- QFTCIMI515 Game 6, Rounds 7-8: capitals, cabinet - 2 Updates
- Rotating Quiz #180: RQ by Degrees - 1 Update
- Calvin's Quiz #391 - 1 Update
- Rare Entries Contest OQ-02 Begins - 1 Update
| Marc Dashevsky <usenet@MarcDashevsky.com>: May 04 01:46AM -0500 In article <GIGdnR-PrP31jdjInZ2dnUU7-LOdnZ2d@vex.net>, msb@vex.net says... > Chisinau | Lilongwe | Port Moresby | Washington > Dodoma | London | Pristina | Windhoek > 1. Liechtenstein. Vaduz > 2. Sierra Leone. Freetown > 3. Zambia. Bujumbura; Bamako > 4. Eritrea. Asmara > 5. Honduras. Tegucigalpa > 6. Suriname. Paramaribo > 7. Tonga. Funafuti; Thimphu > 8. Namibia. Windhoek > 9. Kosovo. Pristina > 10. Kyrgyzstan. Bishkek -- Replace "usenet" with "marc" in the e-mail address. |
| Dan Tilque <dtilque@frontier.com>: May 04 03:28AM -0700 Mark Brader wrote: > Chisinau | Lilongwe | Port Moresby | Washington > Dodoma | London | Pristina | Windhoek > 1. Liechtenstein Vaduz > 2. Sierra Leone. Freetown > 3. Zambia. Bujumbura > 4. Eritrea. Bamako > 5. Honduras. Tegucigalpa > 6. Suriname. Paramaribo > 7. Tonga. Funafuti > 8. Namibia. Windhoek > 9. Kosovo. Pristina > 10. Kyrgyzstan. Bishkek -- Dan Tilque |
| Marc Dashevsky <usenet@MarcDashevsky.com>: May 04 03:20AM -0500 In article <mi35av$9v6$1@reader1.panix.com>, tool@panix.com says... > 1. From the Latin for "by things," this is the usual English term for > representing a word or phrase using pictures which represent sounds. rebus > of the absurd and existentialism, as expressed in works such as The > Plague and The Stranger. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature > in 1957. Camus > common in large stars that become supernovas; it has no exothermic > fusion reactions, so once it's produced via fusion (or via an unstable > fusion product decaying into it) it just builds up at a star's core. iron > for his advertisements (often printed in comic books) selling his > "dynamic tension" system; some ads showed small men getting sand > kicked in their faces by bullies. LaLane > genus, but most got split out, including the "poison" species. Note > that I am looking for the common name for these plants, not the > technical genus name. sumac > Emanuel Lasker. > 10. This is the common Japanese word (and these days, a common English > word) for seaweed used to wrap sushi. nori -- Replace "usenet" with "marc" in the e-mail address. |
| Marc Dashevsky <usenet@MarcDashevsky.com>: May 04 01:55AM -0500 In article <ebf87b83-7ff3-43a9-8e0f-353153612120@googlegroups.com>, 334152@gmail.com says... > 1 Who wrote the 1967 novel One Hundred Years of Solitude? Gabriel Garcia Marquez > 2 Which African country was the scene of the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s? Kenya > 3 Which university did Prince William and Kate Middleton both attend? Oxford > 4 Who in Greek mythology was the first woman on earth? Pandora > 5 Who wrote the epic fantasy novels in the Games of Thrones saga? something R.R. something > 6 In 1851 Leon Foucault's pendulum was used to definitively prove what theory, at least 2,000 years after it was first proposed? earth revolves > 7 Which river passes through Montreal and Quebec City? St. Lawrence > 8 What colour is Art and Literature in Trivial Pursuit? blue > 9 Which Australian mammal is also known as the Ornithorhynchus anatinus? PLatypus > 10 What farm animals feature on the cover of The Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds? goats -- Replace "usenet" with "marc" in the e-mail address. |
| Orlando Quattro <oquattro@magma.ca>: May 03 05:12PM -0400 This is my second attempt at a Rare Entries contest, and I am hoping that the questions in this one will reflect lessons learned from the first one, both in their nature and their wording. That being said, I am sure that entrants will find further ways to correct any failures on my part. Please reply ONLY BY EMAIL to oquattro@magma.ca; DO NOT POST to any newsgroup. Entries must reach me by Tuesday, May 26, 2015 (by Toronto time, zone -4). I intend to post several 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). Perhaps even more fun than my previous first attempt, despite the fact that, yes, there is another railway question. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rules 4.1.1, 4.2, 4.3.2, and 4.3.4 are relevant to certain questions. 0. Name a country where there are extensive, long-term nuclear exclusion zones due to persistent nuclear contamination resulting from either military or industrial wide area nuclear activity (weapons testing, dumping, accident). Extensive means at least one hundred square kilometres, and long-term implies a probable requirement to maintain the exclusion zone for more than a century. 1. Find a pair of reasonably common English words that are homophones [ Definition of HOMOPHONE: Each of two or more words having the same pronunciation but different meanings, origins, or spelling (e.g. new and knew). - Oxford English Dictionary] and which have a combined length of at least 22 letters. Reasonably common means that both words can be found in any good English language dictionary and are in general usage, not jargon specific to some profession or trade. 2. Uniquely identify a currently inhabited community of any size with the name of Ottawa. 3. Identify an extant species of wild cat (within the family felidae) that can be found natively in the wild only north of the equator. 4. Identify a country where the official space agency with which that country is associated has sent two or more astronauts from that country into earth orbit. 5. Identify a narrow gauge railway (gauge less than the 4' 8 1/2" of standard gauge) that at any time in its history has operated at least 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometres) of line. Here the term line refers solely to route distance without regard to parallel tracks that might increase the length of actual railway track. 6. Name a pope of the Catholic Church whose pontificate (tenure of office as pope) lasted more than 30 days, but less than 175 days. 7. Name a movie that has a two word title (in English), one of which is the word "red" and the other of which is NOT a noun in the context of the title. 8. Name a currently independent country that was formerly a member state of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and which has land borders with at least five neighbouring independent countries. 9. Name a political or religious organisation that includes "orange" in its name, officially or unofficially. The orange in the name must NOT refer to a geopolitical location such as, for example, Orange County. If the name given is unofficial, please also provide the corresponding official name. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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 distances involving cities are based on the city centre (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.) |
| 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