Ploy

(Did you mean a Ron Bennett fanzine?)

In Fansmanship, a ploy is a ruse or other clever means by which one appears to be doing one thing while actually accomplishing some hidden agenda self-serving purpose.

A cited ploy in early Conventionsmanship, e.g., involved charting out in advance all the squeaky boards in the room where a convention program was to be held, showing up 15 minutes after it was scheduled (since program items in those days rarely started on time), stepping on the boards to draw attention to your arrival, leading those awaiting, as the program finally gets under way, to the inescapable conclusion that you are so important to the proceedings that it could not possibly start until you arrived.

Mundane dictionaries date ploy in the sense of “a calculated plan” to the 1950s, which is why Fancyclopedia 2 had to explain it.

From Fancyclopedia 2, ca. 1959

A guileful maneuver. Its present popularity stems from Stephen Potter's Gamesmanship, but the word is legitimate Scots dialect for employ, from Latin in plico.

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Fanspeak

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