A large screen presents a view of another tug-of-war team somewhere in the world. Below this a powerful electric motor, firmly anchored to the ground, exerts precisely the same amount of pull on the rope as this other team, thus enabling world-wide tug-of-war competition, without all that tedious getting together in muddy fields.
-- hippo, Sep 14 2010

This would allow "handicaps" to be introduced, so that a team of puny primary school children could take on the brutes of an American Football squad.

Taking it further, a team of ants, suitably harnessed and in pursuit of enemy termites as an incentive, could be expected to have a reasonable chance of defeating a corresponding team of logging elephants.
-- xenzag, Sep 14 2010


[Ian] yes, latency would be a problem
[xen] you're right, handicaps would be needed as you'd also be able to compete under different weather conditions, different terrain, and on surfaces with different coefficients of friction
-- hippo, Sep 15 2010


This would be still cleaner if done strictly with virtualness. It would be a test of mouse/cursor strengths.
-- bungston, Sep 15 2010


[Trying to think up rules for 'Online Tug-of-Love' service]
-- DrBob, Sep 17 2010


Very halfbaked. That's more like it.

But how do I keep from falling into and breaking the screen?

DrBob, the rules would be: don't push without also pulling, and don't use your teeth.
-- RayfordSteele, Sep 18 2010



random, halfbakery