A variation on Feud: Instigators and Feudsters

Thread Games
1

I propose a variation on the Feuds by Dolores Reborn. Instead of Dolores picking the questions, the questions will be selected by Dopers. The idea is that there will be two games in one:
[ul][li] An ordinary Feud that will be played and scored exactly like Dolores’ games.[/li][li] A contest to see which Doper can construct the “best” question for the Feud.[/li][/ul]
So, as usual, someone will get confetti for the best score in the Feud, but someone else will get a prize for coming up with the best question.

I’ll call the game Instigators and Feudsters. Instigators are the players who try to cause trouble with their questions! Instigators are welcome to also play in the Feud phase of the Game.

Instigator’s Questions intended for the Feud can be placed in this thread, or be submitted to me via PM. Once we get enough questions, and have agreed on the best way to score them, I’ll start another thread exactly like one of Dolores’ games.

But first, let’s try to agree on what a good Feud question is! It may be easier to agree on what a bad Feud question is:
[ul][li] A question where everyone matches is a bad question.[/li][li] A question where nobody matches is a bad question.[/li][li] A question where there are many matching groups all of the same size is a bad question. For example, “5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 2 2 1” shows nine 5-way answers, and is a bad question.[/li][li] Similarly, a few large groups is bad, e.g. “12 12 13 13.”[/li][/ul]
In these examples of bad questions, most or all of the Feudsters get almost the same score. That’s no good!

So, I propose that a question’s “goodness” be defined as the difference between the maximum score it yields (in the regular Feud) and the average score it gets in the Feud.

Here are the ten questions from the most recent Feud. The “_at” question was best (by the Max minus Average criterion) — it gave players a chance for a good score ‘CAT’ but also a good chance of going wrong. The “-ish” and “_are” questions were least effective, given the close splits between dish/fish and bare/care.

score question distribution of responses
18.68 _at 27 11 4 3 2 2 1
15.20 _each 24 12 8 6
12.48 _ack 37 13
12.24 _ast 18 11 9 8 2 1 1
11.76 _ase 21 13 11 5
10.84 _ore 20 16 8 3 1 1 1
10.20 _ane 15 12 9 4 4 3 2 1
8.44 _ill 15 13 10 6 3 1 1 1
6.96 _are 24 21 3 1 1
6.88 _ish 23 20 7

0.96 [example of bad question] 12 12 13 13
0.68 [example of bad question] 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 2 2 1

Any interest?

2

Who’s determining the worth of the questions, and how can you even do that before the game starts? Also, what kind of questions are you looking for?

3

Scoring of the Instigators’ questions occurs AFTER the Feud is scored: Whoever submitted the “best question” (maximizing the difference between max and avg Feudster score, as described in #1) wins.

Questions should be fairly brief, have multiple possible answers, and seem like Feudsters will have fun answering.

I’d prefer to avoid questions where an answer can be written more than one way. (For example: responding to “Name a brand of soft drink” would “Coke” and “Coca Cola” be considered to match or not?) But those problems will be inevitable; I’ll ask Dolores for advice if problems arise.