Family Feud (Round 15)

[Quizmaster]

This is a reminder to get your entries in, there's only a few days left (I think just 1 if I were to be exact)!

I'm especially looking at ccexplore (and Clam), you don't want to miss the (possibly) last feud, now that you've never missed one before, do you? Especially as I made one question just for you.

[ccexplore]

I submitted finally.  This is what happen when you have what amounts to level challenges in a feud. [Plus I really am busy with real life, sadly ]

[edit: @Clam: regarding your IRC comment about Amiga Fun 20, that's no glitch, it's just full acid objects with the "only draw on terrain" flag set.  I think the intended visual effect is to make it look like tubes/pipes of bubbling, simmering liquid.  DOS of course has liquids taken out in plenty of levels and Fun 20's no exception, although I think the DOS rendering programming is such that it wouldn't have rendered correctly anyway.  Might work in Lemmix though.]

[Quizmaster]

The results for the first round moderated by geoo that actually features lemmings questions are out!
I admit, the level questions probably took a bit more time than usual, and the last two didn't even work out that nicely.
Anyway, on to the results:


1. Name a country that features lemmings.

Norway: 6
Canada: 1

Ironically, the player closest to Norway picked Canada (which is definitely correct as well):

Well, I know that we have lemmings in Finland and in our northern neighbour Norway, but nobody won't answer those :--D)

I suppose some people remembered my trivia question: "Which (of the following) territories belonging to Norway feature the Norway Lemming (lemmus lemmus)?"


2. Name a country that features clams.

New Zealand: 6
USA: 1

Clam sums it up nicely:

clams are everywhere, but there's only one Clam

3. Name a country that features capybaras.

Brazil: 4
Peru: 1
USA: 1
Germany: 1

Clam followed the same logic as the previous question, and picked Germany:

anyone who answers different obviously looked it up

Steve on picking USA:

Yea I know that capybaras aren't in the US but I don't think many people actually do and this is more a dump answer

4. What's the greatest enemy of a green haired lemming?

This is a fun one! Let's see:

water/liquid (I grouped these two answers together as they were close enough): 2
clam: 1
nuke: 1
a blue haired lemming: 1
chameleon: 1
player incompetence: 1

I was contemplating grouping Clam with player incompetence.


5. Which year will Simon finish Lix? (NEVER is a valid answer)

Never: 6
2015: 1

Simon put it in all caps and with an exclamation mark!
Steve's comment:

serious answer: ... probably not never, but I mean

6. Which year will Insane Steve finish his 11th levelpack ISteve11? (NEVER is a valid answer)
For the record, his 10th pack was 30% finished in 2006 and finished in 2009, Steve wrote in June 2011 the ISteve11 needs only 2 or 3 more levels.

Never: 3
2013: 3
2014: 1

I noticed the same thing, but I'm trustful. 

We can only hope.

Simon's (and also geoo's) rationale behind picking 2013:

because Steve will get encouraged by this question

Steve answered 'never', noted however:

serious answer: knowing me, probably 2015 when I decide that Lemmix is really neat one random day again

7. Which year will ccexplore's level "Brickout" be backroute-free? (NEVER is a valid answer)
Background: "Brickout" is a very hard level for Lix by ccexplore, which had at least 10 iterations of backroutes and backroute-fixes. The first version was released in early February 2012, and the last (up to now) in March 2012, and it has been backrouted. So right now there is no backroute-fixed version.

Never: 6
2013: 1

THE BACKROUTE IS NEVER END

ccexplore's comment on answering 'never':

for feud purposes only, I hope 

Simon answered NEVER!!!!

And that is not because the game is glitchy! It's because the skills are too versatile!

Lemmings level questions

8. It's Hero Time! You got one of each skill, 1 minute, and 25 lemmings at release rate 99.

Pick some out of the available 8 skills that are sufficient to save 24/25. (I'm easy on you, you don't have to save everyone!).
If someone else solves it with a subset of the skills of your choice, their solution is strictly superior and you get nothing.
If not, you get 1/x points where x is the number of players who picked exactly the skill combination as you.

geoo: blocker, digger, miner
Simon: climber, floater, basher, miner, digger
Gronkling: bomber, blocker, miner, digger
Steve: floater, blocker, miner, digger
Akseli:  floater, blocker, miner, digger
Clam: bomber, miner, digger
ccexplore: floater, blocker, builder, miner

geoo's skillset is a subset of each of Steve's, Gronkling's and Akseli's, so those three get 0 points.
geoo, Simon, Clam and ccexplore get 1 point.
Simon is really lucky here, as basher, miner, digger is also a valid skillset, so he even has 2 surplus skills, but no-one picked this skillset.

ccexplore's solutions is my favourite, at least I like the solution that I found for this skillset. Perhaps his intended solution is different?


9. Fun 20, "We are now at LEMCON ONE". Saving 30/50 required, 20 (14 if there's only 5 players, 17 if there's only 6 players) of each, release rate 10, 5 minutes.
Give a skillset with which you can solve the level. There's one issue though: the skills have to be shared
among all players. It might be that for some skill, the demands of all players add up to more than 20 (or 14 or 17).
In that case, the players with the highest demand for that skill (descendingly) lose, until the total demand
of the remaining players is at most 20 (or 14 or 17). Winning is only rewarding if someone else loses, so if no-one has lost
until now, the player(s) using the most skills in total lose. Everyone who doesn't lose wins and gets a point!

The only skill count that goes above 20 is the basher with 23. Gronkling's solution uses 7 bashers and 2 builders, so everyone but Gronkling get a point.
The detailed list is in the attached spreadsheet.
The builder count is exactly at 20, all other skills are not even close to 20. I think I should have lowered the allowed skill counts in general to get a more conflicts.


10. Now we play Fun 26, "Nightmare on Lem Street". 2/2 lemmings to save, release rate 30, 5 minutes. 20 builders,
but 10 of everything else! (Adapted skillset for the purpose of this challenge.)
Pick a skillset of at most 12 skills that allows to solve the level.
However, there's only limited supply of skills. Again, if the total demand of all players is higher than the available skill amount,
a conflict arises, but this time everyone who needs this skill loses.
Winning is only rewarding if someone else loses, so if no-one has lost
until now, the player(s) using the most skills in total lose. Everyone who doesn't lose wins and gets a point!

Builders are essential in this level. Steve requests 12 builders ("some men just want to watch the world burn"), so the total builder count goes up to 30. Everyone loses.
Details, again, in the spreadsheet. Perhaps I should have asked for solutions that use exactly 2 builders.

Adding up the scores, these are the final results:

1. Simon & geoo: 8.5
3. Clam: 8.25
4. ccexplore: 7.08
5. Gronkling: 7
6. Steve: 6.75
7. Akseli: 4.17

[chaos_defrost]

I love how, with all the 1-per-skill levels I make, switching off my original Hero Time answer (floater/basher/miner/digger) dropped me from 3rd to 6th. Awesome.

Also I am very proud of my answer to the last question deal with it

[ccexplore]

8. It's Hero Time!

geoo: blocker, digger, miner
Simon: climber, floater, basher, miner, digger
Gronkling: bomber, blocker, miner, digger
Steve: floater, blocker, miner, digger
Akseli:  floater, blocker, miner, digger
Clam: bomber, miner, digger
ccexplore: floater, blocker, builder, miner

geoo's skillset is a subset of each of Steve's, Gronkling's and Akseli's, so those three get 0 points.
geoo, Simon, Clam and ccexplore get 1 point.
Simon is really lucky here, as basher, miner, digger is also a valid skillset, so he even has 2 surplus skills, but no-one picked this skillset.

ccexplore's solutions is my favourite, at least I like the solution that I found for this skillset. Perhaps his intended solution is different?

I actually missed both the blocker-digger-miner and the basher-digger-miner solutions, thinking bomber-digger-miner is the only 3-skill solution, so I was just going for what I hope was the less likely picked 4-skill solution.  I strongly suspect my solution to be just a minor, slightly slower variant of floater-blocker-digger-miner given by two people here, which was killed by your blocker-digger-miner, so I got a little lucky in that regard. Also lucky that the DOS timer prevents substituting builder in the 3-skill solutions.

I'm a little curious, does the Quizmaster have an "unfair" advantage here in working through Mayhem 3 in advance to have come up with the question in the first place?  If not, then we might've just proven the real, correct answer to question 3 in round 15......

=============

I also misread questions 9 and 10 and thought that the "most skills toal lose" criteria still applies even after eliminating the skills-exceeding players.  (That is, I thought after eliminating players until no skills are over-demanded, the "most skills total lose" criteria is then still applied to weed out yet more players, rather than only applying it if there were no eliminations due to over-demand.)  That was what ate up time for me to figure out #9.   My solution for #9 ends up essentially being a sort-of challenge of using no more than 3 of a type of a skill while minimizing the total (the latter minimization only because I misread the rules), that worked out to 10.  (I avoided the min-skill solution [5 builders, 1 blocker, 1 basher, 1 digger/miner/bomber] to avoid elimination due to over-demand of builders.)

For 10 (ie. Fun 25 26) I actually had the same thought as Steve, but again because of my misreading of the rules, I went for 5 instead of 12 builders (5 being the minimum number of skills required to solve the level).  AFAIK way back in time when challenges are still active, Clam tried hard but couldn't come up with a builder-free solution for that level, the best he got was getting builders down to 1. [edit: catching up on IRC suggests I probably mixed up Fun 26 with the Mayhem repeat, so I guess there is a no-builder solution but it doesn't work with the additional restrictions of the question, unsurprsingly.]

[ccexplore]

Okay, I feel the need to blab about the rest of round 17 as well:

- Brazil was my actually first thought when answering #3, but for some reason I felt it was not the right South American country, that I got it mixed up with something else rodent-related.  At least you know I'm honest about not looking up the answers...

- For #4 I was really debating whether I should go with the ONML lizard (ie. what Akseli called chameleon).  I also thought about various other creature-like traps in L2 (eg. the Outdoor frog) and even L3 (potato beast) but thought the lower popularity of those games make such answers unfavorable for feud purposes.  In the end I just felt like the question is likely to end up with all different answers, and was hoping at least one other person sees the nuke as the weapon of mass lemmings destruction that it logically is.

- Finally, I started with all three NEVER for the "when will" questions, but decided to cut Steve some slack on that question, although it seems like other people was even more optimistic than I am.   Interesting that in all 3 questions the person being referenced answered NEVER himself.  Not sure how serious Simon's answer is?

I still don't have the time, but I will say that being called out on Brickout does motivate me to actually prove the feud wrong.  I just hope it is actually achievable and not like what Simon suggested......

[ccexplore]

Hmm, I just looked at Steve's solution for Fun 20 in the spreadsheet, and he has 4 bombers, 2 builders, and 3 bashers.  Is that really possible?  I tested bombers during the round and my finding was that the bomber would've just broken through the floor (recall that in Lemmings 1 they fall through diagonally-upward adjacent single pixels of terrain) when you try to get through a piller with just one bomber alone, without other skills to make the bomber explode higher (just one pixel higher than floor level will do).  Was my finding incorrect?

[ccexplore]

I got more comments on IRC for my floater-blocker-builder-miner #8 solution than I expected, which now makes me wonder if the 2 eliminated floater-blocker-miner-digger solutions aren't what I thought they are, given how I already missed two of the three 3-skill solutions?  And also whether geoo has what I has (kinda think he does but on the other hand, he seems to like it too much?).  So anyway I've attached my replay.  It's really floater-blocker-(miner/digger)-(miner/digger/builder).

[Clam]

For 10 (ie. Fun 25 26) I actually had the same thought as Steve, but again because of my misreading of the rules, I went for 5 instead of 12 builders (5 being the minimum number of skills required to solve the level).  AFAIK way back in time when challenges are still active, Clam tried hard but couldn't come up with a builder-free solution for that level, the best he got was getting builders down to 1. [edit: catching up on IRC suggests I probably mixed up Fun 26 with the Mayhem repeat, so I guess there is a no-builder solution but it doesn't work with the additional restrictions of the question, unsurprsingly.]

I was just going to mention that. I can't find a replay for Fun 26 no builders (there's a link to the old forum instead), so I solved it again, replay attached. The repeat (Mayhem 13) needs a builder, there's a replay in the challenge topic - surprisingly not my replay, but Pooty's.

I had the same problem with bombers on Fun 20, maybe IS meant to add in climbers too?

For the "when if ever" questions, I picked "never" for all simply because it saves you having to choose between this year or next year, or the year after that etc. It's an easy cop-out, which one could expect other players to take as well. Plus NEVER is a new and fun option, which makes it extra attractive

[chaos_defrost]

Hmm, I just looked at Steve's solution for Fun 20 in the spreadsheet, and he has 4 bombers, 2 builders, and 3 bashers.  Is that really possible?  I tested bombers during the round and my finding was that the bomber would've just broken through the floor (recall that in Lemmings 1 they fall through diagonally-upward adjacent single pixels of terrain) when you try to get through a piller with just one bomber alone, without other skills to make the bomber explode higher (just one pixel higher than floor level will do).  Was my finding incorrect?

I didn't actually test it as a solution so this is possible yea

doesn't really change the standings any though, so meh

[ccexplore]

It depends on whether you choose to use climbers or builders to raise the bombers, given that the current builder total works out to be 20.  [edit: I should really say "it might", since I can't be bothered to actually check what happens to the rankings with the myriad possibilties, and it's still all kinda pointless regardless as I noted below]

I wouldn't bother reconsidering the rankings anymore though, since this issue really can't be undone without a time machine (for all we know, if Quizmaster did catch the problem, you might've ended up going for a different solution altogether).  All I want to just check and see if I missed anything solution-wise.

[chaos_defrost]

Na, it's a mistake on my end. I thought you could get cleanly through the poles that are over the support pillars without elevating the bombers, but I guess it barely doesn't work.

Almost definitely climbers, since everyone needs at least two builders and I wouldn't want to be the one wasting the builders.

Or maybe I'd have done something like 2 climbers 2 bombers 2 builders 3 bashers 2 miners 2 diggers in case a lot of people used climbers. Pretty sure if I found out that solution didn't work I'd not have added any builders.

[geoo]

Oops, I guess I was a bit careless checking the solutions here.
Yeah, I suppose I'd just give the benefit of doubt and say the additional skills would have been mostly climbers (1 or 2 more builders would have kicked Simon though ).

Yeah, the solution ccexplore posted is the one I found now too. I find it kinda neat as it's got enough time to actually take the long route and build over the bridge, and I like the trick of having everyone walk back and forth, and the miner falls down while the crowd lands safely on the middle platform before proceeding downwards.
I suppose the floater, blocker, miner, digger solution is similar, so it feels kinda bad that it's outrun by my ugly blocker, miner, digger solution (see attached).