RESULTS: Common Entries JFW02

Here are the results of the Common Entries JFW02 contest. There were 22 entries.

!!! The winner is Alan O'Donnell with a score of 53913600 !!!

Second place went to Moshe Jacobson (20966400). Third place went to Liz Churton (10782720).

The answers of the top 3 contestants were:

FIRST SECOND THIRD Alan O'Donnell Moshe Jacobson Liz Churton

1. Fried Rice Sweet and Sour Chicken Fried Rice 2. Barclays Chase Barclays 3. Peanut Peanut Brazil Nut 4. Se7en 2001: A Space Odyssey Se7en 5. Isaac Asimov Isaac Asimov Isaac Asimov 6. Electron Electron Electron 7. Pele Shakira Pele 8. Hilton Motel 6 Hilton 9. Leg Elbow Arm 10. King's Cross St. Pancras King's Cross St. Pancras Marble Arch

!!! Thanks to all who entered !!!

Jim Ward:

Another one from recent years is Th13teen Ghosts.

The Secret of My Succe$s (1987) substitutes a dollar sign for a letter.

What I want to know is why all those people who correctly put '2001' for answer 4 *didn't* correctly put Clarke here!

Surely this is a typo for 'electron' and should have been combined with it, thus improving my score?

Yowp! Was this the same entrant who put 'Peanut' for an SF author, by any chance?

Did any of the entrants actually write it as 'King's Cross St. Pancras', Jim, or was that your emendation? I'm guessing (now) that people thought of King's Cross because of the Harry Potter book/movie series, and put

You're right! I'll collect more errors, then re-score. It won't change the top 3, because they all submitted 'Electron'. (I must've looked over the entries at least five times ...)

Yes. Before the contest I guessed to myself that Ray Bradbury would be the commonest entry.

Moshe Jacobson submitted KXSt.P, and I *wanted* to mark it different from 'King's Cross' because it looked to me like two stations. I'm guessing there was a separate 'St. Pancras' station at one time?

As <http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=530212& Y=183014&A=Y&Z=1> shows, there are two main line stations side by side in this area

Actually, this was my error...

Thanks for a good contest. I found the second half much more difficult than the first. I was interested to note that had the contest been judged on the first 5 questions I would have come in first, and had it been judged on the last 5 questions I would have come very near the bottom. Not sure how that happened!

This phenomenon interested me. You might assume that all of these were submitted by the same person, but they weren't since I entered one of them.

The contest rules didn't say how this would be handled, but I was surprised that you didn't use Mark's general/specific rule to score chow mein as 5 and chicken chow mein as 1.

This always bugs me:

Main Entry: nut Pronunciation: 'n&t Function: noun Etymology: Middle English nute, note, from Old English hnutu; akin to Old High German nuz nut and perhaps to Latin nux nut Date: before 12th century

The word 'nut' was invented many centuries ago to describe a general category of crunchy, edible plant seeds. The fact that scientists have (post-Darwin) rearranged the taxonomy of all living things does not give them the right to redefine common terms (e.g. nut, bug, fruit) for their own terms.

Nitpick....

1. Name a dish on a Chinese restaurant menu.

Chow Mein vs Chicken Chow Mein

You cannot order a Chow Mein as it does not identify the dish. Therefore I argue that Chicken Chow Mein should score the the points the same as Chow Mein.

<snip>

Thanks for an interesting (results) and well run contest.

<snip>

Congratulations to Alan on great matching

I found the 'bank' answers 'different' from what I expected. I had Citibank, but scrubbed it in favour of Bank of England (apologies to those Citibank selectors whose scores would have improved) Obviously a transatlantic (USA & UK) flavour with Bank of America, Citibank and Barclays The latter perhaps more high profile in UK? And I guess at least one other Aussie (Commonwealth Bank)

John Hindge

'Barclays' was the best answer I could come up with off the top of my head, but a Google search suggested that 'Bank of America' is the world's largest bank, whatever that means (most assets?)

Thank-you!

I'm usually optimistic then disappointed in these competitions, but this has made my day! (I wish I'd read the post earlier...)

Alan