Figure 1.
chancery as in Aramaic was the language of Greece's greatest foe, the Persian empire; yet the two-hundred-year-old use of it as a chancery language across the empire meant that there was a clear modelfor Greeks to follow in seeding a Greek-based communications network round their newly won domains. In the UK, the chancery is a division of the High Court of Justice and so it would seem that a chancery language is one that is used in the higher levels of government within a country or empire (as opposed to a vernacular which would be used by the common people).
conflated as in the urban crisis conflates a number of different economic, political and social issues. The definition of conflate is to combine two or more sets of information, texts, ideas etc. into one.
doughty as in his doughty spirit kept him going. It means brave and persistent and derives from the Old English word dohtig.
mooncalf as in As the teenaged Oswald ventured into the world, he was a mooncalf waiting to be exploited. Nowadays, this somewhat archaic word means a foolish person but the word has an interesting history as the following Wikipedia quote illustrates: A mooncalf (or moon-calf, calvaluna) is a monstrous birth, the abortive foetus of a cow or other farm animal. The term was occasionally applied to an abortive human foetus.
The term derives from the once widespread superstition, present in many European folk traditions, that such malformed creatures were the product of the sinister influence of the Moon on foetal development. The earliest recorded use of the term was in 1565, referring to a human false pregnancy.
Modern usage
The term came to also refer to any monstrous or grotesque thing. Shakespeare, for instance, used the term to describe Caliban, the deformed servant of Prospero, in The Tempest.
In H. G. Wells' 1901 novel The First Men in the Moon, large creatures domesticated by the Selenites are referred to as "mooncalves."
Mooncalf is used as a derogatory term indicating someone is a dullard, fool or otherwise not particularly bright or sharp. For example, W. C. Fields in The Bank Dick (1940) advises his prospective son-in-law to avoid being a "mooncalf" by buying shares he has been conned into believing are worth much more than the proffered price.
Mooncalf is also the name of a species of magical creatures in the world of the Harry Potter series. It is described in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them as a shy, nocturnal creature with a smooth, pale grey body, bulging eyes and four spindly legs with large flat feet. Mooncalves perform dances in the moonlight, and are apparently responsible for crop circles. In the film of the same name, Newt Scamander's collection of creatures in his suitcase includes a herd of Mooncalves. See Figure 2.
Figure 2
Wilfred Maxwell, narrator and protagonist of occultist Dion Fortune’s 1938 novel, The Sea Priestess, refers several times to a mentally handicapped character who falls into the sea and disappears as a "mooncalf".
davening as in Wilensky did not follow the service, but some internal program or litany of his own, always rocking back and forth, davening, in his own way. In Judaism, to daven is to recite the prescribed liturgical prayers.
habilitating as in After habilitating in 1922 Banach was appointed associate professor at the Jan Kamimierz University. To habilitate means to qualify for office especially as a teacher in a German university.
sacristan as in Blood that I shed upon ancient battlefields is scraped from the stained earth by Hell's sacristans. A sacristan is a person in charge of a sacristy and its contents. The sacristy is a room in a church where a priest prepares for a service, and where vestments and articles of worship are kept. The word derives from medieval Latin sacristanus from the Latin sacer meaning sacred.
Graf as in She travelled through the world and appeared before kings and queens; archdukes and archduchesses; princes and bishops; Grafs and Grafins ... A Graf is a German word meaning a count: a title of nobility in Germany, Austria, and Sweden, equivalent in rank to an English earl. A Gräfin is the female equivalent.
farceur as in Other Cover to Cover panelists included the biographer Victoria Glendinning, the young actor Jack Klaff, and Kenneth Williams, farceur, review artist, and caustic star of the Carry On films. A farceur is a writer or performer of farces, a comedian.
remuda as in The judge walked out and looked over the horses and selected from that sorry remuda the animal least likely in appearance and caught it up. Remuda is a chiefly North American word for a herd of horses that have been saddle-broken, from which ranch hands choose their mounts for the day.
pinnace as in In the summer of 1556, Stephen Borough was sailing along the Russian coastline in an absurdly small pinnace named the Searchthrift. A pinnace is a chiefly historical term for a small boat, typically with sails and/or several oars, forming part of a warship or other large vessel.
salve as in the idea provide him with a salve for his guilt. A salve is an ointment used to promote healing or the skin or as protection; hence figuratively, something that is soothing or consoling for wounded feelings or an uneasy conscience.
yeoman as in Fortunately, there are some excellent scholars and Cold War experts who have done yeoman service in such matters ... In this sense, yeoman means someone who has rendered great and loyal service but historically (in England), a yeoman was a man who was free and not a servant , and who owned and worked his own land and, just to confuse matters, a servant in a royal or noble household, ranking between a sergeant and a groom or a squire and a page. See Figure 3.
Figure 3
The term is used in the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard, where the enlisted rating of yeoman describes an enlisted service member who performs administrative and clerical work ashore and embarked aboard vessels at sea. They deal with protocol, naval instructions, enlisted evaluations, commissioned officer fitness reports, naval messages, visitors, telephone calls and mail (both conventional and electronic). They organize files and operate office equipment and order and distribute office supplies. They write and type business and social letters, notices, directives, forms and reports.
In the American TV series Star Trek, yeomen are mainly female (although sometimes male) enlisted personnel who assist higher-ranking officers, consistent with U.S. Navy usage. The Urban Dictionary includes a definition of a yeoman as an environmentally aware human being ... a person who is for changing the environment and fighting against global warming e.g. Dude, he's such a yeoman for using those solar panels.
primogeniture as in In the thirteenth century the principle of primogeniture or the hereditary right of the eldest son was first advanced. Primogeniture is the state of being the firstborn child. The pronunciation of the first two syllables is pry-mo rather than prim-o.
empyrean as in it was constructed out of wood and cased with lead, rising, as it seem at the time, into the empyrean. Empyrean means of or relating to heaven and the empyrean is the highest part of heaven, thought by the ancients to be the realm of pure fire but more generally the visible heavens, the sky.
shrift as in go to shrift is an archaic term meaning confession, especially to a priest and derives from the verb shrive. However the term short shrift lives on in the language and there is an interesting explanation of its etymology to be found in The Phrase Finder:
What's the meaning of the phrase 'Short shrift'?
To give 'short shrift' is to give little and unsympathetic attention to.
What's the origin of the phrase 'Short shrift'?
Shrift? Not a word you hear every day. In fact, apart from in this expression, it is now so rarely used that it's hard to think of a shrift that isn't short.
The verb shrive is also now an almost forgotten antique. A priest in a confession, often when the confessor was near to death, would shrive him or her by imposing a penance, called a shrift, in order to provide absolution.
Short shriftShrove Tuesday, which most of us in the UK now refer to as Pancake Day, derives from shriving - originally a day when people were shriven or shrove; more recently a day when we toss pancakes.
In the 17th century, criminals were sent to the scaffold immediately after sentencing and only had time for a cursory 'short shrift' before being hanged. From that literal beginning 'short shrift' migrated into meaning 'give cursory consideration to'.
The term 'short shrift' is ancient and has been part of the English language since at least the 16th century.
The first known use of 'short shrift' in print relates to the history of the British monarchy. Following the death of Edward IV in 1483, the Duke of Gloucester was appointed Lord Protector of England. He accused Lord Hastings of plotting against him and arranged for him to be executed. Hastings was allowed only a short shrift as Gloucester was anxious to get his dinner.
An account of this story was printed almost a hundred years later in by the English writer Raphael Holinshed in The Chronicles of England, 1577:
Lorde Chamberlaine, whome the Protectour hade speede and shrine him apace, for by Saint Paule I will not to dinner till I see thy head off. It booted him not [it mattered not to him] to aske why, but made a short shrift for a longer would not be suffered, the Protector made so much hast to dinner.
Shakespeare had undoubtedly read the Chronicles before he wrote Richard III, first performed in 1594, as his account of the events differ little from Holinshed's:
GLOUCESTER
Off with his head! Now, by Saint Paul I swear,
I will not dine until I see the same.
RATCLIFF:
Dispatch, my lord [Hastings]; the duke would be at dinner:
Make a short shrift; he longs to see your head.
'Short shrift' didn't migrate across the Atlantic very quickly. The first citation that I can find from there is from the Adams Sentinel, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, August 1841:
"The negroes were to be tried on Wednesday, and it was believed that a short shrift and a speedy doom would be awarded to the guilty."
The use of the terms "meme" and "trope" are widespread nowadays and I often have difficulty actually explaining to myself what these two terms mean. I thought I'd use this post to clarify my thinking in regards to these two terms. Let's start with a meme.
1. an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means.
2. an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations.
In 1 we see the earlier pre-Internet use of the term and in 2 we see the more Internet-based use of the term. Silly old Richard Dawkins, in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene", was the first to introduce the term. In the video below, he speaks to an interviewer on the 28th of June 2013 about the history of the term:
Here is a lifewire take by Paul Gil on what memes are (dated January 2020):
A meme is a virally-transmitted photograph that is embellished with text that pokes fun at a cultural symbol or social idea. The majority of modern memes are captioned photos that are intended to be funny, often as a way to publicly ridicule human behaviour. Other memes can be videos and verbal expressions. Some memes have heavier and more philosophical content. The world of memes (which rhymes with 'teams') is noteworthy for two reasons: it is a worldwide social phenomenon, and memes behave like a mass of infectious flu and cold viruses, traveling from person to person quickly through social media.
Figure 1 shows an example that tickled my fancy, taken from the lifewire site:
Figure 1
Reducing a meme to a virally-transmitted photograph with added text does not do the concept justice of course and most of these sorts of memes are pretty lame. Just yesterday I came across another example of a meme on CNN Entertainment:
That 'LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Tinder' meme was started by none other than Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton didn't need to add "social media prowess" to her laundry list of talents. She's been gifting the public timeless zingers and Instagram-worthy photos before the app even existed. And yet, the petite monarch of country music has dipped her manicured toes into a very 21st-century accomplishment: Inventing a successful meme. Ok, boomer! It appears Ms. Parton was the very first to take part in what some have dubbed the "social challenge," a four-photo mosaic of potential profile photos for social media sites LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Tinder. See Figure 1.
Figure 1
She posted this on January 21st 2020 and to quote from the article again:
Celebrities like Jennifer Garner, Naomi Campbell and Mark Ruffalo plus thousands of non-famous folks quickly latched onto the idea and posted their own versions. Theirs were cute and winking, too, and mainly functioned as an excuse to post four flattering photos at once.
So this is what separates a meme from, let's say, a video that goes viral like. A meme is characterised by "behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation" and in the age of the Internet this means "an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations." A viral video just gets watched a lot, it doesn't necessarily get imitated.
Let's move on to tropes. What exactly is a trope? It would be hard to do better than to reproduce the content on this site that deals with examples of tropes:
The word "trope" may sound fancy and literary, but you know several of them already. In the arts, a trope is simply a common convention in a particular medium. It refers to anything that gets used often enough to be recognised.
When you see a kid running around with a cape and know they're pretending to be a superhero, you've recognised the trope that superheroes wear capes. That's all a trope is: a commonplace, recognisable plot element, theme or visual cue that conveys something in the arts. Every genre has distinct tropes of its own, and we will explore several examples of tropes below.
Cinematic Examples of Tropes
Constrained by their limited runtime, movies often rely heavily on tropes to convey maximum information to the viewer in the shortest possible time. Here are a few you may spot in a theatre near you.
Bad Guys Wear Black: There's no reason villains have to dress in black. But if a character is intended to be either cool, evil, or cool and evil, they're exponentially more likely to have monochrome wardrobes. Take a look at the classic Disney villains: Maleficent, Jafar, Ursula, Cruella de Vil all dress in black. Even Scar has a black mane!
Comic Relief: In movies intended to be lighthearted, especially in genres like action that have the potential to become overly harsh and violent, a common trope is including a funny sidekick to lighten the tone. Actors like Michael Pena and Kevin Hart have built whole careers on this trope.
Reluctant Hero: When you see a famous actor living a quiet, comfortable life and then bad guys kill his dog or kidnap his friend or drag him into one last heist, you're watching the trope of the reluctant hero. Reluctant heroes can be tragic, like Bruce Banner forced to turn into the Hulk, or exciting, like John Wick.
Comic Book Tropes
Comic books draw on the tropes of two worlds: literature and visual art. Meshing the two forms creates fresh tropes unique to the comic book genre.
Assemble!: In the real world, people with radically different value systems tend to avoid each other. It's human nature to connect more easily with people who share a lot in common. But superhero comics and movies present teams of people with different ideas and priorities in order to create the conflict that drives the story forward, as is the case with Marvel's Avengers or DC's Suicide Squad. That's a trope.
Capes: As The Incredibles memorably reminded us, wrapping a long, dangling garment around your neck, then going into a dangerous situation, is a really bad idea. But ever since the debut of Superman and Batman in the 1930s, if not before, the cape has been the signature superhero garment.
Teenage Sidekicks: Speaking of strange things to bring to a fight, why would anyone ever endanger a child they're responsible for by exposing them to criminals and supervillains? But it's a powerful trope designed to engage younger readers in the action. Robin in Batman, Speedy in Arrow and Hit-Girl in Kick-Ass are all examples of this trope.
Literary Tropes
Literature could almost be called the origin of tropes. Writing stories down and circulating them made it possible to identify and employ literary structures that seemed successful. Here is a small sample of the near-infinite number of literary tropes.
Lady Chatterley's Lover: In many works of romance literature, especially those set earlier in history, the romantic pair is separated by social class. She's an aristocrat; he's a gamekeeper. He's a professor; she sells flowers in the street. This not only adds a bit of taboo titillation, it provides valuable conflict to motivate the plot. Many of Jane Austen's novels, notably Sense and Sensibility, are driven by romances that cross the class barriers of 19th century Britain. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby employed the same trope in New York during the Roaring Twenties, and Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians illustrates the same theme in modern Singapore.
Teens Are Forever: In young adult fiction, relationships established when characters are young frequently continue more or less unchanged into adulthood. Characters may marry and have children with the same person they gave their first Valentine to in grade school, or pine forever after the object of their first crush. Severus Snape from the Harry Potter series is a classic example of this trope, motivated by his teenage crush on Lily Potter well into middle age.
Size Means Power: In literary genres that emphasise physical conflict, a writer will often linger over the sheer physical size of a character. Doing so emphasises not only their potential strength, but by extension their capacity for violence. This is another powerfully enduring trope, ranging from the Biblical story of David and Goliath to the Mountain from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.
Tropes Are Not Evil
To call something a trope is not to call it a cliche. A cliche is a trope that has been used poorly. Tropes, by contrast, are a vital part of the artistic and narrative process. They define how we communicate.
Of course a great deal has been written on literary tropes. Here is a list taken from Wikipedia that references most of them, the majority of which are quite obscure.
accismus: expressing the want of something by denying it[16]
allegory: A metaphoric narrative in which the literal elements indirectly reveal a parallel story of symbolic or abstract significance.[17][18][19]
allusion: Covert reference to another work of literature or art
apostrophe: Directing the attention away from the audience to an absent third party, often in the form of a personified abstraction or inanimate object.
archaism: Use of an obsolete, archaic word (a word used in olden language, e.g. Shakespeare's language)
auxesis: Form of hyperbole, in which a more important-sounding word is used in place of a more descriptive term
bathos: Pompous speech with a ludicrously mundane worded anti-climax
burlesque metaphor: An amusing, overstated or grotesque comparison or example.
rhetorical question: Asking a question as a way of asserting something. Asking a question which already has the answer hidden in it. Or asking a question not for the sake of getting an answer but for asserting something (or as in a poem for creating a poetic effect)
superlative: Saying that something is the best of something or has the most of some quality, e.g. the ugliest, the most precious etc.
syllepsis: The use of a word in its figurative and literal sense at the same time or a single word used in relation to two other parts of a sentence although the word grammatically or logically applies to only one
syncatabasis (condescension, accommodation): adaptation of style to the level of the audience
synchoresis: A concession made for the purpose of retorting with greater force.
synecdoche: Form of metonymy, referring to a part by its whole, or a whole by its part
synesthesia: Description of one kind of sense impression by using words that normally describe another.
tautology: Superfluous repetition of the same sense in different words Example: The children gathered in a round circle
