Family Feud (Round 15)

[Quizmaster]

Hey,

this is a quiz show!

You'll be asked some very simple questions, e.g., "name a common pet other than dog". Players submit their answers via private message, and you must try to match the most popular answer. In the example, you should name the pet which you also expect the other players to name. In other questions, you might be asked to pick a number from a given range, but the winner is whoever picks a number which nobody else chose.

Anyone on the forums is invited to participate -- the more players, the merrier, and the more diverse the answers will be. :-)

The Quizmaster is a secondary account of Simon, to keep personal messages separated. When participating in a quiz, send your PMs to the Quizmaster, not to Simon.

Rules for participation:

• You may join or leave at any time, without notice. Just start by submitting an entry to the current challenge.
  
• You participate in a challenge by sending your answers to the Quizmaster (not to Simon) via private forum message. The easiest way to do so is to click the speech bubble icon below the recipient's avatar.
  
• As long as the challenge is still open, you can override your earlier entry by submitting another one.
  
• Only the newest challenge is open for submitting answers. After 2 to 6 days, depending on participation, the challenge ends. I will post results and statistics, and make a new challenge.
  
• When you are asked to name things, I will fix all spelling errors, capitalization, and punctuation. However, two things are not considered equal if one is a subclass of the other. "ice-cream" and "Ice Ceram" are considered equal, but "ice-cream" and "chocolate ice-cream" are different things.
  
• This type of quiz is very prone to lobbying or teammaking. Please refrain from discussing popular answers while you're still not sure what you're finally going to guess.
  

We're starting right now! See next post for the first challenge.

-- Simon

[Quizmaster]

First challege! What will be the hottest answers? You get more points by answering what everyone else answers.

This challenge is closed, see results in next post.

-- Simon

[Simon]

Bumping the topic over the counting one. This needs publicity! What fun! ccx, geoo, Akseli, Clam have already entered.

-- Simon

[ccexplore]

Ironically, by the time I read this the bump already has no effect.

The one big disadvantage of doing this as a forum game is that it necessarily discourages forum posting, since one has to wait a few days to gather responses from enough people, and people are not allowed to discuss the quiz questions in the meantime (without influencing the game in undesired ways).  Still, I really hope the first game will prove worthwhile to continue on additional games.

[Quizmaster]

1. A very easy start: What's the easiest level in Lemmings 1?
Just Dig: 4
We all fall down (on increased splat distance versions): 1

2. What is the most useless skill in Lemmings 2 other than the Diver? (Screenshot of practice skill selection, if you need ideas. If you don't know the skill's name, state row and column.)
Skier: 3
Archer: 1
Roller: 1

3. You're a busy college student, living alone, and you're very hungry. What will you have for dinner?
Ramen: 3
Noodles: 1
Fried Capybara: 1

(I considered "Ramen" and "Ramen noodles" as synonyms, and "Noodles" as a more general class, which by the rules counts as a different thing.)

4. Name a suit from the standard deck of Poker or Bridge playing cards.
Hearts: 3
Spades: 1
Diamonds: 1

5. Name something you can buy in a pet store other than any animal.
Pet Food: 4
Leash: 1

Scoring: You can score up to 1 point for each question, but will score a fractional amount of points less than 1 when you deviate from the top answer. The exact score per question is (your answer's frequency) / (top answer's frequency). The scores for all questions are then added together, the result is your final score. (If scores were multiplied instead, the rankings would have been the same.)

ccexplore wins the first day with the full 5 points!

Runner-up scores are 4 + 1/3 points (shared by 3 people), and 1 + 1/2 points.

If you guys consider "noodles" as a synonym for "ramen", then Akseli shares the first place with ccx with 5 points.

-- Simon

[Clam]

Quality game, needs m0ar contestants for maximum awesomeness

If an admin is available, we could counter the game's tendency to disappear off the homepage by adding it to the news reel (the one above the boards list that hasn't been updated since forever).

[Quizmaster]

The second challenge is also closed now, see the next post for results.

The quizmaster will stay with his parents over the weekend, and deliberately does not take his notebook with him. The challenge will therefore be resolved at some time during the upcoming week.

I agree with addition of the thread to the news banner. Some more word of mouth in IRC might also do the trick, e.g. Steve hasn't seen this yet.

-- Simon

[Clam]

No spoilers as to who or how many entered this time! It was fine before, but such information could be useful in this round (Q6 in particular).

[ccexplore]

Is it fair to assume that for #3, we are not considering any avatar additions/changes that may occur after the quiz question has been posted?  Otherwise I can imagine a situation where someone go and create a whole bunch of new users with different rodent avatars to influence the answer.

[geoo]

About rodents in avatars, what about the groundhog in Dullstar's avatar (you missed that one)?

No spoilers as to who or how many entered this time! It was fine before, but such information could be useful in this round (Q6 in particular).

Well, you're allowed to change your guess at any point in time, so it's not that big of an issue I think. And if you e.g. actively persuade someone to join, you'll have that information anyway (which others then might not). And knowing it might be interesting to make a more educated guess.

[Quizmaster]

1. Easy one: Name a geometric shape that doesn't have any straight lines.
Circle: 7 (everyone agreed on this one)

2. You are a very angry computer user, because your system has just crashed and you've lost all your work. What part of the computer do you kick/punch?
Case/tower: 4
Keyboard: 2
Screen: 1

3. Name a kind of rodent that nobody here uses for his avatar (i.e., not hamster, capybara, lemming, porcupine).
Rat: 2
Squirrel: 2
Mouse: 2
Beaver: 1

This was surprisingly evenly-scattered; 6 people get 1 point, the Beaver is worth 1/2 point. It wouldn't have been a problem for a guess if someone had changed his avatar to the guess later. Groundhog is used by Dullstar, which I forgot in the list, yeah.

4. Which Lemmings 1 skill is most notorious for pixel precision?
Bomber/Exploder: 4
Builder: 3

5. Which computer/game system had the most well-known version/port of Lemmings 1 during the 1990's?
PC/DOS: 4
Amiga: 3

ccexplore was the only one to hit both top answers on the previous two questions, everyone else got exactly one top answer and one worth 3/4 points.

6. Choose a number from this range: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Try to choose a number which nobody else chooses. If several numbers are picked equally rarely, the lowest of them wins. (Worth 1 point for winner(s), 0 for others.)
Number 0 chosen: 5 (Akseli, Clam, Ramon, ccexplore, geoo)
Number 8 chosen: 1 (Gronkling; worth 1 point)
Number 9 chosen: 1 (möbius)

The number 8 wins, for being the smallest number chosen at least once with the least people choosing it.

ccexplore was the only one to change his guess, from 4 (which would have won on the spot) to 0, with the following note:

I expect I will change my mind about #6's answer multiple times (and potentially #7 too).  Right now I'm changing my answer to 0 hoping that everyone else will find it too risky to pick the lowest number.

I think it will be most fun for that question to reveal (at the closing of the quiz) exactly who answered what, including all answer changes.

Well, almost everyone was bold enough to pick 0. :-D The other two people -- I wanted to message them at first explaining the exact rules of the question again, but one has won the point after all. This question weighs rather much, because everyone else gets a straight 0 instead of fractional points.

7. There are three treasure chests: A holds 1.5 points, B holds 1.2 points, C holds 1 point. Pick one to plunder. You have to share the loot with everyone who chooses the same chest.
Chest A: 2 (Clam, Ramon; 3/4 points for each)
Chest B: 3 (Gronkling, ccexplore, möbius; 2/5 points for each)
Chest C: 2 (Akseli, geoo; 1/2 point for each)

This was also fairly well-distributed, the intakes differ only by 0.35 points.

Total scores

Gronkling wins 1st place with 6 + 3/20 points! Winning the number game with the number 8 was crucial, but you also gave no too unpopular answers in the first 5 questions.

Clam Spammer wins 2nd place with 5 + 1/2 points. Same points in first 5 questions as Gronkling.

möbius wins 3rd place with 5 + 3/20 points. Also same points in first 5 questions, but a little less points from the treasure chest.

The scores were bunched together quite nicely, the lowest score was 4 + 1/2. Giving popular answers to the first 5 questions proved rather important in the end.

Next challenge will be up later tonight or tomorrow!

-- Simon

[mobius]

AAAARG! I was even contemplating between 9 and 7! And then I thought I was over thinking it and maybe I should just go with a low number. 1 2,3 or even 4 I was thinking that’s what everybody else would pick, so I went high instead. Guess it turns out I would’ve won! I'm surprised everybody picked 0...

[Quizmaster]

Third challenge is closed, see next post for results.

-- Simon

[ccexplore]

Hmm, the 5-2 question distribution again.  Shouldn't we try a different distribution?  (Hey, maybe that can be a question on the next quiz )

[Quizmaster]

Results of the third challenge:

1. Easy start: Name an object/tool that can cut a sheet of paper.
Scissors: 9

Tempted to say chainsaw, but I'm gonna go with Scissors here

2. Name a company that sells computer operating systems.
Microsoft: 9

Full points for everyone so far.

3. Which PC game of the Lemmings series is least often played by members of this forum?
Paintball: 4
Lemmings 3D: 2
Lomax: 2
Revolution: 1

I believe Lomax is actually the correct choice, but this game is a little hard to think of; I'd probably have guessed Paintball myself.

4. Name a well-known country in Asia.
China: 8
Japan: 1

5. Name a number that many people consider lucky or unlucky.
Number 13: 8
Number 7: 1

6. Pick a girl:
A) the tall blonde woman in high-heels,
B) the short medium-blonde cutie with freckles,
C) the hunchbacked grey-haired witch with butt-ugly teeth.
If you pick the second-to-most popular girl, you get 1 point. If you pick the wallflower, you get 1/2 point. The most popular girl is worth 0. (She will just go out with someone else.) Ties will be broken in the manner A > B > C > A, where X > Y means that X gets half an extra pick should X and Y tie in picks. Should all 3 girls tie, then everybody gets 0.

Tall girl: 3 (möbius, Rubix, Clam; worth 1 point)
Short girl: 4 (Insane Steve, LemSteven, Ramon, Akseli; worth 0 points)
Witch: 2 (geoo, ccexplore; worth 1/2 point)

This matches my expected result. Next time, we will put three witches up for choice, so it gets more fair!

7. There are 5 kinds of vegetables: Tomato, Cucumber, Broccoli, Leek, and Eggplant. Choose one to eat, and a different one to deep-freeze. Scoring depends on what you eat: If nobody wants to freeze what you eat, you get 1 point. If you eat the most-frozen thing, 0 points. Scoring for the remaining vegetables is accordingly linearly arranged between 0 and 1, based on the number of freezings.

First, the freezing statistics:
Tomato: frozen 5 times (Insane Steve, geoo, LemSteven, Clam, Ramon)
Cucumber: frozen 1 time (möbius)
Broccoli: frozen 2 times (RubiX, ccexplore)
Leek: still fresh
Eggplant: frozen 1 time (Akseli)

Then, the choice of lunch:
Tomato: eaten 3 times (möbius, RubiX, ccexplore; worth 0 points)
Cucumber: eaten 2 times (geoo, LemSteven; worth 4/5 points)
Broccoli: eschewed
Leek: eaten 4 times (Insane Steve, Clam, Ramon, Akseli; worth 1 point)
Eggplant: eschewed

<SimonN> I figured that most people hate eggplant, but some people love it
<SimonN> Also Leek is something that nobody cares about really
<geoo> Yeah, I actually do. There's some I sorta like. There's also some that you can't really freeze because they suck really hard once you unfreeze them
<geoo> I deep-fry the Quizmaster

Results

Clam Spammer wins first place with 7 points, the highest possible score!

möbius gets second place with 6 points. geoo and LemSteven share third place with 5 + 4/5 each. Getting a good score meant answering the first 5 questions very consistenly, and ripping a fair benefit from the mind games.

Next challenge should be up around tomorrow, and it's a different format than 5 family questions + 2 mind games, guaranteed. ;-)

-- Simon