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Re: Rare Entries contest MSB35 begins

teabag420

8/25/2003 7:54:00 PM

It's not much fun if you can't post the answers and see others'
attempts. Am I missing something? My few answers are below... I
wouldn't win anyway. I did not use any search engines for these
answers, they are from my head. Don't read them if it would be
cheating to do so.



msb@vex.net (Mark Brader) wrote in message news:<vkhs4bgihc6m82@corp.supernews.com>...
> [My first attempt to post this, about 12 hours earlier, seems to have
> vanished without a trace. My apologies if you see it an extra time.]
>
> This is another Rare Entries contest in the MSB series.
>
> As always, reply ONLY BY EMAIL to msb@vex.net; do not post to any
> newsgroup. Entries must reach here by Saturday, September 6, 2003
> (by Toronto time, zone -4). See below the questions for a detailed
> explanation, which is unchanged from my previous contest.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 0. Name a fictional sport.

The martial art of greenoch.

> 1. Name one of the five original categories of Nobel Prize.

Demolition?

> 2. Name a lake on the North American mainland whose area is larger
> than that of any lake that is wholly or partly in Switzerland.

Tahoe

> 3. Name a single English word that names a color, and for which the
> basic search at <http://www.goog... reports under 1,000,000
> hits.

Ecru

> 4. Give a single word used in English for a field of activity that
> is typically in large part artistic and typically involves living
> trees in an important way.

arborism
(treefortology?)

> 5. Name an independent country that is mostly on continental mainland,
> but contains a capital city (not necessarily the national capital)
> that is mostly or entirely on an island or islands.

Denmark owns Greenland

> 6. Name something that it would not be unusual to find used to form
> the outer surface of the exterior wall of a building. Your answer
> must be a single word that is an English noun not being used as
> a brand name.

vinyl
stucco
cedar
paint

> 7. Name someone (fictional character, not performer) who has appeared
> as a living character in two or more of the five Star Wars movies
> so far released. You may use any unambiguous name to identify
> the character. ##### Trap: no robots

Lando Calrisian
> 8. Give a word or phrase that is still used as the name of a place,
> thing, substance, etc., and which is known to have been chosen by
> a specific person for a specific reason that was actually wrong.
> Answers embodying the same error will be counted as equivalent.

This one's tough. Positive/negative, in the context of electricity.
Electrons flow from the negative terminal to the positive terminal.

> 9. Give a single word in English that names a musical instrument,
> or class of musical instruments, with the property that there is
> exactly one part of the instrument whose vibrations are the primary
> origin of all sounds produced when one of these instruments is
> played in the usual manner. "Part" is used here in the sense of
> assembling a new instrument from a set of parts.

accordion
------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> As usual, for each of the items above, your objective is to give a
> response that (1) is correct, and (2) will be duplicated by as FEW
> other people as possible. Feel free to use any reference material
> you like to RESEARCH your answers, but you are asked NOT to use
> mechanical or computer assistance in actually CHOOSING your answer
> from the different possibilities -- this is meant to be a game of wits.
>
> Low score wins; a perfect score is 1. The answer slates of the top few
> entrants will be posted.
>
> If your answer on a category is correct, then your score is the number
> of people who gave that answer or an answer I consider equivalent. If
> wrong, or if you skip the question, you get a high score as a penalty.
> The scores on the different questions are MULTIPLIED to produce a final
> score. All entrants will be listed in order of score in the results
> posting, but high (bad) scores may be omitted.
>
> The penalty score for a wrong question is the median of:
> - the number of entrants
> - the square root of that number, rounded up to an integer
> - double the largest number of entrants giving the same answer
> as each other on the question
>
> For example, say I'd asked for a color on the current Canadian flag.
> 20 people say red, 1 says white, 2 say gules, and 4 say blue. After
> looking up gules I decide it's the same color as red and should be
> treated as a duplicate answer; then the 22 people who said either red
> or gules get 22 points each. The one person who said white gets a
> perfect score of 1 point. The four people who say blue are wrong, and
> get a penalty score. The penalty score is the median of:
> - number of entrants = 27
> - sqrt(27) = 5.196+, rounded up = 6
> - double the most popular answer's count = 22 x 2 = 44
> or in this case, 27.
>
>
> For purposes of these contests, the Earth is considered to be divided
> into disjoint areas each of which is either (1) an independent country,
> (2) a dependency, or (3) without national government. The determining
> factor for whether a place is an independent country is whether it is
> listed as one in reference sources. Any place with representatives in
> an independent country's legislature is considered a part of that
> country rather than a dependency of it. Claims that are not enforced
> or generally recognized don't count, and places currently fighting a
> war of secession don't count either. The European Union is considered a
> association of independent countries, not an independent country itself.
>
> Unless otherwise indicated, distances between places on the Earth are
> measured along a great circle route, and distance involving cities
> are based on the city center. Boundaries are on a de facto basis.
>
> If I ask for a word, it must be listed (or implied by a listing, as
> with plurals) in a suitable dictionary; if two or more inflectional
> variants or other closely related forms are correct answers, they
> will be treated as equivalent unless the question implies otherwise.
>
> If I ask for a web page, it must be one that existed before I posted
> the contest.
>
>
> As moderator, I will be the sole judge of what answers are correct,
> and whether two answers with the same meaning (like red and gules)
> are to be considered the same. It is also possible that I may consider
> one answer to be a more specific variant of another: in that case it
> will usually be scored as if they are different, but the other, less
> specific variant will be scored as if they are the same. However,
> this rule will NOT apply if the question asks for an answer "in general
> terms"; a more specific answer will then at best be treated the same
> as the more general one. I will do my best to be fair on all such
> issues; if you don't like my judgements feel free to say so or to run
> a contest of your own.
>
>
> For my convenience please do not quote this message when responding.
> Mail only your answers, and these in plain ASCII or ISO 8859-1 text:
> no HTML, attachments, Micros--t character sets, etc. (People who fail
> to comply will be chastised in the results posting.)
>
> Your message should preferably consist of just the 10 answers, numbered
> 0 to 9, along with any explanations required, and your name (if it won't
> be in the From: line). You can expect an acknowledgement when I read
> it. Your email address will be posted in the results if I don't see
> both a first and a last name, or an explicit request for a particular
> form of your name to be used.
>
> I may ask you to supply further information or to justify an answer,
> and I reserve the right to make a posting to consult on any judgement
> issue before my final decision.
>
> Questions are not intended to be hard to understand, but normally no
> clarifications will be given during the contest. Only the first answer
> you submit counts; no changes are allowed after submitting an entry,
> nor alternate answers within an entry. If you provide any explanatory
> remarks along with your answers, you are responsible for making it
> sufficiently clear that they are not part of the answers.
>
> Good luck and have fun.
7 Answers

David Eppstein

8/25/2003 8:04:00 PM

0

In article <31900951.0308251153.10422166@posting.google.com>,
teabag420@hotmail.com (Teabag) wrote:

> It''s not much fun if you can''t post the answers and see others''
> attempts. Am I missing something?

Prematurely posted responses distort the contest -- everyone else now
needs to think about whether to be different from what was posted or
counterstrategically the same as what was posted. Put another way,
posting answers would give an unfair advantage to people who see the
questions more quickly (they have not yet propagated to my own usenet
server, and may never do so) since without much thought they can stake
out answers which other people will not dare to collide with.

The other reasons not to post the answers are that Mark explicitly asked
you not to do it, and will not score your results.

You get to see others'' attempts after the contest is over.

--
David Eppstein http://www.ics.uci.edu/...
Univ. of California, Irvine, School of Information & Computer Science

MATTHEW RUST

8/26/2003 2:58:00 AM

0


"David Eppstein" <eppstein@ics.uci.edu> wrote in message
news:eppstein-2B1621.13035025082003@news.service.uci.edu...
> In article <31900951.0308251153.10422166@posting.google.com>,
> teabag420@hotmail.com (Teabag) wrote:
>
> > It''s not much fun if you can''t post the answers and see others''
> > attempts. Am I missing something?
>
> Prematurely posted responses distort the contest -- everyone else now
> needs to think about whether to be different from what was posted or
> counterstrategically the same as what was posted. Put another way,
> posting answers would give an unfair advantage to people who see the
> questions more quickly (they have not yet propagated to my own usenet
> server, and may never do so) since without much thought they can stake
> out answers which other people will not dare to collide with.
>
> The other reasons not to post the answers are that Mark explicitly asked
> you not to do it, and will not score your results.
>
> You get to see others'' attempts after the contest is over.
>
> --
> David Eppstein http://www.ics.uci.edu/...
> Univ. of California, Irvine, School of Information & Computer Science

Not to worry David, his answers were crap

Chuck Grant

8/26/2003 7:08:00 AM

0



Teabag wrote:

> It''s not much fun if you can''t post the answers and see others''
> attempts. Am I missing something?

Reading, understanding, and following the rules,
Asking a question before you proceed with something you don''t understand,
Using proper spoiler notification in your post,
Passing judgment on something before trying it,
Not realizing your actions screw things up for others,

Yes, I would say you missed something.

And apparently you missed that the object of the contest was to guess
what others would answer. Then answer something different yourself.
Guessing is somewhat easier if you read the other answers first.
This is a thinking game, unlike the common entries contests.

It is assumed everyone is capable of finding correct answers,
the quest is to find the rare correct answers, without knowing what
is going to be rare.

Chuck Grant

teabag420

8/26/2003 9:12:00 AM

0

Duh. Yeah, my answers were crap. Especially since I explicitly stated
that I wasn''t using the tools that the rules of the contest explicitly
allowed. I don''t give a fuck about the contest, I''m only interested
in the puzzle. I find your lack of civility distressing in the
extreme, Mr. Matthew Rust.


Mark didn''t say ANYWHERE that eventually all the answers would be
see-able.

"posting answers would give an unfair advantage to people who see the
questions more quickly"

WTF does THAT mean, David? They pay you for that kind of thinking AND
you can bang college girls? Ah got''s to git me one o'' them thar
PhDs!!!


"MATTHEW RUST" <mrust@optonline.net> wrote in message news:<m1A2b.195799$_R5.74125116@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>...
> "David Eppstein" <eppstein@ics.uci.edu> wrote in message
> news:eppstein-2B1621.13035025082003@news.service.uci.edu...
> > In article <31900951.0308251153.10422166@posting.google.com>,
> > teabag420@hotmail.com (Teabag) wrote:
> >
> > > It''s not much fun if you can''t post the answers and see others''
> > > attempts. Am I missing something?
> >
> > Prematurely posted responses distort the contest -- everyone else now
> > needs to think about whether to be different from what was posted or
> > counterstrategically the same as what was posted. Put another way,
> > posting answers would give an unfair advantage to people who see the
> > questions more quickly (they have not yet propagated to my own usenet
> > server, and may never do so) since without much thought they can stake
> > out answers which other people will not dare to collide with.
> >
> > The other reasons not to post the answers are that Mark explicitly asked
> > you not to do it, and will not score your results.
> >
> > You get to see others'' attempts after the contest is over.
> >
> > --
> > David Eppstein http://www.ics.uci.edu/...
> > Univ. of California, Irvine, School of Information & Computer Science
>
> Not to worry David, his answers were crap

tomcatpolka

8/26/2003 1:03:00 PM

0

In rec.puzzles Chuck Grant <fx4m@comcast.con> wrote:

> It is assumed everyone is capable of finding correct answers,
> the quest is to find the rare correct answers, without knowing what
> is going to be rare.

My answers frequently are medium, once is a while well done.

(Erland Sommarskog)

8/26/2003 8:02:00 PM

0

Teabag (teabag420@hotmail.com) writes:
> Mark didn''t say ANYWHERE that eventually all the answers would be
> see-able.

But he has a record of sharing with us all answers 34 times before.
Something you can find out by visiting Google.



--
Erland Sommarskog, Stockholm, sommar@algonet.se

teabag420

8/27/2003 9:09:00 AM

0

From Mark''s post that started this thread:

"The answer slates of the top few entrants will be posted."

Regardless of history, > > Mark didn''t say ANYWHERE that eventually
all the answers would be
> > see-able.

I only mention this because I have been criticised for my inability to
"read" and "understand". I read and understand like a motherfucker.
I don''t think I have to "visit Google" to check what he clearly said,
and I think his clear statement overrides any past pattern anyway. I
trust him to do what he says he will do. I don''t assume he will do
what [you say] he has done in the past.

Erland Sommarskog <sommar@algonet.se> wrote in message news:<Xns93E3DFF48CD9BYazorman@127.0.0.1>...
> Teabag (teabag420@hotmail.com) writes:
> > Mark didn''t say ANYWHERE that eventually all the answers would be
> > see-able.
>
> But he has a record of sharing with us all answers 34 times before.
> Something you can find out by visiting Google.