Rare Entries Contest DZT02

The Game Room
1

A Rare Entries contest is something we’ve been playing for some time on a couple of Usenet newsgroups (rec.games.trivia and rec.puzzles). The idea is for everyone to submit answers to ten items that (1) are correct and (2) will be duplicated by as FEW other people as possible.

A couple important points:

  1. SUBMIT YOUR ENTRIES BY EMAIL; DO NOT POST THEM TO THIS THREAD

  2. DO NOT DISCUSS THE ITEMS OR POSSIBLE ANSWERS IN THIS THREAD.

Anyone violating the above two rules will be disqualified. If too many do it, the contest may be cancelled.

Please submit your entries to [EMAIL=“dtilque@frontier.com”]dtilque@frontier.com. Entries must reach here by 10:00 pm Friday, June 17, 2011 (Pacific Daylight Time) (2011-06-17 2200 UTC -7). Make sure that the subject line includes the string “DZT02”.

Do not include any of the text from this posting with your entry. Just send a list of your answers numbered from 0 through 9, plus your SDMB handle so I can give credit appropriately. Also, please answer with plain text rather than rich text.

If you really feel you must include text from this contest, then please top post your answers so that I can see all of them without scrolling. Do not interleave your answers with the items.

This contest is being simultaneously run in the two Usenet newsgroups as well as here in the SDMB. I’d appreciate it if you do not submit entries both contests. I’ll score the two independently and, if it doesn’t look like too much work, will also score a combined contest.

Feel free to use any resources to research your answers. Use Google and Wikipedia as much as you want. However, I’d appreciate it if you do not ask for help in GQ or other SDMB forums, as other contestants may read those threads and that may influence their answers.

Items:

  1. Name a Solar System body that a spacecraft has landed on or impacted. Atmospheric probes count as impactors, although flying through the coma of a comet does not count as an atmospheric probe.

  2. Name a current or former capital city which was named for a US President.

  3. Name a real person who was not a US president and whose image has appeared on a US coin issued for circulation. Models used by coin designers are excluded from this question; only a person that an image is meant to represent is a valid answer. Coins intended only for collectors and/or investment purposes are excluded.

  4. Name a Great Lake.

  5. Give the make or model of an automobile or light truck which has an astronomical theme. The vehicle does not have to be currently in production.

  6. Name an organized sport that has more than one mode of scoring. A mode of scoring is determined by the number of points (see definition 4.5) scored. All actions that score the same number of points count as a single mode. Administratively assigned points (e.g. for forfeits or penalties) do not count as a mode of scoring. Tennis is excluded from this question; it has only one mode of scoring, but has a funny way of counting to four.

  7. Give a word (definition 4.1) which has the meaning of some shade of red. Note that pink, orange, and purple are separate colors and not considered to be a shade of red.

  8. Name a prime minister of Canada who served at least 2 years in that office.

  9. Name an album released by the Beatles.

  10. Name material that bicycle frames are made of.

Rules

For each of the items above, your objective is to give an answer 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.
1.0 Scoring

For each item, the score will be set to how many entrants gave a particular answer. If someone gives an answer no one else gives, they score 1; if one other entrant gives that answer, both score 2; etc. Each entrant’s total score will be their ten individual scores multiplied together. Low score wins.

Wrong answers will score the lesser of (1) twice the highest correct score for that item and (2) half the total number of participants in the contest.
2.0 Synonyms

Synonymous answers will be treated as the same answer. There are two exceptions to this:

  1. A request for a name or term for a single person or object. These, by their very nature, will all be synonyms, so obviously it makes no sense to treat them as the same answer.

  2. A request for an English word for something. The item must specifically request a word and not a name or something else. Otherwise, the phrasing of the item does not make a difference.
    3.0 More Specific Variants
    ==========================

On some items it’s possible that one entrant will give an answer that’s a more specific variant of an answer given by someone else. In that case the more specific variant will be scored as if the two answers are different, but the other, less specific variant, will be scored as if they are the same.
4.0 Definitions

4.1 word means a lowercase, solidly-written, English word found in a general-purpose English dictionary. (The OED, by the way, is not a general-purpose dictionary; it’s a historical dictionary.)

4.2 term may be either a single word or multi-word phrase for something.

4.3 geographic means something found on maps of Earth or a part thereof. Fantasy maps or maps of other planets do not count.

4.4 cartographic means something found on a map, either fictional or otherwise. However, the map must have existed before the contest began and must be accessible on the Internet.

4.5 point – When referring to sports, “point” will be considered a generic term for any kind of score, no matter if they are called goals, runs, strokes, etc. by a particular sport.
5.0 Clarifications

Please email any requests for clarification of an item. DO NOT POST them to the newsgroup/thread. If I agree that one needs to be made, I’ll post a correction and anyone who’s already submitted an entry will be allowed to change their answer for that item.

Please do not discuss the items or possible answers in the newsgroup/thread. Doing so may result in disqualification.
6.0 Misc

Unless specifically stated in an item, there is no penalty for errors of spelling, capitalization, punctuation, etc. so long as it’s clear what you intended.

If you supply an answer which is incorrect, but related to a correct answer, then I may, at my own discretion, allow it as if you’d given the correct answer. For example, if an item asks for a national capital city with certain characteristics and you submit the name of a country, then I may consider your entry to be that country’s capital. However, don’t count on this; it’s not automatic.

Only give one answer per item. If multiple answers are supplied for an item or multiple sets of answers are submitted, the first one will be considered your submission and the rest ignored.
Entry

Email all answers to [EMAIL=“dtilque@frontier.com”]dtilque@frontier.com Do not post them to this newsgroup/thread. Anyone who does will be disqualified.

Do not include any of the text from this message with your answers. Your entry should just have a list of ten answers numbered 0 through 9 plus the name/handle you want to receive credit under. If you absolutely must include text, then do not interleave your answers. Instead, please top post your answers, so that I can see them in the message without scrolling down.

Please answer in plain text and not in rich text format.

You should receive an acknowledgement email within a couple days of your entry.

A final note: This contest is something of an experiment. We’ve run many of them in the Usenet newsgroups and everyone there understands how they work and there are few problems with them. But this is a new set of participants and I expect problems.

So please follow the rules about not posting your entries or possible answers in the thread. I’d really hate to cancel this contest, but will if too many people violate these rules. Also remember to include the string DZT02 in the subject line of your entry.

You can, however, discuss the rules and I’ll be happy to explain them more thoroughly. I’ll also bump this thread from time to time if it migrates off the first page.

2

Ha! I remember playing this on rec.puzzles fifteen years ago. Very cool.

3

Given my usual performance on the Feuds, I should do well at this. Expect an e-mail momentarily.

Should we include that we’re from the SDMB, so you know what scoring group to put us in?

4

Target sports are also excluded.

5

Not necessary. The Usenet people will have a different code in their subject line.

6

I put my answers first, but then included justifications for the answers below. I hope that’s OK.

And this thread is going to be very frustrating, having to wait two weeks to find out how well we did.

7

Yes it is. It’s not required to justify your answers, but it doesn’t hurt. For most of the questions I already know what the valid answers are. If I have doubts, I can always use Google or Wikipedia myself. I can also send an email back to an entrant to ask about anything I’m still uncertain about.

Of course that doesn’t always settle things. The post-results discussions/arguments (and there’s always some) is half the fun of the contest.

The first time I ran one of these, I set it 20 days out. That was a mistake. Virtually no one entered in the last half of the contest. Next time I may reduce it to only 10 days.

8

Bumpity-bump

9

Things that go bump in the day.

10

this one should be right up my alley; however, not sure I could give correct answers to some of the questions.

11

Remember, Google or other research is allowed.

12

There’s only about a day left in this contest.

And yes, Google searches and Wikipedia as well as dictionaries and other references are OK to use.

13

Contest is over. Expect results either late tonight or tomorrow.

You can now discuss the items in this thread, although likely you will want to wait until after the results are up.

14

I’m just curious as to whether all of my entries were considered correct. I was admittedly stretching a little with the space probe question.

15

There were 17 entrants from the Usenet newsroups and 4 from the SDMB. Since 4 is not enough contestants to do a rare entries contest on, I’m going to just score a single comnbined contest.

The winner was JOHN GERSON. Runners up were DAVE FILPUS and HARAN PILPEL. Here are their answer slates (with some abbreviation):



   John Gerson         Dave Filpus          Haran Pilpel
0. Titan               Venus                Jupiter
1. Lincoln, NE         Jefferson City MO    Jefferson City
2. Sacagawea           John Muir            John Muir
3. Lake Superior       Huron                Superior
4. zodiac              Jupiter              Merkur
5. Six-red snooker     Rugby                Chess (W)
6. ruby                cardinal             raspberry
7. Laurier             Borden               King
8. With The Beatles    Rubber Soul          Yesterday and Today
9. 4130 steel          Magnesium            walnut

There were only 7 wrong answers in total in this contest, a surprisingly low number. I haven’t done any statistics (not even counted them), but my impression is that there were relatively few 1’s compared to previous rare entries contests.

Here’s the complete table of scores. Names marked with an * are entrants from the SDMB. Those are their handles rather than actual names.



                 Item number--> 0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9

 1.     360  John Gerson        4  1  3  5  1  1  1  2  3  1
 2.     600  Dave Filpus        1  5  2  5  1  3  2  2  1  1
 3.    1800  Haran Pilpel       2  5  2  5  1  W  1  3  1  1
 4.    2500  Chronos *          1  5  2  5  5  2  1  5  1  1
 5.    2916  Mark Brader        9  9  1  3  1  1  2  1  1  6
 6.    4050  panamajack *       9  3  1  5  5  1  1  1  1  6
 7.    5040  Gibbs89 *          1  1  1  4  2  2  2  5  3  W
 8.    5760  Garmt de Vries     2  3  1  4  5  2  W  2  3  1
 9.    7200  Don Pivin          2  2  2  3  2  1  2  5  1  6
10.(t) 8640  Duke               9  5  4  4  1  1  2  3  1  2
10.(t) 8640  Stephen Perry      9  2  5  1  2  2  1  1  4  6
12.   10800  Kevin Stone        9  5  4  1  5  1  1  3  4  1
13.   18000  Bruce Bowler       9  5  5  1  5  2  2  1  4  1
14.   19200  Maus Magill *      2  2  5  1  4  2  2  5  3  4
15.   19440  Rob Parker         4  3  3  5  2  1  2  3  3  3
16.   32400  Calvin             4  5  5  3  3  1  W  3  3  1
17.   38880  Nick Selwyn        9  9  1  5  4  2  2  3  1  2
18.   97200  Lieven Marchand    9  5  4  5  3  3  2  1  3  2
19.  100800  Björn Lundin       W  5  5  4  4  2  1  2  3  2
20.  138240  Joseph P           9  2  4  5  4  1  W  1  4  6
21.  324000  Peter Chapman      4  5  3  5  3  1  W  5  3  6

And the scores of the individual items:
0. Name a Solar System body that a spacecraft has landed on or impacted. Atmospheric probes count as impactors, although flying through the coma of a comet does not count as an atmospheric probe.

9 Earth
4 Titan
2 25143 Itokawa
2 Jupiter
1 Moon
1 Sun
1 Venus

W Io

Big collision on Earth while Mars, 433 Eros, and Comet 9P/Tempel 1 were left untouched.

The Sun is a questionable answer. The entrant argued that the solar wind is composed of particles from the Sun’s atmosphere and we’ve sent missions to study the solar wind. Ergo, those missions are atmospheric probes. I wasn’t real happy about this, but decided to give it to him anyway.

  1. Name a current or former capital city which was named for a US President.

9 Washington

  • 2 Washington DC
  • 2 Washington AR
  • 3 Washington MS
    5 Jefferson City MO
    5 Monrovia, Liberia
    1 Lincoln NE
    1 Villa Hayes, Paraguay

Two people answered Washington without qualification. That omission cost them dearly. No doubt they were unaware (as was I before this contest started) that Washington, Arkansas was the capital of that state during the Civil War after Little Rock had been captured by Union forces and that Washington, Mississippi was the capital while it was a territory.

Villa Hayes is named for Rutherford B Hayes. Apparently, he’s something of a hero in Paraguay for ruling in that country’s favor in a border dispute. Most US citizens barely know he existed.

Answers not given were Madison WI, Jackson MS, and another obscure one, Washington-on-the-Brazos, TX, which was the capital of the Republic of Texas twice.

  1. Name a real person who was not a US president and whose image has appeared on a US coin issued for circulation. Models used by coin designers are excluded from this question; only a person that an image is meant to represent is a valid answer. Coins intended only for collectors and/or investment purposes are excluded.

5 Benjamin Franklin
4 Susan B Anthony
3 Sacagawea
2 Kamehameha I (Hawaii state quarter)
2 John Muir (California state quarter)
1 Jean Baptiste Charbonneau ($1 coin)
1 William Clark
1 Duke Ellington (DC territorial quarter)
1 Meriwether Lewis
1 Prince Whipple (New Jersey state quarter)

I assume Lewis and Clark are on the Missouri state quarter, although I don’t know if that’s official or not. There’s a boat with three figures in it which represents their expedition, but I don’t know if those figures are actually meant to represent the men themselves.

Jean Baptiste Charbonneau is the papoose that Sacagawea is carrying on her back. Prince Whipple is one of the men on Washington’s boat crossing the Delaware.

Answers not given are Caesar Rodney (DE quarter), General Edward Hand (NJ quarter), Wilbur and Orville Wright (NC quarter), and Helen Keller (AL quarter).

  1. Name a Great Lake.

5 Huron
5 Superior
4 Ontario
3 Great Lake, Tasmania
1 Erie
1 Great Salt Lake
1 Michigan
1 Michigan-Huron

Technically, Lakes Michigan and Huron are a single lake, since there’s just a fairly wide passage between them rather than a river. I decided to count it as a distinct answer rather than a less specific answer.

It surprised me that no one gave any of the African Great Lakes as an answer.

  1. Give the make or model of an automobile or light truck which has an astronomical theme. The vehicle does not have to be currently in production.

5 Subaru (Japanese “Pleides”)
4 Galaxy
3 Astra (Latin “star, constellation”)
2 Gemini
2 Orion
1 Daewoo (Korean “great universe”)
1 Galaxie
1 Jupiter
1 Merkur (German “Mercury”)
1 Zodiac

Everyone, please note the conjunction between “make” and “model” above. Despite it being “or”, most people gave both a make and a model. I was looking for just one or the other. Obviously I didn’t make this clear enough, so I’ll take the blame for it.

Since many of the makes (and some of the models) given were not valid answers, I decided to take the first name that had an astronomical theme in each entrant’s answer as their answer. Since everyone had at least one (and a few people had two), no one got a wrong answer, although some may have gotten a higher score than they’d anticipated.

Several people gave the Ford Galaxy, which I’m going to guess was usually meant to be the large sedan from the 60s. That car was actually spelled Galaxie. It turns out that Ford is also making a minivan under the spelling of Galaxy. So these answers are distinct rather than Galaxy being treated as a misspelling. All parties benefitted, although the guy who answered Galaxie got the most benefit (Mark’s spelling anal-retentiveness finally pays dividends.)

There’s a number of answers no one gave: Saturn, Mercury, Comet, and Astro are a few.

  1. Name an organized sport that has more than one mode of scoring. A mode of scoring is determined by the number of points (see definition 4.5) scored. All actions that score the same number of points count as a single mode. Administratively assigned points (e.g. for forfeits or penalties) do not count as a mode of scoring. Tennis is excluded from this question; it has only one mode of scoring, but has a funny way of counting to four. Target sports are excluded from this item.

3 rugby

  • 1 rugby league
    2 bowling
    2 cricket
    2 hurling
    2 judo
    1 arena football
    1 Australian Rules Football
    1 (English) billiards
    1 Canadian football
    1 Gaelic football
    1 gliding
    1 Kabaddi
    1 (muggle) Quidditch
    1 six-red snooker

W chess

Chess is not a sport (it’s a board game), but even if it were, it does not have more than one mode of scoring. The numbers usually assigned for taken pieces (e.g. 1 for a pawn, 3 for a knight, etc.) are just an informal way of keeping track of who’s ahead and have no official status. In fact, they’re actually rarely used even informally, as far as I can tell.

Some day American contestants are going to learn that rugby is not a single sport and thus do better on these contests. Don’t hold your breath.

  1. Give a word (definition 4.1) which has the meaning of some shade of red. Note that pink, orange, and purple are separate colors and not considered to be a shade of red.

2 cardinal
2 carmine
2 carnelian
2 puce
2 scarlet
1 coquelicot
1 flame
1 incarnadine
1 maroon
1 raspberry
1 ruby
1 vermilion

W rufous (adjective)
W ruddy (adjective)
W blood
W falu red (two words)

Rufous and ruddy are adjectives meaning “reddish”. I was looking for a noun. For a few of the answers, I had to look in a large number of dictionaries to find one that defined it as a shade of red. “Flame” and “carnelian” were notable here. I checked over a dozen dictionaries, both on-line and off, and couldn’t find any that defined “blood” as a shade of red.

  1. Name a prime minister of Canada who served at least 2 years in that office.

5 Sir John Thompson
3 Richard Bedford Bennett
3 William Lyon Mackenzie King
2 Sir Robert Borden
2 Sir Wilfrid Laurier
1 Jean Chrétien
1 Stephen Harper
1 Sir John A. Macdonald
1 Alexander Mackenzie
1 Brian Mulroney
1 Louis St. Laurent

One entrant gave a conditional response based on two possible interpretations of the item. That sort of thing is not allowed. I’ll always take the first answer given, as it says in the rules. The entrant who did this is from the SDMB, so it’s understandable that he was unaware of this.

It turns out neither of the two interpretations he gave was completely correct. “Serving two years in office” means a total of 730 days no matter how many terms those days are spread across. Fortunately for the entrant, the first answer he gave was a valid one.

I do wonder if there are any valid answers from before 1867. I’m not that familiar with the colonial government from that era, but perhaps a Canadian on the list might be.

  1. Name an album released by the Beatles.

4 The Beatles [The White Album; Los Beatles]
3 Beatles for Sale
3 Revolver
3 With the Beatles
1 Beatles 65
1 The Beatles’ Christmas Album
1 The Beatles’ Long Tall Sally (Canadian release)
1 The Beatles’ Second Album
1 Magical Mystery Tour
1 Rubber Soul
1 Something New
1 Yesterday and Today

I couldn’t find anything on the internet about “Los Beatles”, so I assumed it was just the Spanish release of the White Album. Long Tall Sally was an extended play (EP) record in most countries, but was the name of an album released only in Canada.

  1. Name material that bicycle frames are made of.

6 bamboo
4 wood

  • 1 plywood
  • 1 walnut
  • 1 Bubinga wood
    3 steel
  • 1 4136 ChroMoly
  • 1 SAE grade 4130 steel
    2 carbon fiber
    2 titanium
    1 6061 aluminium alloy
    1 magnesium
    1 plastic

W molybdenum

I was unhappy about the scoring of a few answers here. But I’d be unhappy no matter how I scored them.

Molybdenum was scored wrong, as no frames are made just of that metal. No doubt the entrant was thinking of chromium-molybdenum-steel alloy, usually known as chromoly. 4136 Chromoly and SAE grade 4130 steel are two very specific forms of this alloy. This scoring seemed to be unquestionable on its face.

But then you get to the wood bicycles. The only bike frames I could find made of walnut or Bubinga wood are from Renovo Hardwood Bicycles. And in both cases, the frames are made of two different woods laminated together. So, unlike all the other materials in the above list, for these two types of wood, the frames are not made completely from the material.

One way of looking at it is that the only difference between molybdenum and these two types of wood is that you can point to a section of the wooden frames and say “here’s this type of wood”, whereas you can’t do the same with a chromoly frame and molybdenum. So it doesn’t seem quite right to score one wrong and the other two right.

The alternatives seem to be to score the three as either all right or all wrong. Neither of these seem to be a perfect answer. So I’d like any thoughts anyone has on this dilemma.

There will probably be a fair amount of discussion in the rec.games.trivia and rec.puzzles newsgroups. Those interested may want to monitor/contribute to that.

16

I find the make/model question to be the most annoying. As mentioned on one of the newsgroups, there’s a clear conflict between specificity and the parameters of the question. It bothers me that we were penalized for specifying our answers.

For chess, I imagine they were going for the competition scoring of 1 for a game and 1/2 for a draw. In my opinion that would be wrong as well. Otherwise any sport at all could qualify if it’s in a tournament. The World Cup for football/soccer, for instance.

And unless it’s a typo in the write-up, I don’t think there is such a thing as “4136 Chromoly” used for bike frames (or “4136 steel” for that matter - note that 4130 ‘Chromoly’ would be the same thing as 4130 steel).

17

For question number 2, the people on coins, another valid answer (which nobody gave) would be Neil Armstrong, on the Ohio state quarter.

On question 4, the astronomical car, I interpret a model name to include the make. I.e., “Beetle” isn’t a model; “Volkswagen beetle” is. It’s sort of like how “sapiens” isn’t a species name, while “Homo sapiens” is.

And on question 9, the bike frames, the question didn’t specify that the frames be made entirely of the material. Even if you have a steel frame, there are still probably going to be non-steel components. If a frame is made from an alloy of steel and molybdenum, then I would say that “the frame is made out of steel” and “the frame is made out of molybdenum” to both be true statements.
But enough about the scoring. I’m amused that there were so many wise guys who named “Earth” for the probed Solar System body. I was considering it, but decided against it. For the record, I was the guy who said the Sun: I knew it was debatable, but figured that living on the edge was the best way to maximize my chances of winning. If I’d known there would be so few entries, I’d have played it safer.

And on question 5 (the multi-scoring sport), I find it amusing that nobody said basketball or American football. Maybe there’s something to be said for going for an obvious one.

18

Oh, and what coin was Benjamin Franklin on? The only non-president obverses I was able to find were Sacagawea, Susan B. Anthony, Lady Liberty, and the nonspecific Indian Head. Was he on a reverse somewhere (maybe a scene with a bunch of other founding fathers), or was there one I missed?

19

The Half Dollar prior to Kennedy.

A questionable response would have been Massasoit and John Carver. It’s clearly them, but not a full image. Just the hands.
I think the frame question was handled okay. What might have been tough would have been “Scandium”, since frames are referred to as being “Scandium frames” even though they are Aluminum alloy. It’s slightly similar to chromoly, but not quite the same, since the steel is commonly used by that name.

20

Nope, it’s not meant to be Armstrong. It probably would be if he were the only famous astronaut from Ohio. But Glenn is also from OH, so they claim the astronaut figure represents all Ohio-related astronauts. 17 of them, IIRC.

There are various forms you occasionally have to fill out with the make and model of your car. Assuming you owned a Toyota Celica, would you put “Toyota” in the box for make and “Toyota Celica” in the box for model? I don’t think so.

In bicycle-speak, components are definitely not part of he frame; they’re everything that’s attached to the frame. For a metal bike frame, the only parts that could have a different composition might be the welds. I’m not that conversant with welding to know about this.

Well that was a consideration. Or rather an argument for all three answers to be right.

On the first RE contest I ran, I had a item for a solar system body that’s been orbited by a spacecraft. Here’s the summary of the scoring:

5 Earth (=Terra)
4 Venus
3 Saturn
1 Mars
1 Moon
1 Sun

Wrong
1 Io
1 Titan
1 Vesta

That previous contest also had a sports question where basketball and American football were valid answers and were similarly avoided.