Just recently I was in a conversation with a number of UK mainlanders and we had a debate over what “tories” meant, apparently disproportionately ordinarily it refers to a political party and it’s not usual to use it as short for “territories” as I’ve used it (according to how the debate ended, it was half and half between them). And once again I’m reminded of how people feel to look back at their usage of a word/phrase over the years and cringe.
More tragically, me and a friend were embarrassed once upon realizing everyone was confusing “encephalitis” with “hydrocephalus” when talking to someone about their kid with hydrocephalus. Awkward because encephalitis is caused by HIV.
I’m a bit sleepy and ate far too much seafood to process all you’ve written here presently – but the specific thing I was referring to is called Zermelo’s Theorem. Which is up there for top 10 theories with cool-sounding names, as far as I’m concerned – here it is in case you’re interested (I periodically forget about this theorem and it’s always neat to re-find it – which you could call an… optimally suboptimal move)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo's_theorem_(game_theory)