Family Feud (Round 15)

[ccexplore]

Presumably for the poker question, if you actually try to give a hand using one of the 3 cards already on the table, or using 2 identical cards, you score 0 and get thrown out of the Casino, right?

==========

Also, the phrasing of question 8 is a little bit unclear.  Does it mean that all original answers are thrown out, or will the original answers be used for the people who didn't choose to repeat the question being re-scored?  For example, if only 1 person chooses to repeat 4 for 8, does it mean the total number of players is 1 (and so basically he can roll 20 times scoring each time), or does it merely mean the question will be re-scored using the original answers from the N-1 other people who didn't repeat it?

[Quizmaster]

(1) I don't think it's even a poker hand if you do that, so yeah.

(2) You keep your original answers to the other two questions, so there's still a full set of answers for each question.

[Quizmaster]

ATTENTION ALL FEUDERS! The current round will remain open for one more day, for reasons which I won't mention until it's closed (to avoid any unfairness).

The Quizmaster would like to remind all players to read and understand the questions before answering, even if this is just for fun. It's in everyone's interests, because your answers affect everyone's score, but mostly it's in your own interest if you want to score well

[Quizmaster]

The Clamily Casino is now closed so I can count my money score the questions.

[Quizmaster]

Round 11 results! Eight players tried their luck at the Clamily Casino.

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

7: picked 7 times (snap!)
13: picked 1 time


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

Four-leaf clover: 5
Horseshoe: 1
Rabbit's foot: 1
Lucky charm: 1 (I guess this is some kind of unidentified generic trinket)


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

Blackjack: 5
Roulette: 3
Also worth a mention is Gronkling's initial answer of "annoying music"


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.

Answers given were:
4, 0.4 points (picked twice)
6, 0.6 points
9, 0.9 points
10, 0.8 points (picked twice)
12, 0.6 points
14, 0.4 points

Most players know the folly of slot gambling and leave quite early.

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. 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, so you will be accused of cheating. 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

Legit hands:
10H 6H - straight flush - 1.6 points
6C 5S - straight - 1.4 points
9C 9D - triple - 1.2 points
8C 3D - pair - 1 point

Cheat hands:
AH 4H - flush - 0.8 points
QH 4H - flush - 0.6 points
QH 3H (picked twice) - flush - 0.4 points

Incredibly, the straight flush comes off for maximum points!


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.
- 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!

Today's winning numbers are:
1 (4 winners)
8 (1 winner)
9 (1 winner)
25 (picked twice; 1 winner)
26 (1 winner)
30 (2 winners)
42 (no winners unsurprisingly, also deducted 0.5 points for depriving others of a chance to score)

One lucky player picked 3 winners and scored 1.5 points
2 scored 1 point
2 scored 0.5
3 scored zero


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.)

Q4: picked 4 times
Q5: picked 2 times
Q6: picked 2 times


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. Your score for question 8 is your new score for your chosen question.

Four people picked each of Q4 and Q5. Nobody picked Q6, making my job much easier

Q4 (new answers in bold):
4 (picked twice)
8, 0.8 points
9
10
11, 0.7 points
13, 0.5 points (picked twice)

Q5 (new answers in bold):
LEGIT
JD 10D - straight - 1.6 points
KH 3S - nothing hand - 1.4 points
NOT LEGIT
JH 10H - straight flush - 1.2 points
10H 6H - straight flush
AH 4H - flush
QH 4H - flush
7H 6H - 7H is already on the table, the bouncer will see you to the exit.

Q5 was better (re)played overall


This round's standings (aka. who blew the least amount of money):

1st: Simon 8.1
2nd: Akseli 7.5
3rd: LemSteven 7
4th: ccexplore 6.6
5th: Clam 5.7
6th: mobius 5 (and a sore backside)
7th: Gronkling 4.6
8th: geoo 4.24

See feudscore11.xls (attached) for details.

Today's lessons:
(1) Read the question
(2) Keep track of the Feud topic and your PMs after you answer - the Quizmaster doesn't just sleep until the round is over
(3) Gambling doesn't pay! Okay, so this round didn't really teach that at all, but it's still true

Lastly, the fan contributions!

Perhaps the best strategy for everyone is to stage an Ocean-11 style heist on the Clamily Casino.

The next feud will be... sometime, hosted by... someone! (Seriously I have no idea)

[ccexplore]

That was fun and once again the outcome held some surprises.  Gambling paid off rather handsomely for the top ranking players, it would seem.

My brain farted again.  On the lottery I purposely pick the winning number to be one of the numbers I chose, because even though I definitely read where Clam says you can't score off of your own number, I somehow still incorrectly convinced myself that even if someone else scored off my winning number, "so would I". I'll have to give credit to mobius for thinking like I did while taking things a bit farther than is appropriate.  At least the deduction didn't make a difference to his rankings at the end.

On poker I specifically picked 6H 10H to be a jerk, however I originally actually picked 5H 6H and even doubled down on it for #7.  All of the choices have a bad-looking outcome (if you pick a high hand you're likely to collide with someone, while if you pick a low hand you might just have allowed someone risking a high hand to actually score, resulting in your low land scoring mediocre).  A conservative logical choice may go for a straight or lower hand, but ultimately I decided I can't live with (and as I said I wasn't psychologically comfortable with any of the choices) that if doing so means someone risking big on the straight flush actually got it [and scoring additionally on it with 7 and 8], so I went with the irrational jerk mode answer for #5 and back out of doubling down on poker for #7.  Amazingly I still actually scored the 1.6 on #5.  I thought about doing poker again for #8 with a 2-pair hand but got disillusioned and decided to fall back to slots despite the lure of poker's higher payout.  (Yep, at that point I also made the comment to QuizMaster about Ocean 11. )

The slots question was interesting, it was vaguely reminiscent of the candy/mousetrap question from one of the early rounds, but this time people answered a lot more conservatively, to my detriment

===========

Flushes were way too popular on the poker question.  Assuming a uniformly random pick of 2 cards from 2H 3H 4H QH KH AH (excluding all the cards that are involved with a straight flush, as you might as well just go with a straight flush then), the probability that if a second person also chooses flush, he does NOT colliding with your hand is only 0.4, so it's already more likely than not for a collision to happen.

[Clam]

I'll have to give credit to mobius for thinking like I did while taking things a bit farther than is appropriate.  At least the deduction didn't make a difference to his rankings at the end.

möbius actually picked the Lost (TV show) numbers, apparently forgetting that you can only go up to 30.

Blocking the straight flush was definitely a good call, even if you got bumped down you wouldn't lose that much. Playing a regular flush was definitely a bad idea. Unfortunately being quizmaster means you don't get the extra 3-4 days to think over your answer (except then you have advance knowledge of the questions - although thinking through strategy before posting the quiz isn't so easy, especially when you just want to get the thing posted). The poker question would be good for rehashes, with a variety of different community card combinations. I piked a versatile one here, but you could equally give something completely useless and see what people make of it.

And yes, the mousetrap thing was exactly what I had in mind. I was disappointed that no one got mousetrapped then, so I made it almost certain that someone would get it this time and then caught most of them myself, real smooth move there

[Simon]

Again, didn't expect to do so well at all, especially since cc is right about the Flushes. A little unnerving that I didn't consider this myself beforehand.

A nice feud with interesting challenges, and probably rather time-consuming to score. Good job.

Clam sent me the password, and I have 3/4 of a feud already typed up. I'll host it within the upcoming 24 hours.

-- Simon

[geoo]

Ok, that went miserably for me. No more gambling for me for a while. That was an interesting round though, for sure.

So rehashing the most common answer from the previous time for question 1 was definitely not a good idea.

I expected people to be more daring on the slot machine as well, so having this question scored thrice only makes it worse.
I thought any cheater would get the same score in the poker question, so good thing I went at least with the highest flush and not a pair (well, two aces would have been legit, but if not, I'd have scored last there).
I was too lazy to ask the random number generator for my lucky numbers, and only had it pick the winning number (1, of all choices! I was tempted to ask it for a different number, as 1 might be popular, but in true lottery fashion, I wanted to be fair here.)

[Quizmaster]

Feud number 12 is closed, see end of topic for newest feud.

Lo and behold, this feud takes us back to the middle ages. How far do you get with answering these questions before you're killed by the Spanish inquisition?

1. Name a medieval siege weapon.
2. Name a medieval weapon that can be carried around by a single person.
3. Name a defensive means of a medieval castle. Alternative wording of this question: Name a feature of a castle that aids in defense.
4. Name the number of towers of such a castle.
5. Name a special room inside a castle.
6. Name a Lemmings 2 skill associated with the Medieval tribe. (Image of practice mode)

7. The castle by the shore can be attacked from three sides, East, South, and West. You're a bowman and have to defend from atop the walls. Choose one of the three sides to guard.

The king will reward the bowmen based on their distribution efficiency. Since most enemies are expected to come from the South, about half the bowmen shall defend this side. The other two directions shall be defended by a quarter of the bowmen each. The king will calculate the difference of the actual ratio of bowmen to the desired ratio on your castle side. You get 1.2 points for being perfectly distributed, but 0.1 less for each full 1/20 of absolute difference between the ratios. (The difference of ratios on other walls than yours doesn't matter. If one wall isn't defended at all, but your wall has the desired ratio, you get plenty of gold, but the castle is conquered nonetheless. You don't care!)

8. There's a merchant caravan travelling between two castles today, which are 15 km apart. You can choose to be a highwayman and try to rob the caravan, or you can be a guard and protect it against the thieves. Choose your profession, and one of the 16 milestones (0 km = start, 1 km, 2 km, ..., 14 km, 15 km = finish) to work at.

Scoring for highwaymen: If a guard is posted at your milestone or a neighboring milestone, you are arrested and score 0 points. From the un-arrested highwaymen, the first to rob the caravan gets 1.6 points, next gets 1.2 points, third gets 0.8 points, fourth gets 0.4 points, others get 0 points. If several highwaymen lurk at the same milestone, their places are merged and distributed evenly. (E.g., 1.4 each for two thieves tying for earliest.)

Scoring for guards: You arrest all highwaymen at your milestone and the (up to) two neighboring ones, receiving a bounty of 0.6 points per prisoner. If several guards arrest the same thief, they split the bounty for him evenly. If the team of guards manages to catch every single the highwaymen along the way, the merchants will donate a bonus of 1.2 points to the last guard they pass by; this is split if several guards tie for last.

9. Fill in the blanks with usernames other than yourself: ___ catches ___. You can give a list of several names for each blank, the first who actually participates is then used; this protects you from naming nonparticipants. You can also make a list of complete sentences, and the first that has two actual participants is used.

Scoring: If the former player is actually a guard in the previous question, you get 0.3 points. If the latter name is a highwayman, you get 0.3 points. If the statement becomes true as a whole, you get an extra 0.4 points, for a total of 1 point in this question. If you state that somebody will catch himself, then your sentence will always be worth 0.3. (Remember that you cannot name yourself here for any blank.)

PM your answers to the Quizmaster!

-- Simon

[ccexplore]

For #9, what's your take on having the same person appearing on both lists?  Given X is a participant, I presume "X catches X" will be scored 0, instead of the all-but-guaranteed 0.3 if taking the rule's current wording at face value?

The situation is slightly more subtle though because we can give lists of people to handle nonparticipants, so it's possible that the same person appears in both lists, but upon closing of the round, same or different person(s) are picked from the two lists (ie. "how the lists resolve") depending on participation.  Would it be fair to say that having the same person on both lists is not outright rejected, but could potentially score 0 if upon round closing the lists resolve to "X catches X"?  Or should the resolution procedure be modified to avoid "X catches X" resolutions (seems complicated though)?  Or will having the same person on both lists be banned outright regardless of how they end up resolving?

[edit: rules have been updated to take this into consideration]

[Quizmaster]

"X catches X" is a valid choice as long as X is not you, and will always give 0.3 points as long as X participates. If you want safe points, this may be the way to go.

You can also make lists in the form "X1 catches Y1", "X2 catches Y2", "X3 catches Y3", and so on, and the first sentence that lists two actual participants is then chosen.

I've clarified question 9 with this.

-- Simon

[Quizmaster]

Another small update:

Question 3, "Name a defensive means of a medieval castle.", gets a clarification in the following way: An alternative wording of this question is "Name a feature of a castle that aids in defense."

-- Simon

[Quizmaster]

Results of round 12 are in!

1. Name a medieval siege weapon.

Catapult: 1 point (Simon, ccexplore, Akseli, Clam, LemSteven)
Battering Ram: 2/5 points (geoo, Gronkling)

2. Name a medieval weapon that can be carried around by a single person.

Sword: 1 point (Simon, ccexplore, Akseli, Clam, Gronkling, LemSteven)
Bow & Arrow: 1/6 points (geoo)

Quote by geoo: Everybody will pick archer on question 6, therefore bow is the only correct choice for question 2!

3. Name a defensive means of a medieval castle. Alternative wording of this question: Name a feature of a castle that aids in defense.

Moat: 1 point (Simon, geoo, ccexplore,  Akseli, LemSteven)
Tower: 1/5 points (Clam)
Walls: 1/5 points (Gronkling)

4. Name the number of towers of such a castle.

4 towers: 1 point (geoo, Akseli, Clam, Gronkling, LemSteven)
5 towers: 1/5 points (Simon)
2 towers: 1/5 points (ccexplore)

Doesn't the keep count as another tower? :>

5. Name a special room inside a castle.

Throne Room: 1 point (Simon, ccexplore, Akseli)
Dungeon: 2/3 points (Clam, LemSteven)
Dining Room: 1/3 points (geoo)
Great Hall: 1/3 points (Gronkling)

This was very hard, Torture chamber was another good idea. I'm a bit surprised that nobody named it.

6. Name a Lemmings 2 skill associated with the Medieval tribe.

Archer: 1 point (geoo, ccexplore, Akseli, Clam, Gronkling, LemSteven)
Fencer: 1/5 points (LemSteven)
Twister: 1/5 points (Simon)

Twister is the unique skill that's explicitly named in a level name! Archer merely plays a minor Role in level 9!

7. The castle by the shore can be attacked from three sides, East, South, and West. You're a bowman and have to defend from atop the walls. See post above for scoring details.

South side: 3 bowmen of 7 (Simon, Akseli, Clam), desired ratio 1/2, difference 0.0714... = 1.1 points
West side: 3 bowmen of 7 (geoo, ccexplore, LemSteven), desired ratio 1/4, difference 0.1785... = 0.9 points
East side: 1 bowman of 7 (Gronkling), desired ratio 1/7, difference 0.1071... = 1.0 points

This question had a very minor scoring span. If this will ever get repeated, a more interesting point distribution might be called for. But it's good for now, as the next question will flip things over anyway.

8. There's a merchant caravan travelling between two castles today, which are 15 km apart. You can choose to be a highwayman and try to rob the caravan, or you can be a guard and protect it against the thieves. See post above for scoring.

1 km: Guard Akseli doesn't see any thieves, 0 points.
6 km: Highwayman Simon plunders the caravan, 1.6 points.
11 km: Guard Gronkling does great work catching Highwayman Clam at 11 km and Highwayman Lemsteven at 12 km for a total bounty of 1.2 points. No points for Clam and LemSteven.
12 km: Only an empty spot left where once the pointy robber's hat of LemSteven pointed out of the bushes.
15 km: Lazy guards geoo and ccexplore eat their doughnuts and hope that everybody else will get rid of the highwaymen. Nice try, but no cigar, 0 points.

Simon got 1.6 points.
Gronkling got 1.2 points.
All others got 0 points.

9. Fill in the blanks with usernames other than yourself: ___ catches ___. You get 0.3 points for each correct profession. Nobody made a fully true statement.

Simon: ccexplore catches geoo, 0.3 points
geoo: ccexplore catches Simon, 0.6 points
ccexplore: Simon catches Simon, 0.3 points
Akseli: Simon catches ccexplore, 0 points
Clam: Akseli catches Gronkling, 0.3 points
Gronkling: Clam catches LemSteven, 0.3 points
LemSteven: geoo catches ccexplore, 0.3 points

Very thoroughly shuffled guesses, including one safe guess by ccexplore for 0.3 points.

Final standings

Simon: 7.4 points (1 + 1 + 1 + 1/5 + 1 + 1/5 + 1.1 + 1.6 + 0.3)
Akseli: 7.1 points (1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1.1 + 0 + 0)
Gronkling: 6.433 points (2/5 + 1 + 1/5 + 1 + 1/3 + 1 + 1.0 + 1.2 + 0.3)
ccexplore: 6.4 points (1 + 1 + 1 + 1/5 + 1 + 1 + 0.9 + 0 + 0.3)
Clam: 6.267 points (1 + 1 + 1/5 + 1 + 2/3 + 1 + 1.1 + 0 + 0.3)
LemSteven: 6.067 points (1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2/3 + 1/5 + 0.9 + 0 + 0.3)
geoo: 5.4 points (2/5 + 1/6 + 1 + 1 + 1/3 + 1 + 0.9 + 0 + 0.6)

Here's a porcine prize to be shared as a feast by all the noble knights who participated.



Quote by geoo before sending in answers: Somehow, I always end up in first or in last place.

Akseli was the best feuder this time, scoring the full 6 points in the 6 feud questions. There was simply too much variance with the merchant caravan. You also were the single person to get unlucky in the last question.

Thanks to all participators from this round, and I'm sure geoo will soon take us to places weird and wondrous!

-- Simon

[ccexplore]

2. Name a medieval weapon that can be carried around by a single person.

Sword: 1 point (Simon, ccexplore, Akseli, Clam, Gronkling, LemSteven)
Bow & Arrow: 1/6 points (geoo)

Quote by geoo: Everybody will pick archer on question 6, therefore bow is the only correct choice for question 2!

  For the feud questions I've found that at least for me, going with my gut, first-instinct answer usually works out.

I have considered what you thought as well.  Besides people not updating their answers based on later questions, I wonder if anyone else also wondered whether "bow & arrow" sounds like 2 weapons (I know they really aren't, but you kinda see where I'm going) and therefore more risky?  (Although I'm guessing QuizMaster probably would've scored "bow & arrow", "bow", "arrow" as equivalent?)

4. Name the number of towers of such a castle.

4 towers: 1 point (geoo, Akseli, Clam, Gronkling, LemSteven)
5 towers: 1/5 points (Simon)
2 towers: 1/5 points (ccexplore)

If anyone's wondering, I've never saw a castle in person, and it's easy to forget about towers on the back when you're mentally picturing archetypical front-on views of an archetypical castle, in which naturally only the front towers are shown.

6. Name a Lemmings 2 skill associated with the Medieval tribe.

Archer: 1 point (geoo, ccexplore, Akseli, Clam, Gronkling, LemSteven)
Twister: 1/6 points (Simon)

Twister is the unique skill that's explicitly named in a level name! Archer merely plays a minor Role in level 9!

Interesting idea.  Perhaps people are more influenced by this picture instead (see attached).

Although honestly I wasn't even 100% sure whether the picture was what it was until I looked it up.  For me it was more a toss-up between archer and fencer with a strong lean towards archer.  I didn't even think about twister until you brought it up, and I barely remember what level 9 was.