Rare Entries Contest JTS2
Ted S.
Entries must reach here by Friday, October 20 (by New York time, zone -
4). See below the questions for a detailed explanation; this is essentially
unchanged from last time, but wording has added to clarify some points.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
0. Name a descendant of Elizabeth (*4 August 1900 AD/CE), Queen Consort and
later widow of King George VI of the United Kingdom.
1. Name something a doctor might normally see when looking into the mouth
of a currently-healthy person during a routine checkup/physical
examination.
2. Give a word appearing in an English dictionary for a type of musical
composition which usually refers specifically to compositions of classical
music (as opposed to generic words for compositions that can be of any type
of music), and of which there is at least one example composed by Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791 AD/CE).
3. Name a regular (calendrical) Jewish religious observance. That is, the
observance as it appears on the calendar, not a ritual which makes up part
of an observance.
4. Name, or otherwise unambiguously identify, a diacritical mark which
appears with at least one letter in a language using the Latin alphabet.
Equivalent answers will be determined by the appearance of the mark
(excluding typographical differences), and the mark's location in relation
to the letter.
5. Name something (generic terms only, no brand names) commonly found in
houses in the industrialized world for which one of the intended uses is
storage, and which is either installed in some location or too heavy to be
moved in its entirety on a frequent basis.
6. Name a human athlete who won at least two gold medals at the 2000 Sydney
Summer Olympics (held 15 September-1 October 2000 AD/CE).
7. Name a currently independent country, part or all of the territory of
which is south of 36 degrees north latitude, and which gained its current
independence on or after 1 January 1970 AD/CE.
8. Name an author of published books of fiction or poetry whose death is
generally considered (by literature professors and the like) to be a
suicide.
9. Name an English-language feature-length movie directed by Alfred
Hitchcock which, excluding the leading article "The" if it exists, has a
one-word title.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 highest score for a correct answer on the question
For example, say I'd asked for a member of the Beatles. 20 people say Ringo
Starr, 1 says John Lennon, 2 say Richard Starkey, and 4 say Yoko Ono.
After looking up Richard Starkey I decide it's the same answer as Ringo
Starr and should be treated as a duplicate answer; then the 22 people who
said either Ringo Starr or Richard Starkey get 22 points each. The one
person who said John Lennon gets a perfect score of 1 point. The four
people who say Yoko Ono 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 highest score = 22 x 2 = 44
or in this case, 27.
As moderator, I will be the sole judge of what answers are correct, and
whether two answers with the same meaning (like Ringo Starr and Richard
Starkey) 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 be scored as if they are different, but the other, less specific
variant will be scored as if they are the same. 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 of 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.
Good luck and have fun.
--Ted Schuerzinger
fe...@banet.net
HTML version of this contest available at:
http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Goal/8588/rareentries.html
Kevin N. Stone
Ted S.
Ted S.
the previous contest I ran, I'll most likely close entries at the time I
first check my e-mail Saturday morning (in order to deal with Internet
congestion), and will post announcing that entries are closed before
posting the results. I've included a URL where you can find the
questions and a mailto in the sig.
If you've entered before Wednesday the 18th and haven't received
confirmation, please let me know vie e-mail. I had a spam message from
Taiwan that was causing my e-mailer all sorts of problems -- every time it
tried to download the message from the server, the program stopped. I
finally used OLE to download that one message and haven't had any problems
with my e-mail program since, but wonder whether I haven't lost any other
e-mails.
David Eppstein
S.) wrote:
> Two of the wrong answers were rejected on fairly straighforward grounds. A
> floppy disk drive doesn't normally store things (at least, I don't think
> most people leave diskettes in them when the computer is turned off, or
> else they'll get nasty messages saying that it isn't a system disk)
Since it makes the difference between third and ninth place, I feel I must
protest. My dictionary clearly allows "storage" to mean the act of placing
something into a repository as well as to mean holding something in a
repository. The things being stored by a floppy disk drive are, obviously,
computer files. The floppy disk drive places them onto the repository of a
floppy disk. The dictionary (webster on a Sun computer) even explicitly
uses storage of information as an example.
stor-age \'sto^-r-ij, 'sto[0xC7]r-\ n
(1612)
2a: the act of storing: the state of being stored; esp: the safekeeping
of goods in a depository (as a warehouse)
1store \'sto^-(e)r, 'sto[0xC7](e)r\ vt stored; stor-ing
[ME storen, fr. OF estorer to construct, restore, store, fr. L instaurare
to renew, restore, fr. in- + -staurare (akin to Gk stauros
stake) -- more at STEER]
3: to place or leave in a location (as a warehouse, library, or computer
memory) for preservation or later use or disposal
--
David Eppstein UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
epps...@ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/
Ted S.
The rules were the same as always: For each of the items, your objective is
to give a response that (1) is correct, and (2) will be duplicated by as
FEW other people as possible.
Before we go to the scores, several people need to be chastised for not
following some of the rules: "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.)"
Those being chastised this time are: Mike Rampton, Robert Waltz, Larry
Skoczen, Erland Sommarskog, Aaron Morris, and Jim Waters. Shame on you!
For a second time, scores were surprisingly low. The reason for this is
that although there were 40 entrants, three of the questions which I
figured would be good questions had rather even answer distributions, with
lots of 2's and 3's, a few 1's, but nothing higher than a 5.
And now on to the winners: Once again, the winner was JOHN GERSON, who this
time managed a score of only 16, and a larger margin of victory. Second
place goes to LARRY TAPPER, with a score of 40. And in third place is
AARON UCKO, with a score of 108. Here are their answer slates:
JOHN GERSON LARRY TAPPER AARON UCKO
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
0. Princess Beatrice 0. Arthur Chatto 0. Prince Henry
1. Buccal cusp 1. Canine eminence 1. Palate
2. Litany 2. Gavotte 2. Concerto
3. Tu B'Av 3. Simchat Torah 3. Tu B'Shevat
4. Single grave accent 4. En-dash through letter 4. Double grave
5. Mounted scissors holder 5. Breakfront 5. Medicine chest
6. Florian Rousseau 6. Botond Storcz 6. Alexei Nemov
7. Angola 7. Seychelles 7. Kiribati
8. Amy Levy 8. Ernst Weiss 8. Alice Sheldon
9. Rebecca 9. Downhill 9. Marnie
The overall ladder is as follows:
Rank Score Name Q0 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1. 16 John Gerson 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 2
2. 40 Larry Tapper 2 1 1 5 1 1 1 2 1 2
3. 108 Aaron M. Ucko 1 2 2 3 1 1 3 3 1 1
4. 168 Geoff Rowe 2 1 2 1 7 1 1 2 1 3
=5. 216 Estraven 2 1 6 2 1 1 3 1 1 3
=5. 216 Jodie Fredrickson 2 1 6 3 1 1 1 2 1 3
7. 320 Harold Buck 2 2 2 1 2 1 1 1 2 WR
8. 432 Nick Selwyn 1 3 2 3 2 1 1 2 2 3
9. 600 David Eppstein 5 1 1 2 1 WR 3 1 1 2
10. 648 Brian van Dorn 1 1 1 3 6 2 2 3 1 3
11. 1152 Barbara Grenier 1 1 2 2 6 2 3 2 2 2
12. 1260 Bruce Bowler 1 2 1 3 7 1 3 1 1 WR
13. 1620 Beth Brown 2 1 3 3 6 1 1 5 1 3
14. 2592 Keith Calvert Ivey 3 1 3 3 3 2 WR 1 1 2
=15. 2880 Peter McCorquodale 4 2 2 2 1 WR 3 1 1 3
=15. 2880 TIB 3 1 3 4 1 WR 2 4 1 1
=15. 2880 Nick Atty 8 1 1 5 3 1 WR 1 1 3
18. 3240 Joseph Marriott 5 1 2 3 6 1 3 2 1 3
19. 4320 Andrew Hartley 5 1 6 4 6 1 2 1 1 3
=20. 4608 raree...@hotmail.com 3 4 2 2 4 4 1 1 2 3
=20. 4608 Peter McCallum 8 1 1 2 6 2 4 1 3 2
22. 5760 Don Del Grande 2 2 1 1 6 4 2 5 2 3
23. 6480 Matthew Newell 2 3 WR 1 2 1 1 5 3 3
24. 8640 Mark Brader 2 1 2 1 4 WR 3 2 3 3
=25. 10800 Roy Thearle 5 2 6 3 2 WR 1 1 1 3
=25. 10800 Jens Brix Christiansen 2 5 3 4 3 1 3 2 1 5
27. 16128 Joshua Troetel 8 1 3 2 7 1 3 4 2 2
28. 17280 Jim Waters 4 1 3 3 6 2 2 5 2 2
29. 26880 Erland Sommarskog 2 2 3 2 WR 4 2 2 1 5
30. 56448 Neil Sunderland 4 7 2 2 7 2 3 2 2 3
31. 61440 Dave Zahn 2 4 2 1 6 4 4 2 4 5
32. 69120 Pete Fuller 5 4 2 2 6 4 3 1 4 3
33. 129024 Aaron Morris 8 WR 3 3 2 2 2 4 4 1
34. 153600 Mark Cowell 4 4 2 5 4 WR 3 4 1 2
35. 286720 Kevin Stone 8 2 2 2 7 4 WR WR 1 2
36. 302400 Greg Stephens 8 1 6 5 7 5 3 3 2 2
37. 691200 Robert Waltz 8 3 3 2 6 1 2 WR WR 5
38. 716800 Mike Rampton 2 5 2 4 7 2 4 WR WR 2
39. 2592000 Dan Unger 8 5 6 5 6 4 3 5 2 3
40. 21504000 Larry Skoczen WR WR 1 3 4 WR 4 WR 4 5
------------------------------------------------------------------------
0. Name a descendant of Elizabeth (*4 August 1900 AD/CE), Queen Consort and
later widow of King George VI of the United Kingdom.
8 Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones [daughter of Princess Margaret]
5 Samuel Chatto [son of Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones]
4 Princess Margaret [daughter of the Queen Consort]
3 Peter Phillips [son of Princess Anne]
2 Arthur Chatto [son of Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones]
2 David, Viscount Linley [son of Princess Margaret]
2 Prince Charles [son of Queen Elizabeth II]
2 Prince Edward [son of Queen Elizabeth II]
2 Princess Anne [daughter of Queen Elizabeth II]
2 Princess Beatrice [daughter of Prince Andrew]
2 Queen Elizabeth II [daughter of the Queen Consort]
1 Charles Armstrong-Jones [son of David, Viscount Linley]
1 Prince Andrew [son of Queen Elizabeth II]
1 Prince Henry [son of Prince Charles]
1 Princess Eugenia [daughter of Prince Andrew]
1 Zara Phillips [daughter of Princess Anne]
WRONG:
1 Son (I couldn't find any evidence that the Queen Consort ever gave
birth to a son)
Of the 17 correct answers, 11 are on Queen Elizabeth's side of the family,
and 6 on Princess Margaret's side. However, Princess Margaret and her
descendants significantly outnumbered Elizabeth and her descendants.
A PDF file of the family tree (missing one correct answer) can be seen at:
<http://www.royal.gov.uk/family/graphics/tree.pdf>
While a list of all royals, in alphabetical order, can be found at:
<http://www.dcs.hull.uk/public/genealogy/royal/gedx.html>
ObPuzzle: Quick, now: Which one correct answer wasn't given?
1. Name something a doctor might normally see when looking into the mouth
of a currently-healthy person during a routine checkup/physical
examination.
7 Teeth
>>> 1 Buccal cusp of premolar
>>> 1 Crown of incisor
>>> 1 Distal cusp of premolar
>>> 1 Face of specific molar
>>> 1 Lower right canine
>>> 1 Top left secondary incisor
5 Saliva
>>> 2 Saliva bubbles
4 Tongue Depressor
3 Uvula
2 Palate [=roof of mouth]
2 Plastic amalgam substitute
2 Tongue
1 Canine Eminence
1 Canker Sore
1 Food Particles
1 Fordyce Spots
1 Frenulum
1 Gold crown
1 Part of Gums
1 Plaque on specific tooth
1 Rugae
1 Shadow
1 Spaces between teeth
1 Tonsils
1 Tooth wear pattern
WRONG:
1 Cavity
1 Salivary glands
Note that I didn't say that what the doctor saw had to be something
normally *in* the patient's mouth, but instead something the doctor puts in
the mouth; a number of people saw this and went for "tongue depressor".
One entrant wrote "The doctor's own tongue depressor", but since I figured
patients don't normally bring their own tongue depressors to the doctor's
practice, this should be treated like any other tongue depressor.
As for the "currently-healthy" requirement, I decided that any problems
which go away on their own wouldn't violate it, which clearly makes a
canker sore correct. I'm not certain about Fordyce spots. If you want to
see Fordyce spots for yourself, go to
<http://nsh20.med.navy.mil/Dis_Frm.asp?DisIndex=331&LectNum=0&DisNum=0> and
click on the picture in the bottom left to get a larger view. I decided
that cavity was incorrect partly because it does require medical attention
to fix, and partly because I don't think it can be seen. (Why do you think
the dentists use sharp instruments to check for cavities?) I also don't
think that normal salivary glands can be seen. Then again, I wouldn't know
what to look for.
2. Give a word appearing in an English dictionary for a type of musical
composition which usually refers specifically to compositions of classical
music (as opposed to generic words for compositions that can be of any type
of music), and of which there is at least one example composed by Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791 AD/CE).
6 Divertimento
3 Rondo
3 Serenade
3 Sonata
2 Cantata
2 Cassation
2 Concerto
2 Contredanse
2 Mass
>>> 1 Requiem
2 Minuet
2 Opera
2 Symphony
1 Aria
1 Gavotte
1 Gradual
1 Litany
1 Motet
1 Offertory
1 Oratorio
1 Toccata
WRONG:
1 Quartet (can be any composition for five singers)
It doesn't surprise me the the most common answer was a just-slightly-
obscure word like "Divertimento". Everything else was guessed in roughly
equal numbers. I'm not entirely certain about the correctness of
"Toccata". I found one source which implied that K. 564 is a toccata, but
the source I (and apparently several entrants) used,
<http://www.frontiernet.net/~sboerner/mozart/compositions/index.html>
simply lists K. 564 is a "Trio". When I mentioned "as opposed to generic
words", I had intended that words like "song", "melody", "tune" and the
like should not be correct, but I decided that since a duet clearly refers
to all sorts of different genres of musical compositions for two singers or
instruments, so too a quintet should be a generic word.
3. Name a regular (calendrical) Jewish religious observance. That is, the
observance as it appears on the calendar, not a ritual which makes up part
of an observance.
5 Simchat Torah
4 Shabbat [=Sabbath]
3 Rosh Hashanah [=Jewish New Year]
3 Shavuot [=Feast of Weeks]
3 Tisha B'Av [17th of Av]
3 Tu B'Shevat [15th of Shevat]
2 Lag B'Omer
2 Purim
2 Shemini Atzeret
2 Tzom Gedaliahu
2 Yom Kippur
1 Asarah B'Tevet
1 Hanukkah
1 Pesach [=Passover]
1 Shiva Asar B'Tammuz [commemorates destruction of Second Temple]
1 Taanit Esther
1 Tu B'Av
1 Yom Hashoah [=Day of Holocaust Remembrance]
I knew of about eight or nine correct answers, and figured that there were
some obscure ones that a Gentile such as myself wouldn't have known without
doing any research, but I was surprised at just how many minor feasts and
fasts there are in the Jewish calendar. Web searches for most of these
will produce a large number of hits. I don't know of any reason why
Simchat Torah should have been the most guessed, other than the fact that
it falls right at the entry deadline.
4. Name, or otherwise unambiguously identify, a diacritical mark which
appears with at least one letter in a language using the Latin alphabet.
Equivalent answers will be determined by the appearance of the mark
(excluding typographical differences), and the mark's location in relation
to the letter.
7 Cedilla (eg. ç)
6 Macron [=Kahakô] (Latvian and Hawaiian)
6 Umlaut [=Diaeresis] (eg. ä)
4 Circumflex [=Caret] (eg. â)
3 Double Acute Accent [=Hungarian long umlaut]
2 Breve (Romanian and Esperanto)
2 Hacek (various Slavic languages)
2 Single Grave Accent (eg. è)
1 Double Grave Accent (Croatian)
1 Double Vertical Line over letter (Marshallese)
1 Em-dash through letter [=Middle Tilde] (Bantu languages)
1 En-dash through part of letter (Croatian d)
1 Kreska (Polish "acute" accent)
1 Slash through letter (eg. ø)
1 Tilde (eg. ñ)
WRONG:
1 Loop turning I into J
There was a slight preference toward answers that appear in ISO-8859-1.
Note that for those of you who included specific examples in your entry, it
was the *appearane* and *placement* of the mark that mattered; hence the
equivalency of macron and kahakô.
The Polish kreska, however, is different from a regular acute accent in
that it slopes at a different angle than the acute accent: see
http://studweb.euv-frankfurt-o.de/twardoch/f/en/typo/ogonek/kreska.html
Marks found in ISO-8859-1 not guessed include the ring over a letter (eg.
Swedish å), and the single acute accent (eg. é).
The more common marks found in European languages but not in ISO-8859-1 and
not guessed include a dot over a letter (Lithuanian e or Polish z),
apostrophe (Czech lowercase t and d), and the ogonek (makes nasal vowels in
Polish and Lithuanian).
5. Name something (generic terms only, no brand names) commonly found in
houses in the industrialized world for which one of the intended uses is
storage, and which is either installed in some location or too heavy to be
moved in its entirety on a frequent basis.
5 Water storage unit
>>> 4 Cistern
>>> >>> 2 Toilet Cistern
>>> >>> 1 Hot water storage tank
4 Freezer [generic]
>>> 2 Chest Freezer
4 Refrigerator
2 Hot water heater
2 Liquor cabinet
1 Armoire
1 Bookcase
1 Bookshelf
1 Breakfront
1 Expansion tank
1 Gun cabinet
1 Mantelpiece
1 Media center
1 Medicine chest
1 Oil tank
1 Tallboy
1 Trash compactor
1 Vanity
1 Wall-mounted sconce for scissors
1 Wall safe
1 Wine rack
WRONG:
2 Garage (not installed, and doesn't really have weight)
1 Attic (not installed, and doesn't really have weight)
1 Basement (not installed, and doesn't really have weight)
1 Bedroom closet (not installed, and doesn't really have weight)
1 Floppy disk drive (not used for storage)
1 Ottoman (can't be used for storage, and not too heavy to move)
This question presented some of the more difficult judging decisions. My
understanding is that the different types of cabinets mentioned (liquor,
gun, vanity, media center, and breakfront) are significantly different in
appearance and therefore should be counted as diferent answers. Likewise,
my understanding is that a tallboy has drawers, while an armoire has doors
that open, and a bookcase has an open front.
The various water storage devices presented a bigger problem. My
understanding is that a "water storage unit" (which is a direct quote of
one entry) could possibly include pipes as well as a tank, while a cistern
is nothing more than a tank. As such, a "hot water storage tank" should
probably be a type of cistern. Also, I figured that a hot water heater
also serves the purpose of heating water, and so isn't necessarily just a
tank or cistern.
Two of the wrong answers were rejected on fairly straighforward grounds. A
floppy disk drive doesn't normally store things (at least, I don't think
most people leave diskettes in them when the computer is turned off, or
else they'll get nasty messages saying that it isn't a system disk), while
I've never seen an ottoman that stores anything (well, it does have
stuffing, but I used the word "intended" -- I don't think one buys an
ottoman in order to store the stuffing!).
The various rooms of a house, I eventually decided, are not installed.
Built, yes, but not installed: I looked in multiple dictionaries, and all
implied setting the object in position to use, which is not the case with
rooms of a house. Also, since they're physical spaces, they can't really
pass the "too heavy to move" test (which I had intended as meaning that an
item is moved once in a while for cleaning, redecorating, or replacement
purposes -- I had intended to disqualify answers such as "photo album" or
"cookie jar", things that are light enough to pick up and move from place
to place).
6. Name a human athlete who won at least two gold medals at the 2000 Sydney
Summer Olympics (held 15 September-1 October 2000 AD/CE).
4 Ian Thorpe (swimming)
3 Alexei Nemov (gymnastics)
3 Leontien Zijlaard (cycling)
3 Marion Jones (track and field)
3 Robert Korzeniowski (track and field)
3 Yun Mi-jin (archery)
2 Inge de Bruijn (swimming)
2 Megan Quann (swimming)
2 Venus Williams (tennis)
2 Yana Klochkova (swimming)
1 Botond Storcz (kayak)
1 Brooke Bennett (swimming)
1 Elena Zamolodtchikova (gymnastics)
1 Florian Rousseau (cycling)
1 Knut Holmann (kayak)
1 Maurice Green (track and field)
1 Simona Amanar (gymnastics)
1 Valentina Vezzali (fencing)
1 Wang Nan (table tennis)
1 Xiaopeng Li (gymnastics)
WRONG:
1 Bjørn Dæhlie (won medals in various Winter Olympics)
1 Dean Booth (Paralympian as far as I can tell)
1 Shannon Miller (won medals at 1996 Olympics)
I believe that I fairly clearly worded the question so as to eliminate
things like the Paralympics and Olympic games not held in Sydney. Of
course, that didn't limit the number of correct answers as much as I would
have liked. I probably should have required at least one of the gold
medals to have come in an individual event.
7. Name a currently independent country, part or all of the territory of
which is south of 36 degrees north latitude, and which gained its current
independence on or after 1 January 1970 AD/CE.
5 Zimbabwe [1980]
4 Namibia [1990]
3 Kiribati [1979]
2 Angola [1975]
2 Bangladesh [1971]
2 Eritrea [1993]
2 Guinea-Bissau [1974]
2 Palau [1996]
2 Seychelles [1976]
1 Antigua and Barbuda [1981]
1 Brunei [1984]
1 Djibouti [1977]
1 Fiji [1970]
1 Grenada [1974]
1 Lithuania* [1991]
1 Micronesia
1 São Tomé and Príncipe [1975]
1 St. Lucia [1979]
1 Turkmenistan [1991]
1 Tuvalu [1978]
1 Vanuatu [1980]
WRONG:
1 Democratic Republic of Congo (independent in 1960)
1 East Germany (not currently independent)
1 Hong Kong (not currently independent)
1 Moldova (entrant didn't pass southerly test)
Perhaps I should have selected something after 1970 to reduce the number of
correct answers. I selected 36 degrees north latitude because only one of
the former Soviet republics extends further south (Turkmenistan); I figured
I could trick more people into selecting it.
* One entrant wrote a very detailed entry claiming that embassies can
reasonably be considered territory of the sending nation: "See, eg., the
Vienna Convention on Consular Relations
<http://www.un.org/law/ilc/texts/consul.htm>, especially Articles 31,
32, 35, 50ff." I decided to reward this entrant by accepting his answer,
Lithuania; the entrant who guessed Moldova was not rewarded because he did
not back up his answer with evidence, and because he also sent the
questions back to me.
8. Name an author of published books of fiction or poetry whose death is
generally considered (by literature professors and the like) to be a
suicide.
4 Ernest Hemingway
3 Virginia Woolf
2 Jack London
2 Michael Dorris
2 Ryunosuke Akutagawa
2 Sylvia Plath
2 Yukio Mishima
1 Alice Sheldon (pen name: James Tiptree Jr.)
1 Amy Levy
1 Anne Sexton
1 Antero de Quental
1 Attila Joszef
1 Cesare Pavese
1 Ernst Weiss
1 Hart Crane
1 Hugh Miller
1 Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo
1 Jerzy Kosinski
1 John Gould Fletcher
1 Karin Boye
1 Leopoldo Lugones
1 Marcanus Annaeus Lucanus
1 Petronius Arbiter
1 Robert E. Howard
1 Sergei Esenin
1 Thomas Lovell Beddoes
1 Tove Ditlevsen
1 Yasunari Kawabata
WRONG:
1 David Sutch (could not find anything written by him other than an
autobiography)
1 Socrates (death not really a suicide)
I should have known better. I could only think of eight to ten correct
answers off-hand (a few of which weren't guessed). This question should
also have been limited by date.
As for the wrong answers, the entrant who guessed Socrates tried a
contorted argument claiming that because the words were published by Plato,
they're technically fiction (although this would fail the argument that
Socrates be the author of the work) and that he could have avoided the
death penalty had he proposed any other punishment. As for David
"Screaming Lord" Sutch, I searched on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble and
couldn't find any work by him other than an autobiography. I also read a
number of obituaries which did not mention any published books of poetry or
fiction.
9. Name an English-language feature-length movie directed by Alfred
Hitchcock which, excluding the leading article "The" if it exists, has a
one-word title.
5 The Birds [1963]
3 Frenzy [1972]
3 Murder! [1930]
3 Notorious [1946]
3 Sabotage [1936]
3 Saboteur [1942]
3 The Lodger [1926]
2 Blackmail [1929]
2 Downhill [1927]
2 Lifeboat [1944]
2 Rebecca [1940]
2 Rope [1948]
2 Spellbound [1945]
1 Marnie [1964]
1 The Manxman [1929]
1 Vertigo [1958]
WRONG:
1 Mary [1930] (German)
1 The 39 Steps (two words)
It's interesting that while only three people got a 1, the highest score
was only a 5.
Several people guessed silent movies. I decided that since they starred
English-speaking people, and were set in English-speaking locales, they're
probably in English in that if there are any breaks to show dialogue on
screen, those would originally have been in English. The IMDB
<http://us.imdb.com> shows "Mary" as a German-language movie "Sir John
greift ein!". "The 39 Steps" is clearly two words, although the entrant
said "The 39 steps (which as written in IMDB has only one word besides
'The,' since '39' is clearly a number and not a word)." Try calling up any
publication that sells classified ad space by the word, send them a message
an numeric cipher, and tell them they should publish it for free since it
only contains numbers and no words. I don't think the argument will hold
water.
Thank you all for entering.
--Ted Schuerzinger
fe...@banet.net
Estraven
<snip>
> WRONG:
> 1 Quartet (can be any composition for five singers)
Surely four, or quintet.
> [...] but I decided that since a duet clearly refers
> to all sorts of different genres of musical compositions for two
singers or
> instruments, so too a quintet should be a generic word.
Quintet? Quartet? The suspense is killing me!
<snip>
> WRONG:
> 1 Loop turning I into J
This wasn't my answer, but I'd think this would be debatable. There is
a Unicode code point for it (U+0321 COMBINING PALATALIZED HOOK BELOW);
it's used with other characters in the IPA. Arguably U+006A ('j') is a
precomposed version of U+0069 U+0321 ('i'+hook).
Mago
>I've never seen an ottoman that stores anything (well, it does have
>stuffing, but I used the word "intended" -- I don't think one buys an
>ottoman in order to store the stuffing!).
Hi there
Maybe this is an english/american problem, but an ottoman in UK is a
large chest usually kept in the bedroom for the sole purpose of
storing linen, blankets etc. the one I have is certainly too heavy to
move around on a frequent, or any other basis.
Cheers Mark
Mark Brader
> 1. Name something a doctor might normally see when looking into the mouth
> of a currently-healthy person during a routine checkup/physical
> examination.
> WRONG:
> 1 Cavity
I think Ted disqualified this answer for the wrong reason.
> I decided
> that cavity was incorrect partly because it does require medical attention
> to fix, and partly because I don't think it can be seen. (Why do you think
> the dentists use sharp instruments to check for cavities?)
Because they're looking for *small* ones. A big cavity can certainly be
seen, and I don't think a person could be considered "not healthy" just
because they have a cavity.
But I also think that cavities big enough to see easily are probably rare
enough among healthy people that this answer fails the "normally" test.
> 4. Name, or otherwise unambiguously identify, a diacritical mark which
> appears with at least one letter in a language using the Latin alphabet...
> 1 Slash through letter (eg. ų)
I think this is wrong. I know of at least two languages where ų is a
letter, but none where the "slash" in the ų is a diacritical mark.
(I was going to answer "the dot on an I", because Turkish distinguishes
dotted and dotless I's; this would have been a 1 if accepted, since no
one tried either that or the dot on an E that I didn't think of. But
I ruled it out for the same reason: as far as I know the dotted and
dotless I's are considered separate letters, so the dot is not a dia-
critical mark.)
> 5. Name something (generic terms only, no brand names) commonly found in
> houses in the industrialized world for which one of the intended uses is
> storage, and which is either installed in some location or too heavy to be
> moved in its entirety on a frequent basis.
> 1 Expansion tank
Tank for the expansion of what, please? We had water tanks separately,
and I can't imagine what else it could be.
> WRONG:
> 2 Garage (not installed, and doesn't really have weight)
> 1 Attic (not installed, and doesn't really have weight)
> 1 Basement (not installed, and doesn't really have weight)
> 1 Bedroom closet (not installed, and doesn't really have weight)
I was one of the "garage" submitters. Ted interpreted "garage", "closet",
etc. as referring only to the space enclosed by its walls, floor, and
ceiling, hence having no weight. It seems to me that by this logic the
weight of any storage unit is limited to the shelves, rods, etc. within
it, and therefore things like a tallboy are also disqualified. To me a
garage does necessarily include the walls, floor, and ceiling. Especially
the floor, which (unlike floors elsewhere in the house) has to be able to
take the weight of a car!
> The various rooms of a house, I eventually decided, are not installed.
> Built, yes, but not installed...
True, but irrelevant since the question asked for things that are installed
*or* are too heavy to move.
> 9. Name an English-language feature-length movie directed by Alfred
> Hitchcock which, excluding the leading article "The" if it exists, has a
> one-word title.
The correct answers that nobody used were: The Ring (1927), Champagne (1928),
Suspicion (1941), Psycho (1960), and Topaz (1969).
> The IMDB <http://us.imdb.com> shows "Mary" as a German-language movie...
Yep. At one time studios would film the same story two or three times in
succession in different languages, reusing the same sets. Hitchcock did
this once, filming "Murder!" in English and "Mary" in German.
(Posted and emailed.)
--
Mark Brader Twas unix and the C++
Toronto Did compile and load upon the vax:
m...@vex.net All Ritchie was the Kernighan,
And Lisp ran in GNU EMACS.
--Larry Colen (after Lewis Carroll)
My text in this article is in the public domain.
Kevin N. Stone
The Democratic Republic of Congo, which was Zaire, became independent in May
1997. The country you thought I answered is Republic of the Congo - which is
quite different.
Therefore I should have scored 1 for this and not WR. This is supported
by...
http://www.state.gov/www/regions/independent_states.html
and
http://mbendi.co.za/land/af/zr/p0005.htm
Many thanks for the re-score you are about to perform!
Kev
Erland Sommarskog
>4. Name, or otherwise unambiguously identify, a diacritical mark which
>appears with at least one letter in a language using the Latin alphabet.
>Equivalent answers will be determined by the appearance of the mark
>(excluding typographical differences), and the mark's location in relation
>to the letter.
>
> 1 Tilde (eg. ñ)
>WRONG:
> 1 Loop turning I into J
There are two possibilities of interpreting "diacritical mark". One
is that that the mark is an addition to a letter seen from a perspective
of a base alphabet. Another is that the mark actually functions as
a mark in a least one language. That is, the mark only modifies an
existing letter; it does not result in a new letter in that langauge.
"The Latin alphabet" is also an ambiguous expression. It could refer
to the alphabet used actually by Latin, it also refer to alphabets
derived from using the Latin alphabet by using the same shapes and
adding a few of their own, and possibly dropping another. I would say
that the latter is sloppy usage though; it should rather be "Latin
alphabets", because the repetoire and order can vary considerably.
Nevertheless, the usage is common.
These ambiguities go together, so if Ted meant the alphabet used by
Latin, it seems reasonable that any addition to a Latin letter to
compose a new one, is a diacritical mark. On the other hand, if "Latin
alphabet" is just a family name, the requirements for a diacritical mark
must reasonably be "a mark within some language".
The way Ted phrased his question, it wasn't clear what he meant, and
given his rulings it is still not clear.
Above he suggests that slash through a letter is a diacritical mark,
and that the tilde in ñ is a diacritical mark. He also gives ring
as in Swedish "å" an example of marks not given in answers.
This is fine if we use the perspective that Latin is the base language,
and anything added is a diacritical mark. But since Latin didn't have
J, but this letter was derived later, the answer ruled incorrect by
Ted should also be corred. (It was my answer, as you may have guessed.)
But in no language today, the hook has the function of a diacritical
mark, so using the other perspective, my answer is clearly wrong.
However, the only two languages that I know that uses the slash are
Danish and Polish, and they are not diacrictal marks, but slash O
and L are letters of their own rights in the respective languages.
The same applies to Ñ and Å in Spanish and Swedish. The tilde and
ring are correct anyway, beacuse tilde also appear in Portuguese,
where they have diacricital status (I believe), and the ring is used
in Czech and/or Slovak. But the actual examples are bad when you have
ruled the hook that makes the J an I.
I would also say that the same applies to the Polish kreska - these
are not diacritical marks in Polish, but C-kreska is a letter of its
own, and so are the other kreska letters do. I also believe that
the D-stroke in Croatian is a letter of its own. (As for the double
grave accent in Croatian, I have to admit that I have never heard of
it before.) The breve in Roumanian, used only on A, is another case
of not being a diacritic within the language. My Esperanto is rusty,
but I believe that G-breve etc are separate letters there as well.
Of course, had Ted written "according to the Unicode standard" or given
the English alphabet as his base language, his rulings would have made
perfect sense. But then I would have given a different answer.
--
Erland Sommarskog, Stockholm, som...@algonet.se
This is signature isn't half as witty as it used to be.
Ted S.
<39f2b06a...@news.strayduck.net>:
>>while
>>I've never seen an ottoman that stores anything (well, it does have
>>stuffing, but I used the word "intended" -- I don't think one buys an
>>ottoman in order to store the stuffing!).
>
>Hi there
>Maybe this is an english/american problem, but an ottoman in UK is a
>large chest usually kept in the bedroom for the sole purpose of
>storing linen, blankets etc. the one I have is certainly too heavy to
>move around on a frequent, or any other basis.
Apparently it is a UK/US problem. Here in the US, an ottoman is a
stuffed footstool. I have a feeling I'm going to have to rescore the
contest, or at least that section involving the submitter of "ottoman". I
have to admit that I'd never heard of the UK ottoman. When I saw that
entry, I immediately thought of the footstool and decided the answer was
wrong.
FWIW, the entrant who answered "ottoman" finished near the back of the pack
and would only move up to the middle if I re-scored the contest.
I suppose this is going to start another thread about UK/US usage -- I
could have pointed out on the storage question that "garage" clearly does
not rhyme with "marriage". ;-)
>Cheers Mark
--Ted
Ted S.
<iXwI5.75662$YG5....@tor-nn1.netcom.ca>:
>"Ted S." <fe...@banet.net> wrote:
><snip>
>> WRONG:
>> 1 Quartet (can be any composition for five singers)
>
>Surely four, or quintet.
Keep reading.
>> [...] but I decided that since a duet clearly refers
>> to all sorts of different genres of musical compositions for two
>singers or
>> instruments, so too a quintet should be a generic word.
>
>Quintet? Quartet? The suspense is killing me!
The person answered "quintet". That's a typo. As I've said, I haven't
been feeling so well the past few days.
><snip>
>> WRONG:
>> 1 Loop turning I into J
>
>This wasn't my answer, but I'd think this would be debatable. There is
>a Unicode code point for it (U+0321 COMBINING PALATALIZED HOOK BELOW);
>it's used with other characters in the IPA. Arguably U+006A ('j') is a
>precomposed version of U+0069 U+0321 ('i'+hook).
The entrant didn't give me any unicode coding. Also, the IPA isn't a
language; it's a scheme for encoding the sounds of other languages. As for
this question, I'll give a fuller explanation in another post.
--Ted
Ted S.
Stone) wrote rather arrogantly in <DaCI5.2892$wH2.11054@news2-hme0>:
>Hi,
>
>The Democratic Republic of Congo, which was Zaire, became independent in
>May 1997. The country you thought I answered is Republic of the Congo -
>which is quite different.
If the Democratic Republic of Congo became independent in May 1997, from
what country did it become independent?
>Therefore I should have scored 1 for this and not WR. This is supported
>by...
The Democratic Republic of Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960.
It changed its name to Zaïre in 1971, IIRC, and then changed its name back
in 1997. This means that it did not become independent after 1970.
>Many thanks for the re-score you are about to perform!
Bollocks! I may do some re-scoring, but not for this!
BTW: I should apologise if any of my posts today seem hard to follow. As I
pointed out previously, I've been feeling rather unwell the past few days.
I had a splitting headache all day Thursday and was vomiting into various
containers, I was feeling somewhat better on Friday and Saturday, and today
have the headache again, but fortunately no urge to vomit. However, I am
still having trouble thinking clearly and concentrating.
--Ted
Hugo van der Sanden
>
> Somebody claiming to be ma...@cableinet.co.uk (Mago) wrote in
> <39f2b06a...@news.strayduck.net>:
>
> >>I've never seen an ottoman that stores anything (well, it does have
> >>stuffing, but I used the word "intended" -- I don't think one buys an
> >>ottoman in order to store the stuffing!).
> >
> >Maybe this is an english/american problem, but an ottoman in UK is a
> >large chest usually kept in the bedroom for the sole purpose of
> >storing linen, blankets etc. the one I have is certainly too heavy to
> >move around on a frequent, or any other basis.
>
> Apparently it is a UK/US problem. Here in the US, an ottoman is a
> stuffed footstool. I have a feeling I'm going to have to rescore the
> contest, or at least that section involving the submitter of "ottoman". I
> have to admit that I'd never heard of the UK ottoman. When I saw that
> entry, I immediately thought of the footstool and decided the answer was
> wrong.
I can find some partial support for Mark's view here in the Concise
Collins (1987) dictionary:
a low padded seat, usually armless, sometimes in the form of a chest;
a cushioned footstool
.. but Chambers (1990) doesn't mention it:
a cushioned seat for several persons sitting with their backs to one
another; a low, stuffed seat without a back
Hugo
Kevin N. Stone
Well put!
:)
Mago
Cheers
Mark
Keith Willoughby
<h...@crypt0.demon.co.uk> writes
>
>I can find some partial support for Mark's view here in the Concise
>Collins (1987) dictionary:
> a low padded seat, usually armless, sometimes in the form of a chest;
>a cushioned footstool
>
>.. but Chambers (1990) doesn't mention it:
> a cushioned seat for several persons sitting with their backs to one
>another; a low, stuffed seat without a back
Well I never. I've always thought of an ottoman as a storage chest for
bedclothes that just happens to have a padded seat for a lid; I would
never have thought the definition would be "seat".
--
Keith Willoughby, Wales | Fire Jimy
You know how it is when you go to be the subject of a psychology experiment, and
nobody else shows up, and you think maybe that's part of the experiment? I'm
like that all the time. -- Steven Wright
Keith Calvert Ivey
>Ted Schuerzinger writes:
>> 4. Name, or otherwise unambiguously identify, a diacritical mark which
>> appears with at least one letter in a language using the Latin alphabet...
>
>> 1 Slash through letter (eg. ų)
>
>I think this is wrong. I know of at least two languages where ų is a
>letter, but none where the "slash" in the ų is a diacritical mark.
It depends on the context in which you're defining "diacritical
mark". Individual languages may define combinations as separate
letters or not, but from a typographic perspective (or by
Unicode definitions) parts of those letters can still be
diacritical marks.
Of course, if that's the interpretation being used, then the
tail on the "j" should also be a correct answer (and the
crossbar on the "G" would have been as well).
--
Keith C. Ivey <kci...@cpcug.org>
Washington, DC
David Eppstein
(Mago) wrote:
> Get well soon.
And, thanks for persevering through your illness to run this contest.
It was fun!
Keith Calvert Ivey
>I believe that I fairly clearly worded the question so as to eliminate
>things like the Paralympics and Olympic games not held in Sydney.
You did. My wrong answer was purely a result of a too-quick Web
search at the very last minute. I hate the sports questions.
And why is the official Sydney Olympics site so unusable?
Didn't I hear that IBM was sued because of its inept design of
the site?
Thanks for running the contest, Ted, and get well soon.
mark edward hardwidge
>>The Democratic Republic of Congo, which was Zaire, became independent in
>>May 1997. The country you thought I answered is Republic of the Congo -
>>which is quite different.
> If the Democratic Republic of Congo became independent in May 1997, from
> what country did it become independent?
The 2000 CIA Factbook says:
Congo, Democratic Republic of the
Independence: 30 June 1960 (from Belgium)
Congo, Republic of the
Independence: 15 August 1960 (from France)
--
Mark E. Hardwidge
hard...@uiuc.edu
Kevin N. Stone
I have also re-looked and concede defeat.
Perhaps a request for a re-score was a little premature, but Ted responded
eloquently.
PS loads of new optical illusions at:
======================================================================
BrainBashers: www.brainbashers.com
!sega lla rof selzzup dna sresaet niarB
======================================================================
Matthew T. Russotto
Keith Willoughby <ke...@flat222.org> wrote:
}In article <39F319BD...@crypt0.demon.co.uk>, Hugo van der Sanden
}<h...@crypt0.demon.co.uk> writes
}>
}>I can find some partial support for Mark's view here in the Concise
}>Collins (1987) dictionary:
}> a low padded seat, usually armless, sometimes in the form of a chest;
}>a cushioned footstool
}>
}>.. but Chambers (1990) doesn't mention it:
}> a cushioned seat for several persons sitting with their backs to one
}>another; a low, stuffed seat without a back
}
}
}Well I never. I've always thought of an ottoman as a storage chest for
}bedclothes that just happens to have a padded seat for a lid; I would
}never have thought the definition would be "seat".
What you're talking about is easy enough to move around, though,
provided it's empty.
--
Matthew T. Russotto russ...@pond.com
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
of justice is no virtue."
Ted S.
marks" question), I'm going to comment on it in one meta-post that (with
any luck) should answer all the questions already asked.
Somebody claiming to be som...@algonet.se (Erland Sommarskog) wrote in
<8FD5A102...@194.213.69.148>:
>Ted S. (fe...@banet.net) writes:
>>4. Name, or otherwise unambiguously identify, a diacritical mark which
>>appears with at least one letter in a language using the Latin
>>alphabet. Equivalent answers will be determined by the appearance of
>>the mark (excluding typographical differences), and the mark's location
>>in relation to the letter.
>>
>> 1 Slash through letter (eg. ø)
>> 1 Tilde (eg. ñ)
>>WRONG:
>> 1 Loop turning I into J
>
>There are two possibilities of interpreting "diacritical mark". One
>is that that the mark is an addition to a letter seen from a perspective
>of a base alphabet. Another is that the mark actually functions as
>a mark in a least one language. That is, the mark only modifies an
>existing letter; it does not result in a new letter in that langauge.
>
>"The Latin alphabet" is also an ambiguous expression. It could refer
>to the alphabet used actually by Latin, it also refer to alphabets
>derived from using the Latin alphabet by using the same shapes and
>adding a few of their own, and possibly dropping another. I would say
>that the latter is sloppy usage though; it should rather be "Latin
>alphabets", because the repetoire and order can vary considerably.
>Nevertheless, the usage is common.
>
>These ambiguities go together, so if Ted meant the alphabet used by
>Latin, it seems reasonable that any addition to a Latin letter to
>compose a new one, is a diacritical mark. On the other hand, if "Latin
>alphabet" is just a family name, the requirements for a diacritical mark
>must reasonably be "a mark within some language".
>
>The way Ted phrased his question, it wasn't clear what he meant, and
>given his rulings it is still not clear.
>
>Above he suggests that slash through a letter is a diacritical mark,
>and that the tilde in ñ is a diacritical mark. He also gives ring
>as in Swedish "å" an example of marks not given in answers.
I should point out here that I used the å only because that's the letter
that appears in ISO-8859-1. The Czech u with a ring over it doesn't appear
in ISO-8859-1, of course. As of using the ñ instead of the ã, which
appears in Portuguese, I can mark that one up to sheer laziness.
>This is fine if we use the perspective that Latin is the base language,
>and anything added is a diacritical mark. But since Latin didn't have
>J, but this letter was derived later, the answer ruled incorrect by
>Ted should also be corred. (It was my answer, as you may have guessed.)
Well, actually, since you were the only one to get a wrong answer on this
question, anybody could look to see who had a "WR" in the scoring ladder
and correlate it with the one wrong answer. ;-)
>But in no language today, the hook has the function of a diacritical
>mark, so using the other perspective, my answer is clearly wrong.
>However, the only two languages that I know that uses the slash are
>Danish and Polish, and they are not diacrictal marks, but slash O
>and L are letters of their own rights in the respective languages.
>The same applies to Ñ and Å in Spanish and Swedish. The tilde and
>ring are correct anyway, beacuse tilde also appear in Portuguese,
>where they have diacricital status (I believe), and the ring is used
>in Czech and/or Slovak. But the actual examples are bad when you have
>ruled the hook that makes the J an I.
>
>I would also say that the same applies to the Polish kreska - these
>are not diacritical marks in Polish, but C-kreska is a letter of its
>own, and so are the other kreska letters do. I also believe that
>the D-stroke in Croatian is a letter of its own. (As for the double
>grave accent in Croatian, I have to admit that I have never heard of
>it before.)
I hadn't heard of it before either, but was given a unicode reference to
it.
> The breve in Roumanian, used only on A, is another case
>of not being a diacritic within the language. My Esperanto is rusty,
>but I believe that G-breve etc are separate letters there as well.
Actually, since my Esperanto is slightly less rusty, I can tell you that
the c, g, h, j, and s in Esperanto all have circumflexes over them. :-)
The u has a breve, and is alphebetized separately. I don't speak Romanian,
and so have no idea as to whether the A-breve is a separate letter.
>Of course, had Ted written "according to the Unicode standard" or given
>the English alphabet as his base language, his rulings would have made
>perfect sense. But then I would have given a different answer.
Actually, when I was thinking of the "Latin alphabet", I had something more
like 7-bit ASCII in mind, or the "Latin alphabet" as opposed to the
"Cyrillic alphabet", which also has several variations but one more or less
common version.
Now as to the more important question of whether a letter with some marking
that is alphebetized separately disqualifies it from the status of a
diacritical mark, my understanding was that this shouldn't be the case.
And yet, the loop that makes an I into a J just seems intuitively wrong to
me. The J has become a letter in a whole host of foreign languages, with
different pronounciations (eg. English, French, and Spanish). For those
marks that are only used in one or two languages, and look like a letter
with a mark over it to average people (ie not the types who inhabit these
NGs) who speak most of the languages using some variation of the Latin
alphabet, I presumed that the average person would think of it as a
diacritical mark (if they even know what such a mark is).
Finally, a question in response to Keith Ivey's point: Suppose somebody
answered "the letter V, which turns a V into a W". Now, the original Latin
alphabet didn't have a letter W for many centuries. But would this be a
correct answer. My thinking on this question was rather like the
explanation Keith put forth. However, the J has become different enough
for people in most languages (as has the W, as far as I can tell, to the
point that IIRC Polish doesn't even use the letter V -- yes, Erland, I know
that the V and W are equivalent in Finnish), that I'm not certain it should
count as a diacritical.
I didn't think this question would cause such a controversy! ;-)
Now a little more comment on my not feeling so well, since a lot of you
have been kind enough to wish me well: Judging the contest wasn't all that
hard, since I was feeling fine until Thursday morning. The only place it
really caused a problem was on Question 8, where since there were so many
1s I basically decided with the entrants in the last few days to be rather
more lazy in looking up the correctness of an answer unless somebody (like
Gerson) had a very good score. Fortunately, a lot of the late entrants had
repeat answers on Question 8. :-) I haven't felt nauseous since Thursday,
but if I can just get rid of this splitting headache....
--Ted
Charles Bryant
Ted S. <fe...@banet.net> wrote:
>2. Give a word appearing in an English dictionary for a type of musical
>composition which usually refers specifically to compositions of classical
>music (as opposed to generic words for compositions that can be of any type
>of music), and of which there is at least one example composed by Wolfgang
>Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791 AD/CE).
>WRONG:
> 1 Quartet (can be any composition for five singers)
> 564 is a "Trio". When I mentioned "as opposed to generic
>words", I had intended that words like "song", "melody", "tune" and the
>like should not be correct, but I decided that since a duet clearly refers
>to all sorts of different genres of musical compositions for two singers or
>instruments, so too a quintet should be a generic word.
I think there is a big difference between "duet" and "quartet". If I
heard a reference to a quartet I would be very surprised if it
referred to a piece of rock music, but a duet could well be modern.
The reason for this difference is that modern rock/pop etc music is not
written for a specific number of instuments, but the words of a song may
well be intended to be sung by two people.
A group might still be referred to as a quartet, but not a piece of
music.
>5. Name something (generic terms only, no brand names) commonly found in
>houses in the industrialized world for which one of the intended uses is
>storage, and which is either installed in some location or too heavy to be
>moved in its entirety on a frequent basis.
>
...
>WRONG:
...
> 1 Floppy disk drive (not used for storage)
If is it not used for storage, what is it used for? Note that
"storage" means two things: a place to store things and the action of
storing. A floppy disk drive is not usually used as a place for
storing things but it is almost exclusively used for the process of
storing.
--
Eppur si muove
Jens Brix Christiansen
> >
> >> 1 Slash through letter (eg. ø)
> >
> >letter, but none where the "slash" in the ø is a diacritical mark.
I guess the two languages Mark had in mind are Danish and Norwegian, but
Faroese also has this letter. In Faroese, the letter has two different
representations in use: ö (as in Icelandic (and more remotely Swedish))
and ø (as in Danish and Norwegian); this certainly highlights Mark's
point that we are talking about a separate letter here.
Faroese displays the letter prominently: The Faroese name for the Faroe
Islands is "Føroyar" (or, of course, "Föroyar").
>
> It depends on the context in which you're defining "diacritical
> mark". Individual languages may define combinations as separate
> letters or not, but from a typographic perspective (or by
> Unicode definitions) parts of those letters can still be
> diacritical marks.
I agree. This is all a question of drawing the line somewhere, which is
Ted's privilege. The slash in ø is what I normally classify as a risky
answer to Rare Entries. If it passes, you are probably in for a good
score, but if it is rejected, you are definitely in for a bad score. In
this case, Mark chose to play it safe.
The ring over å would have been less risky. Å is, like ø, a separate
letter in the Nordic languages, but the ring is used over capital U in
Czech to denote a long u.
Erland Sommarskog
>>(As for the double grave accent in Croatian, I have to admit that
>>I have never heard of it before.)
>
>I hadn't heard of it before either, but was given a unicode reference to
>it.
I stumbled on a Unicode docuemnt last night, and apparently the double
grave is used in Serbian and Croatian poetics (sic!).
By the way, the kreska does not appear in Unicode as a character, but
that's irrelevant, as the question was not constrained to Unicode.
>Actually, when I was thinking of the "Latin alphabet", I had something more
>like 7-bit ASCII in mind,
I have no problem of using ASCII as a base for such a question, but ASCII
is not the same as the Latin alphabet. ASCII coincides with the English
alphabet, but not with the Latin.
>"Cyrillic alphabet", which also has several variations but one more or less
>common version.
I dare you to define that "common version" of the Cyrillic alphabet. It's
difficult finding two languages with Latin script that uses the same
alphabet (English/Dutch/French, Danish/Norweigian are a few combinations
that comes to mind), but the varition in the Cyrillic family is much
greater. As far there is a "common version" of Cyrillic, it's probably
the Russian alphabet, despite Russian having added letters that are not
used on the Balkan peninsula. (Personally, I would be more inclined to
nominate Bulgarian as the "master" for Cyrillic.)
>Now as to the more important question of whether a letter with some marking
>that is alphebetized separately disqualifies it from the status of a
>diacritical mark, my understanding was that this shouldn't be the case.
>And yet, the loop that makes an I into a J just seems intuitively wrong to
>me. The J has become a letter in a whole host of foreign languages, with
>different pronounciations (eg. English, French, and Spanish). For those
>marks that are only used in one or two languages, and look like a letter
>with a mark over it to average people (ie not the types who inhabit these
>NGs) who speak most of the languages using some variation of the Latin
>alphabet, I presumed that the average person would think of it as a
>diacritical mark (if they even know what such a mark is).
But that's irrelavant. The J is almost universal. (But it is not included
in the Italian alphabet, although dictionaries appear to list it separately
anyway.) Nevertheless, from the point of view of the ortography used by
Caesar and Cicero, J is a variant of I.
Of course, I understand that it is intuively wrong to you, being a
speaker of the English langauge, and a slash over an existing letter
is intuitively correct to you, but that wasn't your question.
(Admittedly; I was naughty when I gave my answer, but I as you might
have noticed, I don't like when people confused the Latin alphabet
with the English alphabet.)
Matthew T. Russotto
Erland Sommarskog <som...@algonet.se> wrote:
}
}But that's irrelavant. The J is almost universal. (But it is not included
}in the Italian alphabet, although dictionaries appear to list it separately
}anyway.) Nevertheless, from the point of view of the ortography used by
}Caesar and Cicero, J is a variant of I.
IIRC, "J" appears in Italian courtesy of words borrowed from other
languages.
lta...@my-deja.com
Hmmm, it seems to me that we're in rather swampy territory trying to
decide whether "quartet" is "generic".
How is "quartet" all that different from "sonata", "concerto" or
"symphony"? All of these terms are commonly used only to describe
classical compositions; and all of them, in Mozart's time, usually
referred to longish works typically divided into three or four
movements, with similar conventions regarding the arrangement and
nature of the various movements.
If "quartet" doesn't qualify, would "string quartet" do? And in that
case, would "concerto" flunk and "piano concerto" pass? Hard to say
where to draw the line.
Anyway, this is just the usual post-mortem quibbling. Thanks again for
a very enjoyable and well-run contest!
Larry Tapper
(done in by the unexpected popularity of Simchat Torah)
In article <2000-10-2...@chch.demon.co.uk>,
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Kevin N. Stone
I have an idea (which may or not be unique - but then how many ideas are
unique?), anyway, my idea...
Have exactly the same questions as the Rare Contest but run a second contest
where the object is to get the MOST popular answer, therefore the best score
would be the highest and a wrong answer would score 1.
Any takers - certainly easy to score as unpopular/wrong answers could safely
be ignored?
Kev
Keith Willoughby
e...@despam.brainbashers.com> writes
>Have exactly the same questions as the Rare Contest but run a second
>contest where the object is to get the MOST popular answer, therefore
>the best score would be the highest and a wrong answer would score 1.
>
>Any takers - certainly easy to score as unpopular/wrong answers could
>safely be ignored?
Common Entries competitions became popular shortly after Rare Entries
made their entrance on the group. I enjoyed them.
One thing though - usually, there were no wrong answers. All answers
were counted as correct. If a lot of people believed that "Bart Simpson"
was a valid answer for "name a president of the USA", then that was
fine.
--
Keith Willoughby, Wales | Fire Jimy
Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: One. He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem to an
earlier joke.
Matthew T. Russotto
Keith Willoughby <ke...@flat222.org> wrote:
}In article <Gb_I5.2957$sZ2.14946@news1-hme0>, Kevin N. Stone <kevin.ston
}e...@despam.brainbashers.com> writes
}>Have exactly the same questions as the Rare Contest but run a second
}>contest where the object is to get the MOST popular answer, therefore
}>the best score would be the highest and a wrong answer would score 1.
}>
}>Any takers - certainly easy to score as unpopular/wrong answers could
}>safely be ignored?
}
}Common Entries competitions became popular shortly after Rare Entries
}made their entrance on the group. I enjoyed them.
And there are those who enter the Rare Entries contest to lose (that
is, get the highest score with no wrong answers). I've entered both
ways (in different contest) but it doesn't seem to make much
difference to my score.
Also, weren't there a few "Name the most common entry in the Rare
Entries contest currently running" contests?
Erland Sommarskog
>IIRC, "J" appears in Italian courtesy of words borrowed from other
>languages.
And so does W in Swedish, but W is not a letter in the Swedish alphabet.
--
Erland Sommarskog, Stockholm, som...@algonet.se
Keith Calvert Ivey
>Finally, a question in response to Keith Ivey's point: Suppose somebody
>answered "the letter V, which turns a V into a W". Now, the original Latin
>alphabet didn't have a letter W for many centuries. But would this be a
>correct answer.
I'd say no. Neither the a nor the e in the a-e ligature is a
diacritical mark, either. Of course, now someone will mention
that some diacritical marks originated as tiny letters above the
marked letters.
>My thinking on this question was rather like the
>explanation Keith put forth. However, the J has become different enough
>for people in most languages (as has the W, as far as I can tell, to the
>point that IIRC Polish doesn't even use the letter V -- yes, Erland, I know
>that the V and W are equivalent in Finnish), that I'm not certain it should
>count as a diacritical.
Fair enough. But we have to have the traditional post-contest
carping. Of course, Erland deserved what he got after all the
bad karma he's built up from HTML attachments or whatever
garbage he keeps sending the moderators.
>I didn't think this question would cause such a controversy! ;-)
It seems to me I've seen this sort of conversation almost every
time someone mentions diacritical marks on Usenet.
David K. Lewis
> >while
> >I've never seen an ottoman that stores anything (well, it does have
> >stuffing, but I used the word "intended" -- I don't think one buys an
> >ottoman in order to store the stuffing!).
>
> Hi there
> Maybe this is an english/american problem, but an ottoman in UK is a
> large chest usually kept in the bedroom for the sole purpose of
> storing linen, blankets etc. the one I have is certainly too heavy to
> move around on a frequent, or any other basis.
Ah, we call those chests. In the US, an Ottoman is a padded footstool.
Dave.
Jens Brix Christiansen
>
> Matthew T. Russotto (russ...@wanda.vf.pond.com) writes:
> >IIRC, "J" appears in Italian courtesy of words borrowed from other
> >languages.
>
> And so does W in Swedish, but W is not a letter in the Swedish alphabet.
This is not the whole truth about Swedish: W is widely used in
indigenous Swedish surnames as an ornamental variation of V. And Q has
much the same role in Swedish as W does. Still, Q is a separate letter
in the Swedish alphabet. Go figure!
In Danish, where W and Q appear much like they do in Swedish, both are
counted as distinct letters in the alphabet, although the distinct
alphabetization of V and W is not always obeyed.
Similarly, ü (u with an umlaut) appears in Danish, mostly in personal
names of German, Turkish, or Hungarian origin. Unlike in German, it is
treated as a letter and alphabetized as a variant of y.
Ted S.
<39f4c55f...@news.newsguy.com>:
>fe...@banet.spam (Ted S.) wrote:
>
>>Finally, a question in response to Keith Ivey's point: Suppose somebody
>>answered "the letter V, which turns a V into a W". Now, the original
>>Latin alphabet didn't have a letter W for many centuries. But would
>>this be a correct answer.
>
>I'd say no. Neither the a nor the e in the a-e ligature is a
>diacritical mark, either. Of course, now someone will mention
>that some diacritical marks originated as tiny letters above the
>marked letters.
Since I set the question, I ought to be that someone. ;-) I know that the
German umlaut came from the letter "e" after the vowel which now carries
the umlaut. How do you think my surname became Schuerzinger when my
grandfather came from the old country?
A few more points unrelated to the judgment decisions on that question:
1) I'm glad nobody tried the Vietnamese diacritical marks. It was bad
enough that two people answered "kahakô", but at least one of them gave me
a URL so that I could see that this is equivalent to "macron".
2) My answer would have been the double acute accent that makes the
Hungarian ö into a long letter, so I wouldn't have scored well on it,
either.
3) I always thought the Polish nasal vowels had a cedilla under them until
I ran this contest and found out that it's actually called an "ogonek" and
looks more like a reverse comma.
>>My thinking on this question was rather like the
>>explanation Keith put forth. However, the J has become different
>>enough for people in most languages (as has the W, as far as I can
>>tell, to the point that IIRC Polish doesn't even use the letter V --
>>yes, Erland, I know that the V and W are equivalent in Finnish), that
>>I'm not certain it should count as a diacritical.
>
>Fair enough. But we have to have the traditional post-contest
>carping. Of course, Erland deserved what he got after all the
>bad karma he's built up from HTML attachments or whatever
>garbage he keeps sending the moderators.
You really should put a smiley here. In defense of Erland, he said that he
was running a contest once where somebody sent in the right answers to the
wrong questions (ie. got their answers out of order), so he includes the
questions in mailing his answers in order to make certain he doesn't screw
up the answer order.
--Ted
To reply by e-mail, change .spam to .net
Ted S.
<39F53D...@dksin.dk>:
German alphebetizes the letters with the umlauts rather strangely. Most
reference sources alphebetize them the same as the umlaut-less variant,
while some alphebetize them as though they were spelt "ae", "oe", and "ue".
Crossword puzzles in German are also a pain for non-native speakers in that
the umlauts are never used, instead replaced by the two-letter
combinations, with each letter in a separate box, making the word one
letter longer than one is normally used to.
When I was in Europe a decade ago, I bought a small road atlas of the
Netherlands which had an index of place-names that alphebetized the IJ
digraph as equivalent to Y. However, I've been told by Dutch speakers that
this is incorrect and the digraph is supposed to be alphebetized as though
it's two letters.
--Ted, feeling better, but tired since I foolishly stayed up to watch the
end of a football game that didn't end until 1:30....
Ted S.
<8t1kji$2bl$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>:
>
>
>Hmmm, it seems to me that we're in rather swampy territory trying to
>decide whether "quartet" is "generic".
What about arrangements for a cappella groups?
>How is "quartet" all that different from "sonata", "concerto" or
>"symphony"? All of these terms are commonly used only to describe
>classical compositions; and all of them, in Mozart's time, usually
>referred to longish works typically divided into three or four
>movements, with similar conventions regarding the arrangement and
>nature of the various movements.
>
>If "quartet" doesn't qualify, would "string quartet" do? And in that
>case, would "concerto" flunk and "piano concerto" pass? Hard to say
>where to draw the line.
These two wouldn't do. If you re-read the question, you'll note that it
asks for "a word". "String Quartet" and "Piano Concerto" are both two
words.
At any rate, on this question my thought process regarding "generic" was
one of whether the average person would think of classical music upon
hearing the word. For words like symphony or opera, my thought is that
people do, even though there is symphonic rock and rock operas, but on
quintet, people wouldn't necessarily think of classical music -- at least
not to anywhere near the extent they would for the other words. But if
somebody else running the contest had accepted it, I probably wouldn't
object unless it kept me from winning the contest. :-)
>Anyway, this is just the usual post-mortem quibbling. Thanks again for
>a very enjoyable and well-run contest!
>
>Larry Tapper
>
>(done in by the unexpected popularity of Simchat Torah)
And I was done in by the fact that nobody scored more than a 5 on that
question. Really, I thought that question, along with the Olympics
question and (to a lesser extent) the Hitchcock movies question, all of
which I thought would lead to scores greater than a 5.
Oh well, Mark said he was going to be away for about six weeks and those
six weeks are coming to a close. I'm hoping he or somebody else will post
a Rare Entries contest soon since I'm itching to enter one again!
--Ted
Ted S.
wrote in <2000-10-2...@chch.demon.co.uk>:
>>5. Name something (generic terms only, no brand names) commonly found
>>in houses in the industrialized world for which one of the intended
>>uses is storage, and which is either installed in some location or too
>>heavy to be moved in its entirety on a frequent basis.
>>
>...
>>WRONG:
>...
>> 1 Floppy disk drive (not used for storage)
>
>If is it not used for storage, what is it used for? Note that
>"storage" means two things: a place to store things and the action of
>storing. A floppy disk drive is not usually used as a place for
>storing things but it is almost exclusively used for the process of
>storing.
It's used for the process of writing the data to a floppy diskette, which
is then used for actually storing the data. If I answer the phone and take
a message for somebody else, am I storing the message when I write down the
phone number on a filing card or when I put the card with the phone number
into a Rolodex or some similar filing device? (Of coure, Rolodex, being a
trademark, would have been incorrect, but that's another story.)
--Ted, who hopes Mark starts a new MSB so that I don't have to make such
judging decisions any longer. :-)
David Eppstein
S.) wrote:
> It's used for the process of writing the data to a floppy diskette, which
> is then used for actually storing the data. If I answer the phone and take
> a message for somebody else, am I storing the message when I write down the
> phone number on a filing card or when I put the card with the phone number
> into a Rolodex or some similar filing device? (Of coure, Rolodex, being a
> trademark, would have been incorrect, but that's another story.)
Yes, you are.
Did you read my message where I noted that the dictionary definition
of storage clearly includes the act or process of causing something to be
stored? Here are the definitions again in case you missed it.
This is from "webster" on a Sun workstation.
stor-age \'sto^-r-ij, 'sto[0xC7]r-\ n
(1612)
2a: the act of storing: the state of being stored; esp: the safekeeping
of goods in a depository (as a warehouse)
1store \'sto^-(e)r, 'sto[0xC7](e)r\ vt stored; stor-ing
[ME storen, fr. OF estorer to construct, restore, store, fr. L instaurare
to renew, restore, fr. in- + -staurare (akin to Gk stauros
stake) -- more at STEER]
(13c)
3: to place or leave in a location (as a warehouse, library, or computer
memory) for preservation or later use or disposal
Nick Atty
wrote:
>fe...@banet.net (Ted S.) wrote:
>
>>I believe that I fairly clearly worded the question so as to eliminate
>>things like the Paralympics and Olympic games not held in Sydney.
>
>You did. My wrong answer was purely a result of a too-quick Web
>search at the very last minute. I hate the sports questions.
>And why is the official Sydney Olympics site so unusable?
>Didn't I hear that IBM was sued because of its inept design of
>the site?
Exactly the same here! I'd done all the ones I could do with my
reference books a week or so back, but had to look up the two on dull
subjects :-) like sport and films on the web. I'd have done alright if
it hadn't been for the sports.
And yes, all the results I got from a web search for the medals were
dire. Several dozen telling me about what Sydney was going to be like,
and one that deluded me (though I should have realised that there
wouldn't have been much skiing in Sydney!)
>Thanks for running the contest, Ted, and get well soon.
Ditto.
--
On-line canal route planner: http://www.mihalis.net/canal/cgi-bin/index.cgi
Nick Atty
>A few more points unrelated to the judgment decisions on that question:
[snip]
I wasn't sure from the question whether it was a diacritic, or a
combination of a diacritic and a letter. What's more, I don't think
I've worked it out from this discussion.
I played safe and went Hungarian, if not I'd have gone for the acute
accent on m in Kivunjo (chapter 5 in Pinker's "The Language Instinct")!
David Eppstein
nos...@nandj.freeserve.co.uk wrote:
> And yes, all the results I got from a web search for the medals were
> dire. Several dozen telling me about what Sydney was going to be like,
> and one that deluded me (though I should have realised that there
> wouldn't have been much skiing in Sydney!)
My experience was similar. For most of the questions google led me
directly to a good reference. For the independence dates I used the CIA
world factbook, and searching for "poet committed suicide" on bartleby.com
got very good results (google no help there). But the olympic medals were
a pain, and I eventually ended up jumping back and forth between a couple
different sites (one with the team medals listed only by country, and the
official site with all the data but no good index).
One result that surprised me from this contest was the low number of
answers of "Alice Sheldon" (aka James Tiptree Jr. aka Raccoona Sheldon) on
the suicide question -- she was the first one I thought of, so I was sure
she would be more popular.
Mark Brader
> Oh well, Mark said he was going to be away for about six weeks and those
> six weeks are coming to a close.
What I actually said (on September 7) was:
| I'll be off-net more often than not for the next 6 weeks...
I am back, but have not started composing another contest yet.
--
Mark Brader | "I do not want to give the impression I spend all
Toronto | my time on the Internet, but in the right hands
m...@vex.net | it is a wondrous tool, and in the wrong hands
| it is an even better one." -- Cecil Adams
My text in this article is in the public domain.
Eytan Zweig
> 3. Name a regular (calendrical) Jewish religious observance. That
is, the
> observance as it appears on the calendar, not a ritual which makes up
part
> of an observance.
>
> 5 Simchat Torah
> 4 Shabbat [=Sabbath]
> 3 Rosh Hashanah [=Jewish New Year]
> 3 Shavuot [=Feast of Weeks]
> 3 Tisha B'Av [17th of Av]
Tisha B'Av is the 9th day of Av, and is the second most important
Jewish fast.
The 17th day of Av does not have an attached observance (at least not
one I'm aware off), and it is called "Yod Zayin B'Av".
> I knew of about eight or nine correct answers, and figured that there
were
> some obscure ones that a Gentile such as myself wouldn't have known
without
> doing any research, but I was surprised at just how many minor feasts
and
> fasts there are in the Jewish calendar.
Actually, every single Saturday in the yearhas an associated parasha
(section of the bible) that's read on it, starting from Simchat Tora
(where the first chapter of Genesis is read). This makes every Saturday
a calanderial religious observance - religious people here in Israel
definitely use the parasha as a reference to which Saturday is
mentioned.
Eytan
Erland Sommarskog
>My experience was similar. For most of the questions google led me
>directly to a good reference. For the independence dates I used the CIA
>world factbook, and searching for "poet committed suicide" on bartleby.com
>got very good results (google no help there). But the olympic medals were
>a pain, and I eventually ended up jumping back and forth between a couple
>different sites (one with the team medals listed only by country, and the
>official site with all the data but no good index).
We all have our questions where we are virtually clueless I guess.
I was fairly lucky this time. I went to IMDB for Hitchock to verify
that "Fåglarna" actually was "The Birds" in English. This is the
problem of living in a non-English country: you don't always no the
English titles. On the other hand, there is also an advantage. For
the poet that committed suicide the Swedish Karin Boye came immediately
in mind, and it seemed a fairly safe unique answer.
As for the olympics, we had a Swedish swimmer who won two silver
medals behind the Dutchess Inge de Bruijn so that was an easy thing.
My worse subject this round was probably Jewish fiests, but I trusted
the rest of the pack being better versed, so Yom Kippur seemed to
be low-point enough.
Now, if Ted only had scored the diacritic question according to his
wording and not what he thought of...
Aaron M. Ucko
> got very good results (google no help there). But the olympic medals were
> a pain, and I eventually ended up jumping back and forth between a couple
> different sites (one with the team medals listed only by country, and the
> official site with all the data but no good index).
Yeah, that question was annoying. I think I ended up looking a few
places before finding relevant information on CNNSI.
> One result that surprised me from this contest was the low number of
> answers of "Alice Sheldon" (aka James Tiptree Jr. aka Raccoona Sheldon) on
> the suicide question -- she was the first one I thought of, so I was sure
> she would be more popular.
I thought of her fairly quickly too, but figured most people didn't
know that much SF trivia.
BTW, I'd be happy to split my third-place prize money with you. ;-)
--
Aaron M. Ucko, KB1CJC <a...@mit.edu> (finger a...@monk.mit.edu)
gerson
And there are those who enter the Rare Entries contest to lose (that
> is, get the highest score with no wrong answers). I've entered both
> ways (in different ...
How dare you
Keith Calvert Ivey
>1) I'm glad nobody tried the Vietnamese diacritical marks. It was bad
>enough that two people answered "kahakô", but at least one of them gave me
>a URL so that I could see that this is equivalent to "macron".
I was going to try Vietnamese (probably the horn), but I thought
that was too obvious. I don't know whether everybody else
thought that too or just didn't think of Vietnamese at all.
>2) My answer would have been the double acute accent that makes the
>Hungarian ö into a long letter, so I wouldn't have scored well on it,
>either.
Yes, that was what I chose instead.
[snip]
>>Of course, Erland deserved what he got after all the
>>bad karma he's built up from HTML attachments or whatever
>>garbage he keeps sending the moderators.
>
>You really should put a smiley here. In defense of Erland, he said that he
>was running a contest once where somebody sent in the right answers to the
>wrong questions (ie. got their answers out of order), so he includes the
>questions in mailing his answers in order to make certain he doesn't screw
>up the answer order.
I'm afraid I'm one of those people who can't bring themselves to
use smileys. I can see that they could be useful in some
situations (perhaps this one), but many times they seem to add
confusion rather than clarify. I've pondered smileyed posts
before, trying to determine whether there's a joke I'm missing,
when the same post without a smiley would have been perfectly
comprehensible.
Anyway, apologies to Erland. As far as outside observers could
see, he was just being obnoxious because he enjoyed seeing his
name featured in the results, even if he was being chastised.
I'm glad to see that that wasn't the case.
Keith Calvert Ivey
>One result that surprised me from this contest was the low number of
>answers of "Alice Sheldon" (aka James Tiptree Jr. aka Raccoona Sheldon) on
>the suicide question -- she was the first one I thought of, so I was sure
>she would be more popular.
That's what I thought about Robert E. Howard (though Sylvia
Plath was the first one I thought of). Fortunately I chose
him anyway, since that was one of my three ones.
Erland Sommarskog
>Anyway, apologies to Erland. As far as outside observers could
>see, he was just being obnoxious because he enjoyed seeing his
>name featured in the results, even if he was being chastised.
>I'm glad to see that that wasn't the case.
I stick my principles. Let's what happens to those suckers who don't
include the answers, but only the answers, if I ever come around to
run any more quizzes. :-)
(Actually, I have few interesting "Rare" questions, but I have had
these since Mark started the previous fad a couple of years ago,
and the likelyhood of me finding the time has not increased.)
Erland Sommarskog
I don't know if he wants to rule the world, or if it's only art
for art's sake. It's probably only the tip of the iceberg anyway.
Matthew T. Russotto
Erland Sommarskog <som...@algonet.se> wrote:
}"gerson" <ger...@bigpond.net.au> writes:
}>"Matthew T. Russotto" wrote>
}>
}> And there are those who enter the Rare Entries contest to lose (that
}>> is, get the highest score with no wrong answers). I've entered both
}>> ways (in different ...
}>
}>How dare you
}
}I don't know if he wants to rule the world, or if it's only art
}for art's sake. It's probably only the tip of the iceberg anyway.
Alas, you've unmasked me
-- Snowball
Jacqui
> Ted Schuerzinger writes:
> > 1. Name something a doctor might normally see when looking into the mouth
> > of a currently-healthy person during a routine checkup/physical
> > examination.
> ...
> > WRONG:
> > 1 Cavity
>
> I think Ted disqualified this answer for the wrong reason.
>
> > I decided
> > that cavity was incorrect partly because it does require medical attention
> > to fix, and partly because I don't think it can be seen. (Why do you think
> > the dentists use sharp instruments to check for cavities?)
>
> Because they're looking for *small* ones. A big cavity can certainly be
> seen, and I don't think a person could be considered "not healthy" just
> because they have a cavity.
>
> But I also think that cavities big enough to see easily are probably rare
> enough among healthy people that this answer fails the "normally" test.
You *so* don't want to see the huge hole I have in one of my bottom
right molars then...
Jac, otherwise perfectly healthy (and with good teeth apart from that
one. Don't ask me why I've not had it fixed, I just haven't got around
to it yet.)
Paul Guertin
> You *so* don't want to see the huge hole I have in one of my bottom
> right molars then...
Dentist: That's the biggest cavity I've ever seen. That's the biggest
cavity I've ever seen.
Patient: You don't have to say it twice.
Dentist: I didn't. It was the echo.
Paul Guertin
p...@sff.net