- QFTCI5GNM15 Current Events 7-8 answers - 2 Updates
- Rare Entries Contest OQ-02: I guess I'll take over - 1 Update
- QFTCIMI515 Game 10, Rounds 2-3: convicts and servants - 1 Update
| msb@vex.net (Mark Brader): Jun 27 10:51PM -0500 Mark Brader: > And now, the two current-events rounds that were played while > I was away... Since these rounds were delayed, the next set will follow in just a few days. > the Canadian Inquisition (QFTCI*)". > * Game 7 (2015-06-08), Round 1 - Current Events > 1. 50 Canadian churches rang their bells Thursday in whose honor? The missing and murdered aboriginal women (on the RCMP list). > 2. Who won the Canadian Formula 1 Grand Prix yesterday? Lewis Hamilton. 4 for Peter. > now-unofficial Liberal counterpart. Both are among the senators > named in auditor-general Michael Ferguson's forthcoming audit > of expenses. Claude Carignan, James Cowan. > 4. An opposition private member's bill, Bill 77, was passed in > the Ontario legislature Thursday. What does it ban? (LGBTQ) "Conversion Therapy". > 5. Name either the operation, or the gang targeted, when more than > 700 officers from various forces executed 50 search warrants > in Southern Ontario Thursday. Project Pharaoh, the Monstarz. > 6. More than 400 people died when the cruise ship Eastern Star > capsized last Monday -- on what body of water? Yangtze River. 4 for Marc, Erland, and Dan Tilque. > Ontario legislature. How many seats more, or how many in total, > will there be if the proposal goes through? (You must say > which question you are answering.) 15 more, making 122. > 8. Within $1, how much is the adult one-way fare on the new train > from Union Station to Pearson Airport, if not using a Presto > card? $27.50 (accepting $26.50-$28.50). Nobody came within $15, let alone $1. I can confirm this answer by personal experience, by the way, as I was actually riding that train to the airport at about the same time that this question was being asked. There were 7 passengers on board the 2-car train. But it was evening, and only the third day of service. > 9. Hannah White set a Guinness world record for the fastest what? Single-handed dinghy crossing of the English Channel. > 10. Which horse won the Belmont Stakes on Saturday, completing > the Triple Crown of thoroughbred racing? American Pharaoh. 4 for Dan Blum, Marc, Joshua, Peter, and Dan Tilque. > 1. Name the prime minister who sparked outrage when he said: > "I am happy that the Bangladesh prime minister, despite being > a woman, has declared zero tolerance for terrorism." Narendra Modi (India). 4 for Joshua, Peter, and Erland. > South Korea, he said there was "trouble" with "girls" working > in laboratories. Name this scientist, who resigned from his > honorary post at University College London last week. Sir Tim Hunt. 4 for Dan Blum. > 3. What longstanding NHL post-season tradition did Mark Lazarus, > chairman of NBC Sports, reportedly ask the NHL to ban, in order > to improve the marketability of players? "Playoff" beards. 4 for Joshua and Erland. > 4. Give the full name of the NHL team that may find itself > homeless soon. This team plays in a city-owned arena under a > lease agreement that last week the city's council voted to end. Arizona Coyotes (accepting Phoenix Coyotes, their name until recently). > Sunday? The practice has been suspended since January 1, has > been widely criticized, and is the subject of a constitutional > challenge. Carding. > week after a "Toronto Star" investigation revealed that he had > brokered art deals involving involving people he had dealt with > as a journalist. Evan Solomon. > 7. Name the so-called "technology company" that drew criticism > for charging 5 times its normal rate in some of areas of Toronto > during the subway closure last Monday morning. Uber. 4 for Dan Blum, Joshua, and Peter. 3 for Dan Tilque. > 8. Name the company that reportedly paid $30,000,000 for the > distribution rights to the satirical comedy "War Machine", > starring Brad Pitt. Netflix. 4 for Joshua. > 9. Name the veteran actor who died at the age of 93, who was best > known for playing Dracula, Saruman (in the "Lord of the Rings" > movies), and Count Dooku (in the "Star Wars" prequels). Christopher Lee. 4 for Dan Blum, Marc, Joshua, Peter, and Jason. > 10. Name the actor, best known for playing Uncle Jesse on "Full > House", who was arrested for driving under the influence in > Beverly Hills last Friday. John Stamos. 4 for Marc, Joshua, and Jason. Scores, if there are no errors: GAMES-> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 BEST SIX Stephen Perry 36 36 36 32 20 24 -- -- 184 Joshua Kreitzer 8 24 24 12 20 12 4 24 116 Peter Smyth 0 19 24 16 15 12 8 12 98 Dan Blum 3 24 16 11 18 7 4 12 88 Marc Dashevsky 0 24 18 12 8 12 8 8 82 Dan Tilque 4 20 15 8 8 12 8 3 71 Pete Gayde 12 20 24 12 -- -- -- -- 68 Bruce Bowler 4 24 24 12 -- -- -- -- 64 Erland Sommarskog 4 16 8 12 16 4 4 8 64 Jason Kreitzer 4 16 8 0 8 8 0 8 52 -- Mark Brader, Toronto "History will be kind to me, for I intend msb@vex.net to write it." -- Churchill My text in this article is in the public domain. |
| Marc Dashevsky <usenet@MarcDashevsky.com>: Jun 28 05:22AM -0500 In article <7KOdndKd2dig8hLInZ2dnUU7-dmdnZ2d@vex.net>, msb@vex.net says... > > the Triple Crown of thoroughbred racing? > American Pharaoh. 4 for Dan Blum, Marc, Joshua, Peter, > and Dan Tilque. The name is actually an "incorrect" spelling: American Pharoah -- Replace "usenet" with "marc" in the e-mail address. |
| msb@vex.net (Mark Brader): Jun 27 10:47PM -0500 On May 3, Orlando Quattro wrote: > This is my second attempt at a Rare Entries contest... > Entries must reach me by Tuesday, May 26, 2015 (by Toronto time, > zone -4). I intend to post several reminders before then. Well, an email message I sent Orlando did not bounce, but he also has not answered it or responded to an earlier query in the newsgroup. On the assumption that he's no longer available to do it, I'm willing to score any entries that people email to me in the next few days. If you entered in response to the original contest posting, please send me the same entry that you did then. If you hadn't gotten around to it, you may as well treat this as a reminder and construct an entry now if you feel so inclined. Of course, if any scoring involves a judgement call, my judgement may be different from Orlando's, and if there are people who don't see this notice and email me their entries, I won't be able to score those. I did enter myself and will be scoring my answers along with the others. Let's say you until Thursday, that's July 2 (by Toronto time, zone -4) to either send me your existing entry or construct and send a new one. That gives you 5 days and about 12 minutes from the time of posting. If Orlando pops up before that time and wants to resume the contest on a basis of his choosing, then I'll withdraw. For the benefit of people constructing a new entry, here's a repeat or Orlando's questions and rules. Everything between this point and the signature is the same as in his original posting. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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, |
| "Björn Lundin" <b.f.lundin@gmail.com>: Jun 27 06:08PM +0200 On 2015-06-26 00:36, Mark Brader wrote: > * Game 10, Round 2 - History - Famous Convicts > 1. Who was sentenced to life in prison on 1895-01-05, and sent to > Devil's Island? Dreyfuss > 2. Which Boer War correspondent for the London Morning Post landed > in a Pretoria prison in 1899? Winston Churchill > 5. Who started refusing food and water in the Maze Prison on > 1981-03-01? Nelson Mandela? > 2. In the hilarious works of P.G. Wodehouse, this valet is > incredibly bright and well-spoken, and helps his congenial but > dim master out of many a scrape. Who is this valet? Jeeves > names him Friday, and uses him as a servant. He teaches Friday > English and convinces him that cannibalism is wrong. Who wrote > "Robinson Crusoe"? Dafoe > 10. This character acts as squire to Don Quixote and throughout > the novel provides comments that are a combination of broad > humor, ironic Spanish proverbs, and earthy wit. Name him. Pancho -- -- Björn |
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