# Celebrity Death Pool 2014 **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Tags:** death-pool\ **Created:** [December 1, 2013, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193 "2013-12-01T06:00:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 36
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2014, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/701 "2014-01-15T17:27:37Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > What the heck are the others doing there? 🙂 > > I could not find a wikipedia article that was created before she was ill. Perhaps that would be an acceptable criteria. The same thing that 15,000 people in the NYC marathon are doing. Pushing themselves and accomplishing personal goals. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2014, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/702 "2014-01-15T18:59:57Z")
> [@Bellhorn](#): > > However, there should be some arbitrary method, whether it’s a combination of international, published sources or that the celebrity had to be listed in some set of references. Take this year’s amalgam of celebrities from all 180 lists and come up with the smallest number of references that include 95%(?) of those selected. One tricky thing is how to avoid U.S.-centrism, or how to even know you need to do so. I hope **CAMJAY77** doesn’t mind my beating his list into the ground in the way of providing examples, but he has Australian and South African politicians on his list. Most of us, of course, have no way of knowing whether people in their countries, outside of their legislative districts, actually know who they are. (Lord knows there are people in the U.S. House of Representatives whose names would fail to ring a bell with 90% or more of regular GD posters who hail from the U.S.A.) It would be hard to know when you had a sufficiently fair group of references to determine the celebrityhood, or lack of it, for such people. The 95% suggestion probably wouldn’t help, they’d probably be in the 5%, or the 2%, or whatever, even if legit. ---
**Author:** ![CAMJAY77](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5fc32e/32.png) [@CAMJAY77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CAMJAY77)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2014, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/703 "2014-01-15T19:17:53Z")
I was in another death pool for many years and one rule we had was that the person had to have a wikipedia page. Wouldn’t mind doing that here next year. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2014, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/704 "2014-01-15T19:33:40Z")
I wish I were more eloquent, or a better writer, but I’m not. I’m going to set down some musings I have on the nature of celebrity, in relation to this game. To me, if an international wire service, like Reuters, UPI, or the like, picks up and runs with a story on the death of a person, said person is celebrity enough for me. It’s the same if a prominent national newspaper, (NY Times, Times of London, etc) carries a death story. I don’t rely on Wikipedia because _anyone_ could have a Wikipedia article about them. If a major website, say, like IMDb, carries a name _ **and** _ biographical info, even if that person is long retired, I’d figure that person counted. Heck, my 2013 list was made up of people from 95 to 100 years old. These folks were big back in the day. _(Alicia Rhett, why couldn’t you have died a week and a half earlier?)_ Someone said upthread that it’s easier to search for celebrity information now, with the internet, so we can find folks from other countries. And since we are an international board I figure politicians, prominent business people, and the like, from other countries, are fair game. For example, this year, for the first time, I have a themed list. All the people on the list share my birthday, of December 31st. Some are very recognizable, like Ben Kingsley and Anthony Hopkins. But the First Minister(is that like prime minister?) of Scotland is a man named Alexander Salmond. Not only was he born on December 31st, but in the same _ **year** _ as me, 1954. If an important politician like that croaked I figure in would at least be on MSN News. I still agree that a person famous _only_ due to a medical contion, illness, or related actions or events, is not a celebrity. This is why I would have nixed Ryan White. I do not limit celebrity to what I’ve written above, but that’s what I’d be looking for. It helps me, as DeathMistress, when players explain who their choices are, before giving the plain list. This makes it easier to look them up if there is a challenge. Ah yes, challenges. The right to challenge is an important one, but it should start privately, by PM or email. It’s a fun game we are playing here, and I don’t want to create hard feelings for any reason. I hope players will trust that I’ll act fairly. I’ll check on challenges, and if I agree with a challenger, I’ll politely ask the player in question to choose another name. These jackboots don’t fit very well and I don’t want to use them. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2014, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/705 "2014-01-15T19:53:59Z")
You’re driving, but I’d rather have a gentlemanly, public inquiry into whether or not a candidate is suitable. Then we could take the little weasel out back and steal his lunch mon… Let me get back to you on this. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2014, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/706 "2014-01-15T20:57:29Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > To me, if an international wire service, like Reuters, UPI, or the like, picks up and runs with a story on the death of a person, said person is celebrity enough for me. It’s the same if a prominent national newspaper, (NY Times, Times of London, etc) carries a death story. I think I can see a slight temporal problem with being able to use this metric. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2014, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/707 "2014-01-16T00:30:49Z")
It is difficult to prove celebrity without unfairly disadvantaging non-US players. To choose an example from my list this year, I doubt Lorrae Desmond’s death would be picked up by international news carriers, yet I expect Australian news sources will cover it, just like they covered the death of her former co-star Joyce Jacobs last year. If we polled all the players in the death pool, I believe less than a dozen would know who Lorrae Desmond is, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s quite famous in Australia. Everyone (over 35) knows Shirl from A Country Practice! We furriers do have an advantage for unique picks from our domestic celebrities, but we also are disadvantaged by our lack of knowledge of US celebrities like news anchors, sports stars and celebrity cooks, etc, because those people are often only famous in their home market. Surely it evens out, especially as the US potentially has a far greater pool of domestic celebs by virtue of its greater population size. The rule has long been that you can challenge the celebrity status of a pick who has died, but an obituary from a mainstream publication is acceptable proof that they qualified. We talked at one stage about defining which publications count as major publications, but I think we agreed it was too hard to make a comprehensive list that accommodated our international audience. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2014, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/708 "2014-01-16T01:18:39Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > I don’t rely on Wikipedia because _anyone_ could have a Wikipedia article about them. Well, maybe not[anyone.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Zotti) > [@](#): > > The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia’s general notability guideline. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2014, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/709 "2014-01-16T01:47:30Z")
> [@Eliahna](#): > > It is difficult to prove celebrity without unfairly disadvantaging non-US players. Agreed. > [@Eliahna](#): > > We furriers Furriners? Unless you speak of platypus pelts or something. 🙂 My Father repaired airplanes in your country during the Second World War, and longed to return. Unfortunately, he was never able to do so. ---
**Author:** ![Randy\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ee7513/32.png) [@Randy\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randy_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2014, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/710 "2014-01-16T03:00:06Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > I’ll put this in the open, since that is where you have brought it now. You were the only player, in several PM’s, who challenged other player’s choices. i agreed with some of them and some players had to make changes. You sound sore because I didn’t give in on \*\*all \*\*of your challenges. I’m not sore because you rejected one of my challenges and accepted another. Rejecting challenges is your prerogative. I would point out, however, that you also completely ignored two of my challenges. Both of which were more egregious violations of the only-famous-for-their-illness rule than the challenge you accepted. > [@](#): > > Look, we are here to have a good time, as is agreed, and it is a game and games have rules. But it’s **still** just a game and you sound as if you are taking it way too seriously. There’s no money involved, nobody is going to put “Death Pool winner” on a resume(I hope), in a hundred years, or way less, nobody is going to remember how we ranked here. I know everybody appreciates what you’re doing, but you may note some guarded disagreement with you here. I’m clearly not the only one who’s annoyed that some people turn this from a celebrity death pool into simply a death pool. I’ve only been playing this game for a few years, and I know that years before I started, there was some kind of dispute over what constituted a celebrity, and that dispute caused the celebrity bar to be set very low. It’s not my game to run, and you should of course run it how you like, but I don’t see why some objective standard couldn’t be implemented that would eliminate the dispute. > [@](#): > > Please, lighten up. I hear this from a friend I golf with: he’ll pick up anything within about fifteen feet of the hole, saying “eh, that’s about a club length.” Now I’m not going to make him putt it out if it’s two feet away, but come on. ---
**Author:** ![kayT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayt/32/3633_2.png) [@kayT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayT)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2014, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/711 "2014-01-16T03:13:20Z")
You know, **Randy** , you are taking a great deal of the fun out of this thread. I appreciate that you have issues but Baker has repeatedly asked that such issues be dealt with in PMs and not clutter up this thread. I wish you would do that. I personally am not interested in your concerns in the least little bit, and I don’t think I am the only one who feels that way. Take it to PMs. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2014, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/712 "2014-01-16T03:24:56Z")
> [@Randy\_Seltzer](#): > > It’s not my game to run, Then don’t try. If you had challenged my pick in a gentlemanly manner to me, I’d have seen there were no mentions on wikipedia before she was ill, and conceded defeat. And hope no one else picked her and got away with it. 🙂 We can continue this in PMs if you would like, rather than messing up the thread. Come to think of it, since you challenged in a PM, why fuss about it in the thread? ---
**Author:** ![Kitten\_Mitten](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b782af/32.png) [@Kitten\_Mitten](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kitten_Mitten)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2014, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/713 "2014-01-16T06:31:56Z")
I’m not very good at this game and am just in it for fun. So, I’m just fine with however the Death Mistress wants to run it. With that said here is something I saw on another site’s list of rules for their death pool: > [@](#): > > Definition of a Celebrity > > A celebrity is defined as anyone who’s first name and last name appears on at least 5 web sites when searched on [www.google.com](http://www.google.com). Each of these 5 web sites must list an obvious association to that person claim to fame as well. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2014, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/714 "2014-01-16T06:40:45Z")
> [@Randy\_Seltzer](#): > > I’m not sore because you rejected one of my challenges and accepted another. Rejecting challenges is your prerogative. I would point out, however, that you also completely ignored two of my challenges. Both of which were more egregious violations of the only-famous-for-their-illness rule than the challenge you accepted. > > I know everybody appreciates what you’re doing, but you may note some guarded disagreement with you here. I’m clearly not the only one who’s annoyed that some people turn this from a celebrity death pool into simply a death pool. > > I’ve only been playing this game for a few years, and I know that years before I started, there was some kind of dispute over what constituted a celebrity, and that dispute caused the celebrity bar to be set very low. It’s not my game to run, and you should of course run it how you like, but I don’t see why some objective standard couldn’t be implemented that would eliminate the dispute. > > I hear this from a friend I golf with: he’ll pick up anything within about fifteen feet of the hole, saying “eh, that’s about a club length.” Now I’m not going to make him putt it out if it’s two feet away, but come on. One thing I think all of us agree on is that we don’t enjoy this arguing over the rules. This game is just for fun. So if you aren’t having fun, don’t play. Baker has apparently made her decisions on the issues you raised. It’s her game and it’s her call to make. You need to let it go. ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2014, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/715 "2014-01-16T06:44:15Z")
Sounds good, but doesn’t Google use context (like your location) to decide which results to show you? I get 5+ results for retired Australian football player Lou Richards when I Google his name, but would an American get the same results? ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2014, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/716 "2014-01-16T07:29:51Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > One thing I think all of us agree on is that we don’t enjoy this arguing over the rules. This game is just for fun. So if you aren’t having fun, don’t play. > > Baker has apparently made her decisions on the issues you raised. It’s her game and it’s her call to make. You need to let it go. +1 ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2014, 10:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/717 "2014-01-16T10:27:24Z")
Let’s consider the subject closed. Now, any DEATHs to report? I mean, Ariel Sharon was a big hit, but we can go on without him. How’s Bush Sr. doing? Or Lindsay Lohan? ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2014, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/718 "2014-01-16T12:15:00Z")
It would seem your wish is Roger Lloyd-Pack’s command. [http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25762006](http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25762006) ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2014, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/719 "2014-01-16T12:50:56Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > One thing I think all of us agree on is that we don’t enjoy this arguing over the rules. This game is just for fun. So if you aren’t having fun, don’t play. > > Baker has apparently made her decisions on the issues you raised. It’s her game and it’s her call to make. You need to let it go. I enjoy arguing over whether I enjoy arguing over the rules. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2014, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193/720 "2014-01-16T14:18:18Z")
> [@Eliahna](#): > > It would seem your wish is Roger Lloyd-Pack’s command. > > [http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25762006](http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25762006) He was only 69. Pancreatic cancer got him. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193.md?page=35) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/celebrity-death-pool-2014/675193.md?page=37)