A blind pig

Posted by Bob on July 29, 2007

In Reply to: A blind pig posted by ESC on July 29, 2007

: : I just found this forum while looking up the saying, "Even a blind pig finds a truffle now and then." It's never made sense to me, and I found an old posting here that seems wrong to me. I understand it to mean that even a pig handicapped for the hunt gets lucky once in a while and finds a truffle. Applied to a person, it would suggest that even someone incompetent at a certain activity may succeed by luck occasionally.

: : The problem with this is that, as I suspected, a pig doesn't search for truffles by vision, but by smell (I looked it up), so a blind pig should be as successful finding truffles as a sighted one and needn't rely on luck or occasional happenstance, as I do to hit a 3-iron well. Any thoughts?

: My thoughts are: the way I've heard the expression is, "Even a blind hog finds an acorn every once in a while." And thought No. 2, now that you mentioned blind pigs, check out Blind Pig Records: www.blindpigrecords.com/ Great music. And that is all I can think of.

And I've always heard it as "Even a blind pig finds an acorn..."
so I tied a Google war to see the frequency of each variation:
hog/truffle = 39 hits
hog/acorn = 3170
pig/truffle = 450
pig/acorn = 2760
So it's a close call between hog and pig, but acorns trump truffles. A good result with a 3-iron, however, remains in the field of capricious happenstance. One is reminded of Lee Trevino's (attributed to, anyway) joke: "if lightning approaches, hold a 1-iron over your head, because even God can't hit a 1-iron."

• A blind pig Smokey Stover 29/July/07
  • A blind pig RRC 29/July/07
• A blind pig Smokey Stover 29/July/07
  • A blind pig ESC 29/July/07