Speaking to a meeting of his Syriza party, Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, said:
“Το Ταμείο δειλιάζει να πει την αλήθεια, κοιτώντας στα μάτια τους Ευρωπαίους εταίρους του. Προτιμά να παίζει ένα διαρκές παιχνίδι πόκερ, κωλυσιεργώντας. Ή αλλιώς, όπως το λέμε εδώ στην Ελλάδα, να παίζει τον μουτζούρη.”
“The IMF shies from telling the truth, looking its European partners in the eyes. It prefers to drag its feet, playing an endless game of poker—or, as we say in Greece, to play a game of ‘Moudzouris’.”
As IMF members may be curious to know what their game is like in the eyes of Greeks, or at least in the mind of the prime minister (or his speechwriter), let us say Moudzouris is a variant of what is known as Old Maid in English-speaking countries or Schwarzer Peter (‘Black Peter’) in Germany and Le Pouilleux in France (‘The louse-ridden one’).
In the Greek Moudzouris (‘The smudged one’), all the face cards are removed from the deck except the king of spades. Players take one card in turn from the player next to them and discard any pairs in their hand. The game goes on until one player is left with the one unmatched card, the king of spades. This player is smudged with soot and becomes the ‘Moudzouris’.
Let us think back and try to remember who has always been left with soot on the face in the games we have been playing with our lenders.
Wikipedia entry: Old Maid
“Το Ταμείο δειλιάζει να πει την αλήθεια, κοιτώντας στα μάτια τους Ευρωπαίους εταίρους του. Προτιμά να παίζει ένα διαρκές παιχνίδι πόκερ, κωλυσιεργώντας. Ή αλλιώς, όπως το λέμε εδώ στην Ελλάδα, να παίζει τον μουτζούρη.”
“The IMF shies from telling the truth, looking its European partners in the eyes. It prefers to drag its feet, playing an endless game of poker—or, as we say in Greece, to play a game of ‘Moudzouris’.”
As IMF members may be curious to know what their game is like in the eyes of Greeks, or at least in the mind of the prime minister (or his speechwriter), let us say Moudzouris is a variant of what is known as Old Maid in English-speaking countries or Schwarzer Peter (‘Black Peter’) in Germany and Le Pouilleux in France (‘The louse-ridden one’).
In the Greek Moudzouris (‘The smudged one’), all the face cards are removed from the deck except the king of spades. Players take one card in turn from the player next to them and discard any pairs in their hand. The game goes on until one player is left with the one unmatched card, the king of spades. This player is smudged with soot and becomes the ‘Moudzouris’.
Let us think back and try to remember who has always been left with soot on the face in the games we have been playing with our lenders.
Wikipedia entry: Old Maid