Family Feud 2014

[geoo]

Yeah, this round was too hard for me. I'm amazed how NaOH almost got a perfect score, congrats!

I thought thyme would be the prime answer for Q1 as it not only rhymes, but it also has the same ending when written...

I think my brain didn't work for Q2, how could I forget monocle and tophat.

Same for Q4, I wasn't seriously thinking about pets, but more about remarkable or silly birds; a penguin is plump and looks silly, or maybe even a dodo, but then I went with raven as we have it as an avatar here. I don't think either qualifies as a suitable pet...

For Q6 I was pondering between a few: The red button one because it stands out (it's not explicitely written like a thing you can do but a question), but then pressing a red button that you don't know what it does is not such a dumb thing to do. Use your private parts as piranha bait as it was the dumbest one among the earlier few answers. Dress up like a moose during hunting season as it's so bizarre. And the one I picked, sell both your kidneys, as I thought it'd be the most sure-fire way to die.

For Q10 it seems like I was screwed anyway. Had I picked citizen it'd been 0.03 points for me, which is pretty much 0. I was hoping more people would go for the 'safe' townfolk points, ignoring that in most of the scenarios where the mafia don't lose by default the score is close to 0.

[NaOH]

I think my brain didn't work for Q2, how could I forget monocle and tophat.

Name a piece of attire that a lemming would look good in, in addition to his blue shirt.
tie (0.5) - geoo

For the record, a lemming in a tie would be darn cool.

By the way, I will be playing in this next round, even though I'm Quizmaster. Answers are already submitted.

[Quizmaster]

Willkommen to Family Feud Round #4. All questions use standard scoring, except for the bonus. Standard scoring is (participants with your answer) / (number of votes the most popular answer got).

1. What is most dangerous to a lemming?

2. Give an example of something that people have but lemmings do not.

3. Which is your favourite track from Oh No More Lemmings?
Youtube Links for convenience:

Track 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s08dtSrbQk
Track 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_5wo_KSd4k
Track 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4VVU6npsQE
Track 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_BFKUTtd90
Track 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGu3XOM9KbE
Track 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M90bhzEITro

4. Are lemmings male, female, or something else? (for "something else" - you can specify, but it won't matter for scoring purposes.)

5. What do lemmings eat?

6. What's your favourite skill from Lemmings 2? (Edit: Thanks to ccexplore for this link to the Lemmings Encyclopedia entry listing all the skills in Lemmings 2, along with a picture and summary.)

Archer Attractor Ballooner Basher Bazooker Blocker Bomber Booter Builder Climber Club-Basher Digger Diver Exploder Fencer Filler Flame-Thrower Floater Glue-Pourer Hang-Glider Hopper Icarus-Wings Jet-Pack Jumper Kayaker Laser-Blaster Magic-Carpet Magno-Boots Mortar Parachute Planter Platformer Pole-Vaulter Rock-Climber Roller Roper Runner Sand-Pourer Scooper Shimmier Skater Skier Slider Spearer Stacker Stomper Super-Lem! Surfer Swimmer Thrower Twister

7. If you got to choose a new tileset for the next official Lemmings game, what would it be? It probably shouldn't be a tileset that has been seen in L1, ONML, L2, L3, etc. (Scoring on this will be lenient.)

8. Please provide the URL to the cutest picture of a real-life lemming that you can find. The following is not a real-life lemming.



(It is a video-game lemming; real life lemmings have fur.)
This is also not a real-life lemming:

                         

Note: Different URLs featuring the same picture or edited versions of the same picture will be considered the same answer for scoring purposes.

9. Which of the following lemmings would you least want to be right now?



10. What has been your favourite Lix Forums Family Feud Question of 2014? Any prior question (From here, here, or here) is valid, any question from this list other than this question is valid, and any future question is valid.

Bonus! Choose another user; one tenth of their score (prior to scoring this question) will be added to your score. However, there's a catch: if anyone else chooses the same user, the score will be split evenly between you. You may choose yourself; the same catch applies.

(ex. if users Alice, Bob, and Charlie all choose Dave, who earns 7.8 points, then Alice, Bob, and Charlie will gave 7.8/30=0.26 points)

As a fallback for if the user you choose doesn't enter, you may list multiple users in order; the first in the list who is playing will be considered for your score. If none are playing, you will be considered to have chosen yourself.

Good luck! (/evil laughter)

[Clam]

Some people have suggested that I should have entered the previous round, which I hosted. I'm not convinced either way.

On the plus side, having the "Quizmaster" play gives one extra participant each game...

but, on the flip side, it's kind of sketchy if the Quizmaster wins the game

Thoughts?

My rationale in this case was that we had plenty of players anyway, and the Quizmaster before me (möbius) didn't enter that round.

(Note to newer players: the person who has the Quizmaster account can legitimately play, by entering their answers at the start of the round and not changing them.)

[ccexplore]

Ultimately it's probably best for the game if it's close to 50-50 whether a QuizMaster participates in his/her own round, otherwise people can strategize around assumptions/probabilities of QuizMaster participation/non-participation (like I've tried in the past, somewhat more successfully in 2013 than 2014 apparently) which may be kinda unfair.

[ccexplore]

6. What's your favourite skill from Lemmings 2?

In case people need it:  The Lemmings Encyclopedia has a page that details all the Lemmings 2 skills, with pictures.

[NaOH]

On the plus side, having the "Quizmaster" play gives one extra participant each game...

but, on the flip side, it's kind of sketchy if the Quizmaster wins the game

So, why not have the Quizmaster contribute to the corpus of answers, but not be given a final score (and thus not be allowed to win.)

[geoo]

I think the Quizmaster should participate, for one to get more submissions, and then so (s)he has to suffer through their questions as well. (See how Clam bailed out of his hard round? This round is a lot easier, except for Q1.) I don't see the issue about cheating, the next quizmaster can check that the previous Quizmaster's submission was really the first and didn't get changed. And few of us would try to cheat in the first place anyway, there's very little motivation really.

Ultimately it's probably best for the game if it's close to 50-50 whether a QuizMaster participates in his/her own round, otherwise people can strategize around assumptions/probabilities of QuizMaster participation/non-participation (like I've tried in the past, somewhat more successfully in 2013 than 2014 apparently) which may be kinda unfair.

I don't get this point, for the regulars in this game you can say with 98% anyway that they'll participate, so why not about the Quizmaster. Also if you get the chance to submit a list of players that gets traversed linearly until there's a player that participates (like in the bonus question of this round), then frequent participation makes players stand out even less against the rest.

[Simon]

I'm still believing that BOAT rhymes with LOAD; you don't pronounce the T as hard as inside a word, do you?

-- Simon

[ccexplore]

Ultimately it's probably best for the game if it's close to 50-50 whether a QuizMaster participates in his/her own round, otherwise people can strategize around assumptions/probabilities of QuizMaster participation/non-participation (like I've tried in the past, somewhat more successfully in 2013 than 2014 apparently) which may be kinda unfair.

I don't get this point, for the regulars in this game you can say with 98% anyway that they'll participate, so why not about the Quizmaster. Also if you get the chance to submit a list of players that gets traversed linearly until there's a player that participates (like in the bonus question of this round), then frequent participation makes players stand out even less against the rest.

So maybe not 50-50, but I still feel like there is a difference between 100% (or 0%) compelled to participate, as oppose to being as much their own free will to participate/not participate as everyone else.  I don't know if it matters as much with normal feud questions, I think in the past it may have more of an effect on non-feud type questions.

Anyway, I don't have a strong opinion either way, though I feel all arguments so far for compelled participation (ie. 100% or 0%) are not that strong, so might as well make it a free choice just like everyone else's choice to participate.

So, why not have the Quizmaster contribute to the corpus of answers, but not be given a final score (and thus not be allowed to win.)

This leads to the interesting possibility of QuizMaster more likely to answer a lot differently than (s)he would as a regular player whose answers actually affect his/here own scoring.  I'm not opposed to it per se, but it's something to point out.

[ccexplore]

I'm still believing that BOAT rhymes with LOAD; you don't pronounce the T as hard as inside a word, do you?

Try this:

http://www.text2speech.org/

It sounds decent enough to my ears to pass for actual human English voice for single words.  Try having it speak the word "font" and the word "fond" and see if you can hear the difference with the final consonant.  It is admittedly subtle, though I doubt native English speakers will have trouble telling the two apart.

Notes:
  - The "MP3 file" link shown after clicking on the "convert..." button only works if you do right-click "save as" and save to a file, then play the file; clicking on link directly doesn't do anything useful.  At least that's the case in IE but maybe it's just IE sucks.
  - I find selecting "American Male 2" for voice type works best for this, but that may be just me.  "American Male 1" is also okay.  Don't do the female one, it sounds fairly unnatural to me.  Note that the voice-type selection resets to "American Male 1" after each and every conversion, so take note if you want to use "Male 2".

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

Feel free to try other words as well where the consonant appears in middle or start of a word.  I would say that in general as far as I'm taught (or at least as far as my ears are concerned, whatever that means ), the "t" and "d" sounds remain distinct regardless of where they appear in the word, one exception being that in the combination "st<vowel>" the "t" is pronounced like "d" would normally.

[Timballisto]

Huh.  Interesting.  This text to speech thing is pretty amusing.

Yeah, I don't think most people (myself included), at least in the midwest US, would say that boat and load are rhyming words.  South of me the difference might be even more pronounced.  The d in load is held a lot longer than the t is in boat.  If you went north of me though, around Wisconsin and Minnesota, it might be harder to distinguish the t from the d.  Not 100% sure on that one.

Also, I thought what you said about st<vowel> was interesting, so I switched the t out for a d in the word stow and tried saying it.  I also had my dad do it.  There's definitely a difference there for us.

...Phonemes are cool.

[ccexplore]

Yeah, I expect there to be some regional variations; I'm not exactly a particularly well-traveled person.  That's why I mentioned "German way of thinking"--poor phrasing but basically I'm wondering if perhaps in Simon's accent (presumably colored by the German language of which I admittedly know close to nothing) the final "d" and "t" do actually sound the same (or possibly to those speakers they perceive them as same sound).

I may actually have been a little confused with the "st" thing.  Reading up more on Wikipedia, it seems like the difference is that the "t" is "st" is often (there may be some exceptions) unaspirated while normally "t" is aspirated.  In contrast the t/d difference is voiceless vs voiced, even though it is also true that the "d" is generally unaspirated as well (hence my confusion).  This basically means the "t" is "st" is sort of "in-between or mix" the normal t and the normal d sounds rather than being truly one or the other.  In any case, for rhyming purposes we don't care about the initial consonants in a syllable anyhow.   (And AFAIK there is no variance in the final "t" sound for "st" like in "must".)

Anyway, maybe the next feud round can feature some question based on pronunciation (beyond rhyming)......

[Quizmaster]

Results will be up shortly. They're currently being compiled.

[Quizmaster]

Five days have elapsed, so now it's time to look at the results!

Question 1: What is most dangerous to a lemming?

This question was actually originally buried later on, but after some rearrangement it ended up as the first. This was probably a bad idea; it's actually quite an intimidating question!

Water (6/6) Clam, geoo, Ramon, Simon, Timballisto, ccexplore
Cliffs/Heights (2/6) RubiX, möbius
Bomber (1/6) Akseli
The player (1/6) NaOH


Question 2: Give an example of something that people have but lemmings do not.

Intelligence (2/2) Clam, ccexplore
Survival Instinct (1/2) NaOH
Free Will (1/2) Ramon
Nose (1/2) Akseli
Mouth (1/2) geoo ("At least in most of the 90's box art and ingame sprites")
Fingers (1/2) Timballisto
Gender (1/2) Simon
Computers (1/2) RubiX
Money (1/2) möbius


Question 3: Which is your favourite track from Oh No More Lemmings?

Track 5 (4/4) RubiX, NaOH, geoo, ccexplore
Track 3 (2/4) Simon, Clam
Track 4 (2/4) Ramon ("I hate them all."), möbius
Track 2 (1/4) Timballisto
Track 1 (1/4) Akseli (Despite saying many days before this feud over IRC that his favourite was track 5.)


Question 4: Are lemmings male, female, or something else?

Male (5/5) Clam, RubiX, Simon, Timballisto, ccexplore
Something Else (5/5) NaOH, Akseli, geoo, Ramon ("Rodents!"), möbius ("Dinosaurs")

Looks like we're split half-and-half!

Question 5: What do lemmings eat?

Grass (4/4) Clam, RubiX, geoo, möbius
Leaves (1/4) ccexplore
Food (1/4) Timballisto
Nothing (1/4) Ramon
Wurst (1/4) Simon ("I'm pondering whether 'nothing' is better, but wurst seems a safe option" )
Salad (1/4) Akseli
Themselves (1/4) NaOH


Question 6: What's your favourite skill from Lemmings 2?

Jet Pack (2/2) Ramon, möbius
Roper (1/2) geoo
Ballooner (1/2) Clam
Planter (1/2) Simon
Bazooker (1/2) ccexplore
Archer (1/2) Timballisto
Twister (1/2) Akseli
Magno Boots (1/2) RubiX
Club Basher (1/2) NaOH


Question 7: If you got to choose a new tileset for the next official Lemmings game, what would it be? (Marking is lenient.)

Forest/Jungle (3/3) RubiX, geoo, Simon
Underwater (2/3) Clam ("With underwater 'water' like in Spongebob"), Ramon
Occult (2/3) Akseli, ccexplore (The Quizmaster is flattered)
Ruins (1/3) möbius
Desert (1/3) Timballisto
Sky/Cloud (1/3) NaOH


Question 8: Please provide the URL to the cutest picture of a real-life lemming that you can find.


This is the first result on google images searching for "lemming" (4/4) Clam, Akseli, geoo, Ramon


(3/4) RubiX, NaOH, ccexplore


Baby lemming (1/4) Simon


(1/4) möbius


(1/4)Timballisto
(As an aside: this is so adorable that the Quizmaster just squeed.)


Question 9: Which of the following lemmings would you least want to be right now?


The one in the trap (8/8) Clam, RubiX, NaOH, Akseli, geoo, Ramon, Simon, Timballisto
The drowning lemming (1/8) ccexplore
The faller (1/8) möbius

Question 10:

"It's a conga line!" Round one, question eight. (3/3) geoo, Simon, ccexplore
"Which of the following lemmings would you least want to be right now?" The previous question. (1/3) Ramon
"Are you happy that the Quizmaster is back?" Round one, question one. (1/3) Akseli
"PUZZLE TIIIIME!" Round three, question ten. (1/3) Clam
"favorite ONML track" (1/3) möbius ("I want more <listen to this audio aid> questions ")
"Which of these Capybara Gentlemen is most dapper?" Round one, question seven. (1/3) NaOH
"Pick a number between 1 and 9 inclusive. Your score will get smaller if more people pick the same number as you." Round two, question nine. (1/3) Timballisto
"Name a hair colour that is uncommon among humans." Round three, question two. (1/3) RubiX


Bonus:

Note that if you weren't chosen, that's not necessarily an insult -- some people were likely avoided because they were so popular it was predicted other people would choose them too.

Listed in ascending order of payoff:

Timballisto, with 5.42 points (0.18) geoo, Clam, Timballisto
Akseli, with 5.66 points (0.28) Akseli, ccexplore
möbius, with 5.38 points (0.54) möbius
NaOH, with 5.83 points (0.58) RubiX
Ramon, with 7.25 points (0.73) Ramon
RubiX, with 7.42 points  (0.74) Simon
geoo, with 9.00 points (0.90) NaOH

Nobody voted for Clam (8.00 points), ccexplore (7.29 points), or Simon (7.00 points).

Final Scores:

geoo: 9.18
Clam: 8.18
RubiX: 8.16
Ramon: 7.93
Simon: 7.74
ccexplore: 7.57
NaOH: 6.73
Akseli: 5.94
möbius: 5.92
Timballisto: 5.60

Interesting how the two top-scorers selected what was by all accounts the least lucrative bonus option.

Regardless, it seems the bonus hardly affected the rankings -- I feel like this is because the raw scores, especially in the upper echelons, were more spread-out than I anticipated. I recommend in the future that similar questions, rather than scoring based off some arbitrary fraction (one tenth), should score based off the standard deviation of the scores (a measure of how spread-out the scores are), to ensure that regardless of how scores are spread out, such questions are equally important.

Once again, it goes to geoo, our three-time champion! And Clam gets second place, hotly contested by RubiX.

Thanks for playing, everybody! If anybody else wants to be quizmaster again, contact me privately (PM or IRC /msg or email) and I'll send you the account password.