CLM = C = clock

clobber vt.

To overwrite, usually unintentionally: "I walked off the end of the array and clobbered the stack." Compare mung, scribble, trash, and smash the stack.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.

Clobber is a combinatorial game for two players. It can be played on any graph, although usually it is played on a rectangular board (of any size) divided into squares (for example, a chess board or a go board).

The two sides, represented by white and black, have only one type of piece each, called a stone or pawn. Each node on the graph or square on the board can hold at most one piece. A legal move is to "clobber" one of your opponent's pieces by moving one square in any direction (possibly including diagonal, depending on the variant you are playing) onto a piece of the opposite color.

These are the only legal moves; one cannot move without clobbering, nor can one clobber ones' own pieces. A player called upon to move who has no legal move loses the game, as in most combinatorial game theory.

If one player has a possible move in a component of a clobber position, the other player does as well, so that one cannot store up territory, as in a game like Go or Domineering. Consequently, every clobber position has infinitesimal value, meaning the combinatorial value of a clobber position is between -1/n and 1/n for every integer n. Clobber positions may take nimber values like star or star two, or partizan values such as up, double up, or (maybe) up second.

1. verb To clobber; to hit someone. Implies a heavy hit, as with a club or fist. "Shut up or I'll clobber you!"

2. verb To clobber; to beat someone in a fight or contest. To defeat someone. "We clobbered them!"

3. verb To clobber; to treat someone or something harshly. To denounce or criticize. "The movie got clobbered by the critics."

4. verb To clobber; to paint over the existing decoration, especially applied to the reapplication of enamel on a ceramic piece.

5. noun UK or Australian slang; Clothes and personal belongings. "There was dust and clobber everywhere.".

6 and 7. According to Webster, clobber is also an alternate form of clabber (noun Soured milk, verb To curdle), and a shortening of klaberjass (noun a card game in the pinochle family).

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