Cast iron robotip: France to win World Cup

Who wins? A toy decides

By Chris Williams • Get more from this author

Posted in Science, 7th July 2006 14:45 GMT

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England's inevitable whimpering limp back to Blighty aside, the World Cup is always a relatively unpredictable affair, a fact which sends the bookies cackling all the way to the nearest Fabergé egg dealer every four years.

But no more. Step forward Unazukin, "a small fairy. Usually...under the big mushroom in the woods," according to her biography.

Actually Unazukin is a slighty higher-tech version of a magic 8-ball marketed by the robot fetishists at Japanese toy giant Bandai. Ask her a question, and she responds with an affirmative nod or a negative shake of her super-cutesy robohead.

Web designer and Unazukin owner Alan Lubin decided to deploy the toy's decision-making powers as soothsayer through a voyage in World Cup gambling novicery, having decided a blog about his real life would go something this:

Went home and sat in silence with angry girlfriend and we shared quality time staring at the television for the rest of the night.

So far Unazukin has gotten seven out of seven predictions correct, which is an improvement on Alan Hansen, and a damn sight better than Andy Townsend, Tactics Truck™ or nay.

Assuming the result of a football match is an essentially stochastic event, bashing those numbers into The Register Probatron 3000, we figure she had a less than 1 in 125 chance of a run like that, and we like those odds.

She's got France to take the final. Allez les bleus! ®

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