Brett Kavanaugh’s senior yearbook page, like his 1982 calendar, had been like a puzzle waiting to be solved.
Wikipedia, the crowd-sourced online encyclopedia, was edited after his testimony to make his explanation of one of the mysteries make sense.
One of the puzzles had been what was meant by the term “Devil’s Triangle.”
The attorney Michael Avenatti suggested there was some sexual innuendo, and entries online had similarly nefarious definitions of the term. Avenatti’s client later accused Kavanaugh of being present at a party where she said she was “gang” raped. Those accusations featured in the hearing, and Kavanaugh refuted them as pure fantasy during his opening statement.
It was not until questioning by Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, however, that Kavanaugh got to Devil’s Triangle.
“Drinking game,” said Kavanaugh to Whitehouse, who asked how you play.
“Three glasses in a triangle,” said Kavanaugh.
“And?” said Whitehouse.
“You ever played quarters?” asked Kavanaugh.
“No,” said Whitehouse.
“OK, it’s a quarters game,” said Kavanaugh.
It’s not a very popular version of the game, however, since there wasn’t any mention, per Google (people were immediately Googling), of Devil’s Triangle as a type of quarters.
Quarters is where you try to bounce a quarter into a glass and may have to drink what’s inside.
Who knows what they were doing in the ’80s in Kavanaugh’s set, but that particular game didn’t penetrate much further into the world.
Perhaps sensing that it needed an online presence, someone on Capitol Hill, operating from a congressional IP address, decided to update Wikipedia to include an entry for “* “Devil’s Triangle”, a popular drinking game enjoyed by friends of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.”
Congress-Edits is a Twitter bot that tracks Wikipedia updates from congressional IP addresses. The entry has since been removed.
Other congressional Wikipedia editors were posting the DC addresses of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to the site. Those too have been removed. Mean tricks expand far beyond high school in Washington.
Devil’s Triangle, drinking game or something sinister, wasn’t the the only yearbook question for which Kavanaugh had an answer Thursday. The yearbook seemed to disrespect a woman named “Renate,” who in the page Kavanaugh said he was an “alumnius” of. A woman named Renate Dolphin rescinded her support for Kavanaugh after seeing it.
The New York Times had reported the entry, along with more than a dozen others on other pages of the all-boys high school yearbook, was part of a boast by football players about Renate at the time.
At the hearing, Kavanaugh was remorseful about that implication and said the entry was meant to suggest Renate was “one of us” even though she clearly came away with a very different impression. He said she had gone to dances with several of his friends.
But the page was also important in the context of Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation that an inebriated Kavanaugh assaulted her the summer before his senior year. Many of the cryptic entries seemed to refer to heavy drinking and vomiting from drinking. Kavanaugh had an explanation for the vomiting, or being the biggest contributor to the “ralph club” on beach week, since he said he’s a lifelong sufferer from a “weak stomach.”
“Boofing” is also mentioned. There have, like with Devil’s Triangle, been theories as to what this meant. Kavanaugh argued that on his page, “that refers to flatulence; we were 16.”