- Rotating Quiz #176 - 1 Update
- QFTCIMI515 Game 4, Rounds 4,6: bad relationships, half-time - 1 Update
- Rare Entries Contest OQ-01 Reminder - 1 Update
| Calvin <334152@gmail.com>: Apr 06 06:37PM -0700 On Saturday, April 4, 2015 at 5:29:33 PM UTC+10, Dan Tilque wrote: > system is called either WISE 1049-5319 or Luhman 16, with the latter > being favored because it's easier to remember. How far away is Luhman > 16? (2 points if within .5 ly, 1 point if within 1 ly) 11 ly > 3. About 100 years ago, someone discovered a star that has the highest > proper motion of any star. It's the second closest system to the Sun and > was named after the discoverer. What is its name? Barnard's Star > candidacy for US President. But he wasn't actually born in the US. Where > was he born? (Give the city name for full credit; state/province or > country will get partial credit.) Cuba > e. Wayne Gretzky > f. Pamela Anderson > g. Arnold Schwarzenegger None of them have met me. > 8. And speaking of Guy Lombardo, he was most famous for being conductor > of the Royal Canadians and playing Auld Lang Syne on New Years Eve. But > he was also a top-level competitor in a sport. Which sport? Fencing > was on one of the first commemoratives, a quarter dollar minted for the > Columbian Exposition in 1893. The other was a much more recent coinage, > also a quarter. Name them for one point each. Duke Kahanamoku > spun-off from? The spin-off aired from 2006 to 2011. The other show is a > long-running SF show still in production. One point for naming it if you > don't know the other answer. Torchwood cheers, calvin |
| Calvin <334152@gmail.com>: Apr 06 05:13PM -0700 On Sunday, April 5, 2015 at 1:49:23 AM UTC+10, Mark Brader wrote: > before the Grammys in 2009, this tattooed R&B singer assaulted > girlfriend Rihanna, leaving her with visible facial injuries > and him with a permanently damaged reputation. Name him. Rock, Jones > "sexual napalm", and held a press conference when he broke up > with Jennifer Aniston. He cheated on Katy Perry, who found > texts to another woman on his phone. Who is he? Mayer > 3. Record producer Mutt Lange cheated on his country-singer wife > with her best friend. She has since married her now-ex-best- > friend's now-ex-husband. Who is the country singer? Twain > to journalist Maria Shriver, had fathered a son with another > woman during his marriage. *What relationship* did this other > woman have to the Schwarzenegger-Shriver family? Housekeeper, Nanny > on the day she was marry "Flatliners" co-star Kiefer Sutherland, > she ran away to Dublin with Jason Patric, his buddy and "Lost > Boys" co-star. Who is she? Roberts > 6. This actress spoiled her fairy-tale romance with "Twilight" > co-star Robert Pattinson when she was photographed snuggling with > her married "Snow White and the Huntsman" director. Who is she? Stewart > She says: "If you're horrible to me, I'm going to write a song > about you, and you are not going to like it." Who is this > vengeful star? Pink, > 8. This British comic, and political rabble-rouser, told wife Katy > Perry about his plans to divorce her via text message. Name him. Brand > charges of cheating investors, money-laundering, and exaggerating > his ties to the Vatican for personal gain. This ended his > romance with what Oscar-winning Hollywood actress? Witherspoon, Streep > the crowd cheered, then slowly removed his sunglasses, threw > them away, and launched into a 4-song set, one song backed up > by a children's choir. George Michael > rock band headlined? > 3. In 2004, Janet Jackson suffered a notorious "wardrobe > malfunction". Who was she singing with when this happened? Justin Timberlake > 4. This artist's 2007 performance occurred on a stage in the shape > of his symbol. It was ranked by Billboard magazine as the best > Super Bowl half-time show ever. Prince > 5. In 2012 Madonna headlined the half-time show, backed up by > Nicki Minaj and this rapper, who provoked controversy by giving > the finger on camera. Eminem > 6. In 2010, this Florida rock group's half-time set list included > "American Girl" and "Runnin' Down a Dream". Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers > 7. In 2013, the headline performer reunited with her bandmates > during the delayed half-time show. Her famous husband did not > make an appearance. Name her. Beyonce Knowles > about the singer who overshadowed them before the game even > started, by giving what is widely regarded as one of the > best-ever renditions of the national anthem. Name that singer. cheers, calvin |
| Orlando Quattro <oquattro@magma.ca>: Apr 06 06:27PM -0400 This is the first reminder for Rare Entries contest OQ-01. Please reply ONLY BY EMAIL to oquattro@magma.ca; DO NOT POST to any newsgroup. Entries must reach me by Tuesday, April 14, 2015 (by Toronto time, zone -4). I will post a couple more reminders before then. Below the ten questions is a set of rules, largely based on those created by Mark Brader for his long series of rare entries contests. Please take the time to review these rules before emailing an entry. Most importantly, please do NOT POST any discussion of this contest to any news group prior to the entry deadline. I wish you all good luck, and hope you find this fun (See rule 7). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rules 4.1.1, 4.1.3, 4.2, and 4.3.4 are relevant to certain questions. 0. Name an independent country where one might expect to find penguins. 1. Give the name of a tincture used in English heraldry. 2. Unambiguously identify an opera from which music has been featured in at least five full length feature films that are not simply performances of the opera in question, and which have each grossed at least $25 million (USD) at the box office, as shown by the IMDB (Internet Movie DataBase) in their "Box office / business" section, or other authoritative source. 3. name a contemporary string instrument that might be found in a modern day symphony orchestra, chamber orchestra, or chamber music ensemble, but NOT only in an early music ensemble. The instrument must be employed in an ensemble role, and NOT solely as a solo performer. 4. Name a nation with a team entered in the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup. 5. Name a North American venue that has hosted a Formula One grand prix. 6. Unambiguously identify a globally recognized landmark that contains the word "red" as part of its name. Global recognition means that a Google search produces at least one hundred thousand hits. The Google search must be of the form: ("landmark name" "location") 7. Name one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, as listed in Greek tourist guides from the 1st and 2nd centuries BC, and which were all in existence immediately prior to 226 BC. 8. Name an automobile manufacturer that has featured an animal on an on-car badge. The badge may be for a marque or a specific model. 9. Name a country with an active railway station at an elevation higher than 7,000 feet (2,133 metres). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rules for Orlando Quattro's Rare Entry Contests These are shamelessly borrowed from Mark Brader, who provided years of entertainment with a long series of Rare Entries contests. I feel that years of refinement lend these a certain authority, which is not to say that I will not end up further refining them in the light of experience with with my own rare entry contests. Also, Mark took the trouble to place the text of his postings in the public domain, which makes me comfortable taking advantage of his experience in this regard. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Rule 1. The Game For each of the questions in the quiz, your objective is to give an answer that (1) is correct, and (2) will be duplicated by as FEW other quiz entrants as possible. Feel free to use any reference material you like to RESEARCH your answers; but when you have found enough possible answers for your liking, you are expected to choose on your own which one to submit, WITHOUT mechanical or computer assistance: this is meant to be a game of wits. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Rule 2. Scoring The scores on the different questions are MULTIPLIED to produce a final score for each entrant. Low score wins; a perfect score is 1. If your answer on a category is correct, then your score is the number of people who gave that answer, or an answer That I deem equivalent. A wrong answer, or a skipped question, gets a high score as a penalty. This is the median of: - the number of entrants - the square root of that number, rounded up to an integer - double the largest score achieved by anyone on this question Rule 2.1 Scoring Example Say I ask for a colour on the current Canadian flag. There are 27 entrants, of whom 20 say "red", 4 say "blue", and 1 each say "gules", "white", and "blue square". After looking up gules I decide it's the same colour as red and should be treated as a duplicate answer; then the 21 people who said either "red" or "gules" get 21 points each. The person who said "white" gets a perfect score of 1 point. "Blue square" is not a colour and blue is not a colour on the flag; the 5 people who gave either of these answers each get the same penalty score, which is the median of: - number of entrants = 27 - sqrt(27) = 5.196+, rounded up = 6 - double the largest score = 21 x 2 = 42 Yielding a median, in this case, of 27. Rule 2.2 Scoring More Specific Variants On some questions it's possible that one entrant will give an answer that is a more specific variant of an answer given by someone else. In that case the more specific variant will usually be scored as if the two answers are different, but the other, less specific variant will be scored as if they are the same. In the above Canadian flag example, if I had decided (incorrectly) to score gules as a more specific variant of red, then "red" would still score 21, but "gules" would now score 1. If a wrong answer is clearly associated with a specific right answer, I will score the right answer as if the wrong answer was a more specific variant of it. In the above Canadian flag example, if there were 3 additional entrants who said "white square", then "white square" would be scored as wrong, but the score for "white" would be 4, not 1. "More specific" scoring 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, and may be considered wrong. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Rule 3. Entries Entries must be emailed to the address given above. Please do not quote the questions back to me, and DO send ONLY PLAIN TEXT in ASCII or ISO 8859-1: no HTML, no attachments, no Micros--t character sets, etc., and NO Unicode, please. (Entrants who fail to comply will be publicly chastised in the results posting.) Your message should preferably consist of just your 10 answers, numbered from 0 to 9, along with any explanations required. Your name should be in it somewhere -- a From: line or signature is fine. (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, then your email address will be posted in the results). You can expect an acknowledgement when I read your entry. If this bounces, it will NOT be sent again. Entries must be received before the entry deadline specified for the quiz. I may, at my discretion, apply latitude based on the log entries from my mail server, provided that they unambiguously show that your entry was received by your mail server before the entry deadline. Rule 3.1 Where Leeway is Allowed for Entries In general there is no penalty for errors of spelling, capitalization, English usage, or other such matters of form, nor for accidentally sending email in an unfinished state, so long as it is clear enough to discern what you intended. Sometimes though, a specific question may imply stricter rules. And if you give an answer that properly refers to a different thing related to the one you intended, I will normally take it as written. Once you intentionally submit an answer, no changes will be allowed, unless I decide there was a problem with the question. Similarly, alternate answers within an entry will not be accepted. Only the first answer that you intentionally submit counts. Rule 3.2 Clarifications for Entries Questions are not intended to be hard to understand, but I may fail in this intent. (For one thing, in many cases clarity could only be provided by an example that would suggest one or another specific answer, and that would compromise the question.) In order to be fair to all entrants, I must insist that requests for clarification must be emailed to me, NOT POSTED in any newsgroup. But if you do ask for clarification, I will probably say that the question is clear enough as posted. If I do decide to clarify or change a question, all entrants will be informed. Rule 3.3 Supporting Information for Entries It is your option whether or not to provide supporting information to justify your answers. If you don't, I'll email you to ask for it if I need to. If you supply it in the form of a URL, if at all possible it should be a "deep link" to the specific relevant page. There is no need to supply URLs for obvious, well-known reference web sites, and there is no point in supplying URLs for pages that don't actually support your answer. 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. The particular format doesn't matter as long as you are clear. In the scoring example above, "white square" was wrong; "white (in the central square)" would have been taken as a correct answer with an explanation. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Rule 4. Interpretation of Questions These are general rules that apply unless a question specifically states otherwise. Rule 4.1 Geography Rule 4.1.1 Countries "Country" means an independent country. Whether or not a place is considered an independent country is determined by how it is listed in reference sources. The primary reference is the list of UN (United Nations) two-digit country codes. For purposes of these contests, the Earth is considered to be divid- ed into disjoint areas each of which is either (1) a country, (2) a dependency, or (3) without national government. Their boundaries are interpreted on a de facto basis. Any place with representatives in a country's legislature is considered a part of that country rather than a dependency of it. The European Union is considered as an association of countries, not a country itself. Claims that are not enforced, or not generally recognized, don't count. Places currently fighting a war of secession don't count. Embassies don't count as special; they may have extraterritorial rights, but they're still part of the host country (and city). Countries existing at different historical times are normally considered the same country if they have the same capital city. Rule 4.1.2 States or provinces Many countries or dependencies are divided into subsidiary political entities, typically with their own subsidiary governments. At the first level of division, these entities are most commonly called states or provinces, but various other names are used; sometimes varying even within the same country (e.g. to indicate unequal political status). Any reference to "states or provinces" in a question refers to these entities at the first level of division, no matter what they are called. Rule 4.1.3 Nations In International Sports When an international sporting event is involved, for instance the ICC Cricket World Cup, some entries may appear as nations, but not in fact be independent countries as defined in rule 4.1.1. England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are all examples of this, when the country of Great Britain is not represented. In the case of any question where such a distinction is pertinent, I will endeavour to make this clear in the wording of the question. Rule 4.1.4 Distances Distances between places on the Earth are measured along a great circle path, and distance involving cities are based on the city center (downtown). Rule 4.2 Entertainment A "movie" does not include any form of solely TV broadcast (TV Movie) or video release; it must have been shown in cinemas. "Oscar" and "Academy Award" are AMPAS trademarks and refer to the awards given by that organization. "Fiction" includes dramatizations of true stories. Rule 4.3 Words and Numbers Rule 4.3.1 Different Answers Some questions specifically ask for a *word*, rather than the thing that it names; this means that different words with the same meaning will in general be treated as distinct answers. However, if two or more inflectional variants, spelling variants, or other closely related forms are correct answers, they will be treated as equivalent. Similarly, if the question specifically asks for a name, different things referred to by the same name will be treated as the same. Rule 4.3.2 Permitted Words On questions that specifically ask for a word, the word that you give must be listed (or implied by a listing, as with inflected forms) in a suitable dictionary. Generally this means a printed dictionary published recently enough to show reasonably current usage, or its online equivalent. Other reasonably authoritative sources may be accepted on a case-by-case basis. Words listed as obsolete or archaic usage don't count, and sources that would list those words without distinguishing them are not acceptable as dictionaries. Rule 4.3.3 Permitted Numbers Where the distinction is important, "number" refers to a specific mathematical value, whereas "numeral" (or numeric representation) means a way of writing it. Thus "4", "IV", and "four" are three different numeric representations of the same number. "Digit" means one of the characters "0", "1", "2", etc. (These definitions represent one of several conflicting common usages.) Rule 4.3.4 "Contained in" If a question asks for a word or numeral "contained" or "included" in a phrase, title, or the like, this does not include substrings or alternate meanings of words, unless explictly specified. For example, if "Canada in 1967" is the title of a book, it contains the numeral 1967 and the preposition "in"; but it does not contain the word "an", the adjective "in", or the numeral 96. Rule 4.4 Tense and Time When a question is worded in the present tense, the correctness of your answer is determined by the facts at the moment you submit it. (In a case where, in my judgement, people might reasonably be unaware of the facts having changed, an out-of-date answer may be accepted as correct.) Questions worded in the present perfect tense include the present unless something states or implies otherwise. (For example, Canada is a country that "has existed", as well as one that "exists".) Different verbs in a sentence bear their usual tense relationship to each other. You are not allowed to change the facts yourself in order to make an answer correct. For example, if a question asks for material on the WWW, what you cite must already have existed before the contest was first posted. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Rule 5. Judging As moderator, I will be the sole judge of what answers are correct, and whether two answers with similar meaning (such as red and gules) are considered the same, different, or more/less specific variants. I will do my best to be fair on all such issues, but sometimes it is necessary to be arbitrary. Those who disagree with my rulings are welcome to complain (or to start a competing contest, or whatever). I may rescore the contest if I agree that I made a serious error and it affects the high finishers. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
| You received this digest because you're subscribed to updates for this group. You can change your settings on the group membership page. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it send an email to rec.games.trivia+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. |
No comments:
Post a Comment