Oddity Central

The Hide-and-Seek World Championship is an Actual Event
Indian Men Detained for Forgery Walk Free after Faking Court Documents
Eat Up or Pay Up – German Restaurants Charge Patrons Extra for Not Finishing Their Meals

The Hide-and-Seek World Championship is an Actual Event

Posted: 23 Aug 2016 06:47 AM PDT

The game of hide-and-seek may not yet be an Olympic sport – although efforts are being made in that regard – but it’s apparently popular enough to have its own world championship.

What started out as a fun one-time event thought up by small Italian publication CTRL Magazine, in 2010, eventually turned into an annual event that grew with every edition. This year, the 6th Nascodino World Championship – “nascondino” is Italian for hide-and-seek – will take place on the the 3rd and 4th of September, in the beautiful village of Consonno, once a bustling tourist attraction complete with its own zoo, sightseeing train and several eclectic buildings. It has since become a ghost town, but event organizers consider the settlement perfect for a grand hide-and-seek competition.

The rules of the tournament are a bit more complex than the childhood game we all used to play growing up, but then again, this is a contest for grownups (18-year-olds and above). Participants may register to take part in the World Nascondino Championship in teams of five, after paying a €125 fee per team. The teams are then divided into four groups and one person per group hides while a “neutral searching team” counts 60 seconds. The hidden player then has 10 minutes to come out of their hiding spot and reach a soft mattress (for diving purposes) placed in the middle of a field without being found or at least before a member of the searching team. If they fail to reach their target within the time limit, players are not awarded any points. The game goes on for two days until the ultimate winner is declared.

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Posted: 23 Aug 2016 05:21 AM PDT

Two notorious Indian criminals recently detained for forging documents and scamming people have managed to secure bail by doing what they do best – faking documents signed by nonexistent cops and guarantors.

Mohammed Lukman Shaikh, 48, and Bashir Mulla, 62, both with long criminal records under their belts, were put behind bars a little over a month ago for forging passports and other Government-issued documents. The two were so well-known for their document-faking talents that during their trial hearings, the Thane court warned police to recheck documents submitted during the proceedings, as both had a history of fabricating papers and cheating the authorities. Even so, Shaikh and Mulla managed to use their skills to secure bail and now they are nowhere to be found.

The two con artists were in judicial custody when they managed to secure bail and walk free. This happened a month ago, but the police just learned about it three days ago, after Vijay Sanap, a constable attached to Srinagar police station in Thane, discovered something suspicious in the paperwork of their case.

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Posted: 23 Aug 2016 02:36 AM PDT

A number of restaurants in Germany have come up with a somewhat controversial way of fighting food waste – charging patrons a small fee if they cannot finish all the food on their plates.

Yuoki, a sushi restaurant in Stuttgart, Germany, is not your everyday all-you-can-eat buffet. For starters, there isn’t an actual buffet to fill your plate at. Instead, patrons are seated at a table and provided with iPads which they can use to order up to five small dishes every ten minutes. They can eat as much as they want for 120 minutes, but having the food delivered at short intervals allows diners to constantly assess how hungry they are and order accordingly, preventing food waste. Also, owner Luan Guoyu believes our “eyes are bigger than our stomachs”, so not being able to see the cooked food at the buffet prevents people from ordering more food that they can actually eat just because they like the way it looks.

But Luan Guoyu’s most effective way of fighting food waste, and the one that has attracted media attention, is his €1 ($1.15) fine for food still left on the plate. “It's called ‘all-you-can-eat,’ not ‘all-you-can-chuck-away,’ he says, adding that the extra charge is not meant to increase his profits, but to act as a reminder not to waste food. In the two years since Yuoki implemented this “eat up or pay up” policy, Guoyu claims he has collected €900 ($1,020) to €1,000 ($1,133) in food waste fees, which he plans to donate to charity.

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