Rare Entries Contest GdV02: Results

I considered this question very carefully, and by the answers given it looks like most entrants came to exactly the same conclusions as I did:

1. If you pick '1' as the answer and most others don't, you will almost certainly be at or near the top score for the question.

2. If you pick '1' as the answer and most others do also, then you're all in the same boat so again won't be losing out on most of the field.

3. The only possible alternative to '1' is another small number that isn't picked by many others, but on what basis do you choose? Its random pot luck hoping no-one else picks the same as you. I assumed the answers would fit a standard 'bell' curve, peaking at '1' and tending to zero around '5', which would make '1' the best option. Other than the single selection for '2' I think I was 100% correct.

Given the above, the choice of '1' amongst most entrants was not cowardice but a sensible choice. If you want to characterise the choices, I would say the single entrant who chose '2' was very lucky (or very skillful to accurately second guess that everyone else would pick '1'.

Not heard of that one.

Did Yello's Oh Yeah make it to number one in the US?

I really do not see that a soundtrack is any less a device than many of the answers judged correct. An LP disk does not work on it's own. Chambers says a device is something which is designed.....

Bugger, this means I'm too late then. Too busy complaining about the weather, I'm a disgrace.

However, it is most certainly a brand name.

Oh, I loved question 9

A device would be the *physical object* you put into your pocket/car/etc to carry this soundtrack around.

My analysis was that the break-even distribution of answers was that which assigned the same score (approximately) to each answer. This implies that if a1 is the number of '1' answers, then the number of 'j' answers should be approximately a1/j. Suppose then that a1 = 12; this implies that the answers should be distributed more or less as follows:

answer: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... count: 12 6 4 3 2 2 2 1 1 ... score: 12 12 12 12 10 12 14 8 9 ...

Since the sum of the counts must equal the number of contestants, this would match the approximately optimal distribution for 33 contestants. I guessed that there would probably be fewer than 33, so I decided against a relatively large answer such as 8 or 9. On the other hand, I guessed that there would be an overage of small answers, '1' in particular, so I decided to avoid these as well. I guessed that the best range to pick from was 3-5, so I chose 4, which gave me a score of 8.

I could have done better by picking 2 or 5 or 6 or 7, but not 1 or 3 or any number greater than 7, so all in all I am satisfied with my

dictaphone may be a brand name, but it is synonymous with the device itself - as hoover is to vacuum cleaner for instance.

Simon

It also allowed Sydney and Brisbane to slip through. And I suspect Durban and Pretoria, but I can't say for certain since the www.citypopulation.de site only gives Urban Area populations for South Africa.

Trivia question: What other cities would slip through this 'loophole'? Not counting cases like Fort Worth, of course.

Well, my 'strategy' of trying to pick the most obvious answers, in hopes that other players would avoid them, proved to be a near complete bust and put me near the bottom of the standings. Was anyone else trying that? I suppose all three of us who said 'Rose' for the plant = name and 'United States' for personal pronoun in anthem were, perhaps.

I wasn't trying to pick obvious answers, but I was trying to get all correct answers without putting in a lot of time.

And Garmt said, explicitly, 'no brand names'.