Family Feud (Round 15)

[geoo]

This round was interesting, especially who considers whom trustworthy.

For the avatar question, I put the following note with my pick: "This is a toughie, Clam Spammer's is nice too, but ccx' post is directly above the Quizmaster one."

Still curious about the story about ccx' favourite swearing word (I assume it's not really 'fan'). And the rationale behind the Ghostbusters answer (though I guess it's a reasonable answer if you don't know the Ghostbusters reference).

Not surprised that no-one tried to steal from Simon's and my plate, considering we posted that kind of stuff we cook in the 'geoo visiting Simon' topic.


Regarding the previous round 8, I love the Clam Quizmaster drawing Gronkling made!

For the Christmas tree question there, I thought I'd be one of the last ones to erect it on Dec 8.

For the previous soup question, the tie on 10:57 is probably not that unlikely. The 3.8% are under the assumption that every pick is equally likely, and any other distribution will actually give a higher value. Here I think the distribution is somewhat skewed towards times close to full hours. Though I'd just say, great minds think alike. (Had a couple of other answers shared only with ccx before in previous rounds too.)
Considering the Quizmaster picked 1:28 on that question, I'm not sure whether the skew towards earlier times is really caused by players not having understood the question fully. Funnily, the later entries that are a few minutes after a full hour would be more of an indication of that, if true.

[Quizmaster]

Welcome to the 10th anniversary of the Lemmings Forum family feud! In celebration of this, this round will contain a best-of selection of questions (euphemism for a lot of rehashes).
I, geoo, will be your host tonight and enter my answers right as this round is posted.


Family Feud

1. Name a planet in the solar system that is not earth.

2. Which is the dumbest question of the previous round?

3. Which is the dumbest question of this (the current) round?

4. Which skill is the least useful in Lemmings 1?

5. Does this round have too many rehashed questions?

6. Who will get his PhD first, Simon or geoo?

7. You're a busy college student, and there's a lot of procrastinating on your to-do list.
But you have an assignment due on Friday at noon (11:59 am).
It's Monday morning right now. What day do you start working on the assignment?


Mixed Questions


8. [The brazen verbatim rehash] The safes from round 5 have been reinstated, and after only getting the small bits last time, you yearn for more loot. The safes operate exactly the same way as before:
There are four safes, each containing points. You want to steal the content, but there is one issue. Each safe has an elaborate security mechanism, which can only be broken by kicking against it really hard for a certain number of times. However you can only kick once, as afterwards your feet hurt too much to dare another kick. So the players picking the same safe to crack have to work together.
Each player can kick the safe, but they can also be smart and choose not to kick, just waiting at the safe watching the others do it. If the safe opens, you share the loot, but those whose feet don't hurt are quicker to prey the safe, so they get twice as much as the other ones. If the safe doesn't open because too few people kicked against it, you get nothing.
Below is the list of safes, each with the number of kicks they need to open and the points inside.

#1: 1 kicks, 1.0 points
#2: 2 kicks, 2.4 points
#3: 3 kicks, 4.2 points
#4: 4 kicks, 6.0 points

Which safe do you pick, and do you choose to kick against it or just wait beside it and watch the others do it?


9. You all enter a dark and scary cave in search of treasure. The cave is laid out like this:

Whatever path you take, you come across 5 junctions, and at each junction you can turn left or right.
What sequence of turns do you take?
Because in the previous cave, there was no treasure, everyone is grumpy and moaning that there's probably no treasure in this cave either. So your goal is to get away from the rest as soon as possible, to avoid that annoyance: After each turn, you gain 0.4 points if you're alone and have no obnoxious company left, secretly hoping to be the one to get the treasure all for himself, 0 points if you're still with someone annoying you.


10. After the previous storm on the bum shelter's soup kitchen, the administration has decided to increase the capacity: Now two bums can eat in the soup kitchen at the same time. However, this renovation required a budget cut somewhere else, so no spoons are available anymore, and you have to bring your own device to spoon your soup. (But unlike Clam's soup kitchen, you can at least stay there to have your soup, and don't have take it away with you. And the amount of soup you get is only limited by how fast you can eat!)
There are three devices available, in decreasing order of attacking power: Fork, ladle and bucket.

• The fork is the most powerful weapon. It's hard to spoon soup with it though (it's mostly just good for picking the few sausage bits out of the soup), so you can only get 0.15 soup units per hour.
• The ladle is not as powerful as the fork, but better suited for having soup with it. You can get 0.3 soup units per hour with it.
• The bucket is the weakest weapon, but you can get 0.5 soup units per hour with it.

You have to decide on some time of the day you want to arrive at the soup kitchen; the soup kitchen is open the entire day, from midnight 0:00 to midnight 24:00. (Note: In case multiple bums arrive at soup kitchen at the same time, a fair dice roll will decide who is first.)

• If you arrive at the bum kitchen and there's still space in the soup kitchen, you sit down and start spooning your soup.
• If you arrive and all spots are occupied, but everyone inside has a strictly stronger weapon, you wait in line outside of the soup kitchen. It might be that you'll have to wait in line until midnight and get nothing.
• If all spots are occupied but there is someone with a weaker or equal weapon, you attack the bum with the weakest weapon (of both have the same weapon, the one who arrived earlier), and immediately overthrow him if he has a weaker weapon, or engage in a short struggle with equal weapons which you win. In either case, the loser runs away from the kitchen in fear. However, if you engage in a struggle with equal weapons while some bums are waiting outside in line, the first bum in line will sneak into the soup kitchen and steal the spot you're fighting for. In that case, exhausted from the struggle, you'll have to leave the soup kitchen with nothing, despite winning the struggle.

Whenever you're in the soup kitchen during peace, with relish you'll enjoy your soup. The soup units you end up eating equal the points you get for this question.

At what time of the day do you choose to arrive at the soup kitchen (be precise to the minute), and which soup spooning device do you choose?


11. But really, who will get his PhD first, Simon or geoo? This question will be scored in a couple of years.

[ccexplore]

Placeholder post for commentary I'll edit in later. Just want the new Quizmaster post to be the newest one.

Of course you know I'll just start yapping about the previous round anyway, so it'd never be newest for long.

But actually I'll get dinner first, so I'll edit this post later.  Do want to start by saying even though it's a game, I do feel a little sorry that I ended up stealing Clam's wallet and eating his food.

---------------

For questions 7 and 8, I drew the following table:

Code: [Select]

A      B      A's score gain  B's score gain
trust  stay?       on #7          on #8        A - B   B - A
-----  -----  --------------  --------------   -----   -----
No      Yes         0               1           -1       +1
No      No          0               0            0        0
Yes     Yes         1               0           +1       -1
Yes     No         -1               1           -2       +2
For question 7 I look at the A-B column, and with my gut, I decided that the -1 worst case of not trusting my partner is not as bad as the -2 worst case of trusting my partner.  Similarly, for question 8 looking at the B-A column, running off with the wallet looks better with the 0 to +2 compared to the +1 and especially -1 of staying. I did some further calculations of expected values assuming uniformly random choice of the other person, and still end up with trusting vs not trusting work out basically the same, but running off with wallet being better, and of course if you think running off with wallet is likely to be popular then you would lean towards not trusting.

I definitely recognize it's a rather flimsy bit of reasoning--that's why I started wondering about game theory and whether it would be able to give more rigorous conclusions on how to answer the questions.  Anyhow, in real life I probably won't trust a random stranger, but I would never dream of stealing someone's wallet.

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For question 1, yep, I'm aware of the GhostBusters movie but have yet to actually watch it.  Or I might have watched one of the movies in the franchise a bit too young for me to actually remember any noteworthy lines from it, and then never watched it again when I got older.  So anyway I didn't get the reference.  I suppose I could've looked it up on Wikipedia.

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avatar question:  I have to say I didn't expect mine to be as popular as Clam's.  I picked Clam's as I genuinely like it and thought others might too, also figured most people can remember his avatar off top of their head since it matches his username so directly.  In contrast while I suppose the animation grabs people's attention, I was also thinking some (many?) people (definitely Proxima at least, though granted he doesn't participate in the feud) are sick of the spinning hamster by now and that would give a reason for people to stay away from my avatar.
 
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For question 4, it may well be the movies, but it also just seems like the pirate caricature is more defined for most people, what with the eyepatch and the "Yarrrr" and maybe the wooden leg and hook for a hand.  Viking? All I can picture is horned helmet warrior.

------------

I picked Capybara because it's the biggest rodent, so from a dinner standpoint it would mean more meat to feed the family, and I was hoping other people would go down the same line of reasoning.  Although I guess that doesn't take into account how easy or hard it would be to hunt the thing.  Porcupine definitely seems like a pain to prepare with all those spines.  I actually know off top of my head (due to watching some food-related travel shows on cable TV) that guinea pigs were domesticated and eaten as food in like the Peru region (in fact, I think I even remember now that the TV episode even mentioned how one of the Queen of England was once served guinea pig during a visit to Peru, as it is considered food for special occasions, and then back home the newspaper made a fuss about how the Queen was served rat), so I would most definitely answer guinea pig if I were to answer truthfully rather than guessing the popular answer.

Still curious about the story about ccx' favourite swearing word (I assume it's not really 'fan').

Wow really?  Sorry to disappoint then, it was indeed "fan" when I was talking on IRC; mobius was talking about the forum censoring swear words and the first thought that came to mind was the whole "fan" thing and how it's something that definitely won't be censored.  I will grant you though that had that conversation never came up on IRC I probably would not have picked "fan".  I was sorta hoping at least one other person on the IRC conversation would do "fan" as well, but I'll admit picking an actual swear word would be a better choice for them score-wise.

If I were to pick the most popular I'd indeed pick the f word since intuition says it's the most infamous one for English, in terms of how many people know about it and how likely it is considered the "worst" swear word.

If I were to answer truthfully...hmm, I'm not sure, but I think the ones I've used the most myself is probably either s@it or d@mn/d@mmit.  To be honest I can't say I have a "favorite" one in the sense of "I like", since I'm pretty sure every situation in which I have to use a swear word is a situation I probably didn't like in the first place.

---------

Ok, enough yapping, time to read and work on the current round.

[Clam]

I mentioned in IRC that these questions are Harrrrrrrrrd. And they were - so much so that I didn't care to think them through completely, since this is meant to be a fun quiz game after all. So I made my choice based on this:
(1) running seemed an obvious choice before the question was changed,
(2) you (ccexplore) hinted that you would change your answer after the question was changed.

You did actually give me something back (1/2 point) by picking my avatar instead of your own

I would guess the difficulty of questions 6-8, plus the creeping number of questions per round, are turning away some players. As fun as it might be to invent hard questions (and, for some of us, to properly think them over ), the Feud thrives on popularity and the chaos that brings. For this reason I'd suggest turning it down just a little in future rounds.

[Simon]

Yeah, many contestants make feud work. In the best case, there are so many contestants that for "What did the wise men bring to baby Jesus as a present?", you get answers like PAPRIKA, WINE, HORN, and JESUS.

Anyway, möbius's feud was still a good one of course. I didn't expect to do so well at all.

-- Simon

[ccexplore]

Okay, I promise I would expand more on the previous quiz but got distracted.  I will say for now that yes, initially I did thought the rule clarification might give an additional scoring opportunity for staying, but further "analysis" seem to show it wasn't helpful enough to make me change my choice to "stay".  "Analysis" in quotes because it was not at all rigorous (I don't actually have the mathematical know-how to try doing it more properly anyhow. And probably too much work even for the Beaver even if I do know how.)  Roughly speaking, maybe if the penalty for one's wallet getting stolen isn't as harsh as it was (-1 for you and +1 for your partner, so a net loss of 2 comparing your score to your partner's), it might be more compelling to consider "stay" as an option.

In the best case, there are so many contestants that for "What did the wise men bring to baby Jesus as a present?", you get answers like PAPRIKA, WINE, HORN, and JESUS.

Yes, but of course, one must note that they aren't anywhere close to the winning answers either, so to put it nicely, it's not only the number of contestants, but also the, well, "mix" of contestants.  In particular I'm not sure having 100 additional Simon-like people participating in our feuds would make for any surprising and entertaining answers.  Frankly, I suspect anyone who likes Lemmings games and participates in this forum would highly unlikely be someone who would gave above answers to the question Simon referenced.

I do have to admit on multiple rounds I have wondered whether I should just screw it for at least that round and go for intentionally funny answers instead, but so far I haven't take the jump yet.

[mobius]

I forgot to mention in the results but 7 people participated (in round 9)

I picked Capybara in spite specifically because of geoo subjecting me to “capybara porn” in the IRC. Yes, I know I clicked on the Link but I wasn’t sure it was actual… ya know. It could’ve been something else. Some funny cartoon or something. 

I was initially going to answer f#ckamabob but remembered I made that word up. There are definitely more creative swear words out there I would’ve like to see. I keep forgetting the goal of this game is guess popular answers though.

[ccexplore]

Wonder what Clam's gonna think about current round's question #10.  It seems just as complex if not more so than last round's trust-based questions.

[Clam]

I'm happy to keep playing, I'm just warning that some people might not be so keen. The rehashes are good though, hopefully some people will return to have another crack at these

[geoo]

There's still soup left, if you come at the right time with the right device!

I never analyze the questions very thoroughly like ccexplore did with Q6/7/8 from the previous round, and mostly go by intuition and heuristics, and I don't seem to do significantly worse than him. It's just for the fun.

[Quizmaster]

Round 10 closes now, here are the results:

Family Feud

1. Name a planet in the solar system that is not earth.
Mars [9] - 1 point
Uranus [1] - 1/9 point

2. Which is the dumbest question of the previous round?
Q1 (Who ya gonna call?) [3] - 1 point
Q4 (Pirates or Vikings?) [2] - 2/3 points
Q7 (Trust/purse stealing) [2] - 2/3 points
Q3 (Hunting rodents) [1] - 1/3 points
Q5 (Swear word) [1] - 1/3 points
Q9 (Dinner time) [1] - 1/3 points

3. Which is the dumbest question of this (the current) round?
Q3 (This question) [4] - 1 point
Q5 (Too many rehashes?) [2] - 1/2 points
Q8 (Rehashed safes) [2] - 1/2 points
Q2 (Dumbest previous question) [1] - 1/4 points
Q10 (Soup kitchen) [1] - 1/4 points

The Bums revisitation is this rounds dumbest bumest question!

4. Which skill is the least useful in Lemmings 1?
bomber [6] - 1 point
blocker [2] - 1/3 points
climber [1] - 1/6 points
floater [1] - 1/6 points

5. Does this round have too many rehashed questions?
yes [7] - 1 point
no [3] - 3/7 points

6. Who will get his PhD first, Simon or geoo?
Simon [6] - 1 point
geoo [4] - 2/3 points

Simon most handsome>geoo smartest. No, really I flipped a coin

I've got to make up to him for stealing his money!

geoo would like to thank those who picked him (the correct answer), and apologize for picking Simon, as he expected most players would be mislead and do the same.

Simon. Geoo will actually quit college and find his true calling in the Circus. Years later he’ll marry a Chinese dwarf and live happily ever after on an island in the South Pacific.

7. You're a busy college student, and there's a lot of procrastinating on your to-do list.
But you have an assignment due on Friday at noon (11:59 am).
It's Monday morning right now. What day do you start working on the assignment?
Thursday [4] - 1 point
Wednesday [3] - 3/4 points
Monday [2] - 2/4 points
Firday [1] - 1/4 points

Right now! Today. I’m going to procrastinate the procrastination.

In reality, I'd do it Thursday night, but I expected the other players to be a bit more diligent, like mobius, so I went with Monday.

Thursday night, sorry. Most of my profs don't take late work.

Mixed Questions

8. Safes

The haul is even worse than the previous time the safes were attacked:

#1: 1 kicks, 1.0 points - waiting: Akseli
#2: 2 kicks, 2.4 points - kicking: Gronkling, Insane Steve (0.3 points); waiting: Clam Spammer, ccexplore (0.6 points)
#3: 3 kicks, 4.2 points - kicking: Simon, geoo; waiting: RubiX
#4: 4 kicks, 6.0 points - kicking: möbius

Only safe 2 gets cracked, and in addition to the two guys kicking it, there's two more leeching (LemSteven doesn't kick because  because his foot still hurts from kicking it the last time, and Clam brazenly rehashes his answer from the previous time). Akseli could have got the 1.0 points from the first safe for himself, but he waits in front for it to open, which doesn't happen. RubiX is lazy too and doesn't help Simon and geoo to open the third safe.

9. Cave

Two pairs of players annoy each other till the end, and no-one finds the treasure:




10. Soup kitchen

Time	Event	Bum 1	Bum 2	in line
00:00	Clam (bucket) enters	Clam (bucket)	-	-
00:16	Steve (bucket) enters	Clam (bucket)	Steve (bucket)	-
03:54	Akseli attacks Clam with a fork	Steve (bucket)	Akseli (fork)	-
05:14	geoo attacks Steve with a fork	Akseli (fork)	geoo (fork)	-
08:14	Simon (ladle) arrives, waits in line	Akseli (fork)	geoo (fork)	Simon (ladle)
08:20	RubiX (ladle) arrives, waits in line	Akseli (fork)	geoo (fork)	Simon (ladle), RubiX (ladle)
09:06	mobius (bucket) arrives*, waits in line	Akseli (fork)	geoo (fork)	Simon (ladle), RubiX (ladle), mobius (bucket)
09:43	LemSteven (bucket) arrives, waits in line	Akseli (fork)	geoo (fork)	Simon (ladle), RubiX (ladle), mobius (bucket), LemSteven (bucket)
19:00	Gronkling (bucket) arrives**, waits in line	Akseli (fork)	geoo (fork)	Simon (ladle), RubiX (ladle), mobius (bucket), LemSteven (bucket), Gronkling (bucket)
19:41	ccexplore fork-fights Akseli, Simon sneaks in	geoo (fork)	Simon (ladle)	RubiX (ladle), mobius (bucket), LemSteven (bucket), Gronkling (bucket)
24:00	soup kitchen closes, everyone leaves	-	-	-

*) mobius actually wears the bucket on the top of his head and runs around singing: “How do you solve a problem like Maria?”, but the distraction maneuver doesn't work unfortunately.
**) Gronkling actually tries to ladle-attack Akseli (see photo below courtesy of Gronkling), but Akseli fends him off and sends him to the end of the waiting queue.


Scoring:
2.82 - geoo
2.48 - Insane Steve
2.37 - Akseli
1.95 - Clam
1.30 - Simon
0.00 - everyone else

Early Clam catches the soup (even though he commented "I am *so* gonna get screwed for trying this"), and so does Steve, before both get kicked out by Akseli and geoo respectively. Akseli and geoo occupy the soup kitchen for most of the day, intimidating everyone else with their forks, until ccexplore attack Akseli, and Simon gets rewarded after waiting for over 11 hours. But RubiX, mobius, LemSteven and Gronkling wait all night and get nothing, no soup for them.


Final results:

1. geoo (9.62)
2. Clam (8.72)
3. LemSteven (8.133)
4. Insane Steve (8.129)
5. Simon (7.91)
6. Akseli (7.35)
7. ccexplore (6.16)
8. Gronkling (5.72)
9. mobius (5.67)
10. RubiX (5.24)

LemSteven leads quite comfortably after the first nine questions (see spreadsheet), but the soup kitchen questions scores unproportionally high, so he gets bumped down to third place after getting nothing there.

The attached spreadsheet (based on Clam's, thanks for that!) contains the detailed results.

[Quizmaster]

Feeling lucky? Then roll on up to the Clamily Casino, where your luck will be put to the test! There are no random draws though – as always, all that counts is your answers!

DISCLAIMER: The Quizmaster does not endorse gambling in any form. (Well, today's Quizmaster doesn't. Others might ) Gambling with real money will ruin your life. Do not do it. Ever.
Conscience clear? Okay, let's gamble!


Pre-Gambling (common answer questions)

1. Rehashed for luck: Choose a number that is considered to be lucky.

2. Choose your lucky charm! Name a physical object that is considered to be lucky.

3. Name something you might play at a casino, that isn't mentioned in this post.


Gambling

4. Slot machine! You each take a seat at a slot machine. Choose how many times you wish to play, up to a maximum of 20. Everyone rolls at the same time, before anyone leaves or takes their next roll. To begin with, each roll is worth 0.1 point. (This is how they suck you in ) However, when half the players have left, the machines stop giving and the remaining players lose 0.1 point per roll. As per usual, you can't get a negative score.

5. Poker! Three cards from a standard deck are laid out on the table: 7H 8H 9H (H = Hearts). Choose two cards to complete a poker hand of five cards. (Yes, I know regular poker gives you five community cards, not three. I picked three to keep it simple.) The best hand wins 1.6 points, the second best 1.4 points, then 1.2, and so on down to zero. There's only one deck, so if you have a card that someone else has, one of you must have cheated by hiding cards up your sleeve. However, no one can tell who really cheated, so rather than being thrown out, you just get ranked below everyone who isn't accused. Ties (hands are identical apart from suit) get the greater value of the two positions, eg. if two players tie for 1st then both get 1.6 points.  If you're not familiar with Poker hand rankings, try this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poker_hands

6. Lottery! Choose five different numbers from 1 to 30 to be your Lucky Numbers, and choose a number from 1 to 30 to draw as a Winning Number in the lottery.  You score 1/2 point for each of your Lucky Numbers that is drawn by someone else as a Winning Number.
Notes:
- You can't win off your own Winning Number, unless someone else picked the same one.
- If more than one person picks the same Winning Number, you can't score twice from it. It just means there are less Winning Numbers in the lottery!


Meta-Gambling

7. Bonus round! Choose a Gambling question (4, 5 or 6) in which to score double! Your score for this question is the same as your score for the question you picked. (Note: you get these points in Q7, not as extra points in the question you picked.)

8. Second chance draw! Choose a Gambling question (4, 5 or 6) and submit a different answer for it. I will re-score questions 4-6 as though each player had submitted their new answer instead of the one they originally gave. (Clarification: Your original answers remain for the other questions, in order to score for players who choose those questions).
Your score for question 8 is your new score for your chosen question.

The Clamily Casino closes in 3 days, be sure to lose all your money in the meantime!

[ccexplore]

Hmm, so my worst fears did come true on last round's soup kitchen.  Actually, I'm surprised (although in hindsight perhaps I shouldn't be) at how many people ended up waiting outside, it basically means I would've been screwed anyway even if I did  try to go for a "sneak in" strategy.  I was expecting a lot more people to bring the fork to fight.  Should've just done what Clam did and start off with the bucket as soon as the kitchen opened (or at least fork my way in around that earlier time).

And darn it, with Clam's latest round that's one more theme I can't use for my own questions.  It's so easy to come up with feud questions but I'm having a hard time coming up with decent non-feud questions (only 3 so far and they are all sort of rehashes, except a mediocre one).

[ccexplore]

DISCLAIMER: The Quizmaster does not endorse gambling in any form. (Well, today's Quizmaster doesn't. Others might ) Gambling with real money will ruin your life. Do not do it. Ever.

It's not so much the gambling as not being able to stop yourself.  Of course, you might not know if you are able to stop or not until it's too late......

(also, one might note that unlike real life, Clam has generously run his casino to explicitly not let you to lose anything, as there are no negative scores to be had......)

[Simon]

Great results, comments, and imagery.

Gambling is not endorsed, yes. At a college mate's home town, four farmers sat together one evening between Christmas and New Year to play Mensch Ärger Dich Nicht with a wager of 50 Euros (about 60 to 70 USD), winner takes all. It's a simplified variant of Pacheesi, you can sometimes meaningfully choose which person's piece to throw out, but that's it; it is just luck-driven otherwise. Quote by the student: "And the dumb blacksmith even won twice for 300 Euros!"

-- Simon