He died happy

I decided to teach the oldest the game of Hangman today, wherein Person A thinks of a word and draws a space for each letter. Person B tries to guess the letters in the word and, ultimately, the word itself. For each incorrect letter guessed, a part of a man's body is drawn hanging from a noose on a gallows. If the hanging man is completed before the word is completely revealed or correctly guessed, Person A wins.

Usually, I only draw a head, a torso, two arms, and two legs, meaning 6 incorrect guesses end the game. But since it was his first time, and the strategy behind it is therefore new to him, I added in two eyes, two ears, a nose, and a mouth, effectively upping his incorrect guess threshhold to 11 before the game would end on the twelth incorrect guess.

After a few rounds, he looked at me, very puzzled.

"What part is confusing you, honey?"

"Mom, wouldn't that make the man, you know, dead?"

"Um, yes. We don't do that anymore. But in the Old West especially, hangings happened."

"I know. I know. But, Mom?"

"Yes?"

"Why do you make him smiling?"

His argument is nothing if not

cogent
adjective
Appealing to the intellect or powers of reasoning; convincing.
[Latin cōgēns, cōgent-, present participle of cōgere, to force : co-, co- + agere, to drive.]
"cogent." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 08 . 2006. http://www.answers.com/topic/cogency