Results to Common Entries Contest MOJO1
There were 61 entrants. The high number of entrants presumably
reflects a combination of the fact that the Common Entries Contest
is much easier to enter than the Rare Entries Contest, and the fact
that this is the first Common Entries Contest in some time.
The winner is Barbara, with a score of 66.6 billion (billion=10^9).
Following closely behind is Clay Blankenship, with a score of 64.7 billion.
(By an interesting coincidence, Clay and Barbara were the last two to send
their entries in.) 66 billion is roughly 3.5% of the maximum possible
score. In third place is Keith Willoughby, with a score of 21.9 billion.
1st: Barbara 2nd: Clay Blankenship 3rd: Keith Willoughby
0. 1 0 1
1. mother mother mother
2. apple apple apple
3. dragon unicorn dragon
4. elf dragon vampire
5. Catherine Zeta-Jones Julia Roberts Sarah Michelle Gellar
6. France France France
7. Look before you leap A stitch in time. . A bird in the hand. . .
8. abortion gun control/2nd amdmt abortion
9. Gone With the Wind The Hobbit 1984
Because of the high number of entrants, I show the answer slates of
the top six contestants, instead of just the top three.
4th: Joe Marriott 5th: Sean Blanchflower 6th: Jonatahn Dushoff
0. 1 1 1
1. me mother mother
2. apple orange apple
3. unicorn dragon unicorn
4. unicorn unicorn unicorn
5. Heidi Klum Britney Spears Jennifer Lopez
6. France England France
7. All's well that. . . A bird in the hand. . . Look before you leap
8. Gun control Racism (especially The Middle East
Nazi/Jewish)
9. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings The Cat in the Hat
the Sorceror's Stone
This is the first Common Entries Contest that I have run, and while
I have been told that there have been previous ones, they weren't recent
enough for me to find them on dejanews. If anyone has comments or
suggestions on how the rules or scoring might be improved, I'm more
than interested.
I was very afraid that someone would post their answers to rec.puzzles.
While this is a problem in a Rare Entries contest too, there the mental
feedback loop to the problem is somewhat self-correcting, while in a Common
Entires contest the feedback loop exacerbates the problem. If anyone
has any ideas on what could be done about this (in addition to the obvious
exclusion of the posted entry from the contest), please let me know.
> For my convenience please do not quote this message when responding.
> Mail only your answers, and these in plain ASCII or ISO 8859-1 text:
> no HTML, attachments, Micros--t character sets, etc. (People who fail
> to comply will be chastised in the results posting.)
Consider yourself chastised, Keith Willoughby!
> . . . Multiple entries are not allowed.
A further chastisement goes to Terry O'Brien, who sent in two identical
entries. Since the entries were exactly the same, and had the exact same
name, it was clearly an honest error, and I accepted ONE of the entries.
However, in future contests if I get multiple entries I may eliminate all
of the multiple entries.
Here is the complete list of scores. Entries are in order, from best, to worst.
The first line, "Hypothetical Maximum," refers to the highest score for each
question. If someone had picked the best answer for each question, they
would have gotten 1.85 trillion (ignoring the fact that they would be
raising the scores for those answers). The last column gives the ratio of
the contestant's score to this hypothetical maximum score. The best entrants
got roughly 1/30th of this hypothetical maximum.
61 people entered. Of the 610 answers, 119 (19.5082%) were unrepeated.
Only 7 of the 61 entrants were able to avoid getting 1s on any question.
Name #0 #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 Score Fraction of max
"Hypothetical Maximum" 29 21 25 25 13 13 38 7 12 9 1.84795e+12
1.Barbara 29 21 25 25 4 3 38 4 12 8 6.6649e+10 0.0360665
2.Clay Blankenship 9 21 25 22 7 13 38 6 10 3 6.47026e+10 0.0350133
3.Keith Willoughby 29 21 25 25 1 7 38 6 12 3 2.18692e+10 0.0118343
4.Joseph Marriott 29 15 25 22 13 1 38 2 10 4 9.45516e+09 0.00511658
5.Sean Blanchflower 29 21 9 25 13 10 5 6 1 9 4.80958e+09 0.00260266
6.Jonathan Dushoff 29 21 25 22 13 7 38 4 1 1 4.63303e+09 0.00250712
7.Steven Howard 9 15 2 25 13 7 38 3 7 9 4.41154e+09 0.00238727
8.Dave Zahn 29 4 25 25 7 2 38 7 12 1 3.23988e+09 0.00175323
9.Jim Gillogly 29 21 25 25 13 3 6 2 4 4 2.85012e+09 0.00154232
10.Terry O'Brien 15 15 1 22 13 7 38 4 7 5 2.39639e+09 0.00129679
11.Jon Wild 29 1 9 22 5 13 38 3 7 8 2.3827e+09 0.00128938
12.Richard Bean 15 15 25 25 5 10 38 1 2 4 2.1375e+09 0.00115669
13.James Dreier 15 21 2 22 2 10 38 3 10 5 1.58004e+09 0.000855025
14.Harold Buck 29 15 9 22 4 10 38 1 12 1 1.57101e+09 0.000850139
15.Leo Breebaart 15 21 25 25 2 1 38 1 12 8 1.4364e+09 0.000777295
16.Mark Coen 29 1 25 25 5 1 38 4 12 8 1.3224e+09 0.000715605
17.Jacqui 15 15 25 25 13 2 38 1 1 9 1.25044e+09 0.000676663
18.Rick Zepp 29 4 25 2 13 7 38 6 2 4 9.62707e+08 0.000520961
19.Geoff Roe 15 21 25 6 7 3 38 2 12 1 9.04932e+08 0.000489696
20.Andrew Hartley 29 21 25 6 6 7 4 6 1 9 8.28727e+08 0.000448458
21.Oliver Gaul 15 21 25 22 1 2 38 6 1 9 7.11018e+08 0.000384761
22.Michael Davidson 29 2 25 25 4 13 38 3 1 3 6.4467e+08 0.000348858
23.David Eppstein 29 15 5 22 7 1 38 1 10 4 5.09124e+08 0.000275508
24.James Cross 15 15 25 25 1 2 38 7 1 5 3.74063e+08 0.000202421
25.James Morse 29 4 25 22 6 2 5 7 4 3 3.21552e+08 0.000174005
26.Aaron M Ucko 29 2 1 25 6 10 38 6 12 1 2.38032e+08 0.000128809
27.Gerrit de Blaauw 29 15 25 25 1 2 38 2 1 4 1.653e+08 8.94507e-05
28.Andy Jakcsy 29 1 25 25 6 13 38 3 1 1 1.61167e+08 8.72144e-05
29.Kevin N Stone 15 3 25 22 6 7 38 4 1 1 1.58004e+08 8.55025e-05
30.John Gerson 15 21 9 25 7 13 3 1 2 4 1.54791e+08 8.37638e-05
31.Chris Kirkwood-Watts 29 21 25 2 1 13 6 7 7 1 1.1638e+08 6.2978e-05
32.Josh 4 1 1 25 13 13 38 7 10 2 8.9908e+07 4.86529e-05
33.Eric Maddy 29 1 25 6 6 7 38 3 1 4 8.33112e+07 4.50831e-05
34.Dan Unger 29 15 2 25 7 2 38 1 7 1 8.0997e+07 4.38308e-05
35.D.A. Thompson 9 15 5 25 4 7 4 1 10 4 7.56e+07 4.09103e-05
36.Mark Brader 9 1 5 6 6 13 38 1 12 5 4.80168e+07 2.59839e-05
37.Neil Sunderland 1 15 25 22 2 1 38 4 12 1 3.0096e+07 1.62862e-05
38.Keith Calvert Ivey 4 1 2 22 5 10 6 6 10 9 2.8512e+07 1.5429e-05
39.Michael Shreeve 9 3 9 22 6 13 3 3 7 1 2.62702e+07 1.42159e-05
40.Matthew Grieco 15 1 25 22 6 13 38 1 1 1 2.4453e+07 1.32325e-05
41.Andrew Krywaniuk 29 21 2 25 6 13 4 2 1 1 1.90008e+07 1.02821e-05
42.Alan Curry 4 21 2 6 1 7 38 7 10 1 1.8769e+07 1.01567e-05
43.Tom Salinsky 9 21 1 22 7 2 38 2 1 4 1.76964e+07 9.57628e-06
44.Jodie Coston 1 15 9 22 4 1 5 7 4 8 1.33056e+07 7.20021e-06
45.Marc Dashevsky 29 21 1 25 13 1 5 1 12 1 1.18755e+07 6.42632e-06
46.Lieven Marchand 9 21 1 6 2 10 6 1 10 8 1.08864e+07 5.89108e-06
47.Michael Crowder 9 2 1 25 1 13 6 3 7 9 6.6339e+06 3.58988e-06
48.Jen Lesar 1 4 9 22 6 13 38 1 2 1 4.69498e+06 2.54065e-06
49.Heidi King 29 1 5 22 13 1 3 3 1 9 3.35907e+06 1.81773e-06
50.David Hill 15 21 1 22 4 7 1 4 4 1 3.10464e+06 1.68005e-06
51.Lee Russell 9 1 5 22 1 7 3 6 10 2 2.4948e+06 1.35004e-06
52.Peter Whincop 1 21 1 1 1 10 38 6 12 4 2.29824e+06 1.24367e-06
53.Tim Vaughan 29 1 2 25 13 10 1 2 1 4 1.508e+06 8.16041e-07
54.Brian Dunphy 29 1 9 2 4 2 38 1 1 8 1.2695e+06 6.86981e-07
55.Paul Atkinson 15 1 1 22 6 1 38 2 1 8 1.20384e+06 6.51447e-07
56.Benjamin Goldberg 29 3 2 25 1 10 4 1 2 3 1.044e+06 5.64951e-07
57.Greg Stephens 29 15 9 1 1 7 5 6 1 1 822150 4.44899e-07
58.Andy Bolton 15 15 1 2 4 1 6 4 1 9 388800 2.10396e-07
59.James McAdams 4 21 1 25 5 1 3 6 1 1 189000 1.02276e-07
60.jamppa@asu.edu 15 1 1 1 13 7 3 1 2 5 40950 2.21597e-08
61.Nuno Fernandes 29 2 1 1 1 2 38 1 1 3 13224 7.15605e-09
And here are the detailed results and rulings for each question.
> 0. Pick a number.
29 1
15 7
9 0
4 3
1 5
1 10
1 42
1 100
This one really surprised me. I thought that virtually everyone would
pick 7, and thus considered eliminating this question. But I decided
to start everyone off with an "easy" question.
> 1. Name a word beginning with the letter m.
21 mother
15 me
4 mom
3 mouse
2 man
2 mythical
1 m
1 ma
1 mama
1 mum
1 Mike
1 milk
1 mojo
1 Momo
1 most
1 Monday
1 money
1 monkey
1 mountain
1 much
I had not thought of picking "mythical," "Momo," or "mojo," but I liked these
answers when I saw them. The strategy of picking a distinctive word that
begins with "m," and that appears in the contest instructions that
all the entrants have just read, did not occur to me when I can up with this
question. But once I saw these answers I felt that they "deserved" to
do better than they did (whatever that means).
> 2. Give an antonym of banana.
25 apple
9 orange
5 banana
2 ananab
2 anti-banana
2 no banana
2 peel
1 'nana
1 beer
1 chimpanzee
1 fruit
1 give an antonym of banana
1 iceberg
1 meat
1 monkey
1 plum
1 purple
1 rock
1 sand
1 stone
1 tomato
"Apple" also struck me as the best answer, although I can't say exactly why.
I originally was going to ask the antonym of "apple," but decided that
the antonym of "apple" was too clearly "orange" (because of the phrase
"comparing apples and oranges"). This shows that the antonym of an antonym
is not always the original word. :)
I thought that some people might respond to the impossibility of the
task by simply repeating the word "banana." But it didn't occur to me
that there were a number of responses in the same vein ("ananab,"
"'nana," "give an antonym of banana," etc. . .). I especially like th
e answers of "no banana" and "anti-banana," which seem almost like
actual antonyms.
> 3. Name a type of mythical creature.
25 dragon
22 unicorn
6 centaur
2 fairy
2 pegasus
1 griffin
1 Loch Ness Monster
1 minotaur
1 Zeus
I expected that dragon and unicorn would be strong winners for this question.
I had no idea what the third most common answer would be. I don't find this
question terribly interesting on its own -- it was just a pretext to
ask the next question.
>4. Name the creature which you expect to be the third most common answer
> to the previous question.
13 unicorn
7 dragon
6 centaur
6 minotaur
5 griffin
4 elf
4 phoenix
2 sphinx
2 werewolf
1 Bigfoot
1 chimaera
1 cyclops
1 fairy
1 giant
1 God
1 hobbit
1 leprechan
1 Loch Ness Monster
1 mermaid
1 Poseidon
1 vampire
Here I was interested in the level of "question-defiance" -- that is,
how many people would disregard the instructions of the question in
order to get the most commmon answer. This issue was also probed with the
answers of "Andorra" to question #6 and "The Bible" to question #9.
The point here is that the task of predicting the third most common
answer to the previous question is almost impossible. More importantly,
even if you feel that you can predict the third most common answer,
there's no point in doing it unless you believe that most other
contestants can do it was well, which seems unlikely. I was curious to
see if people would make a bona fide attempt to predict the 3rd most
common answer to the previous question, or simply put down the same
animal for each question. 18% of the contestants (11 of the 61) put down
the same answer to #3 and #4. Of course, I don't know how many of the
other 82% made a bona fide attempt to predict the third most common answer,
and how many put the answer they expected to be second most common, or
something like that. But given the diversity of responses to this question,
I suspect that a majority of the entrants did make a bona fide attempt.
I also ran this question to test my prediction that the two questions
would have the same distribution of creatures. As you can see, the
distributions are not identical, but they are fairly similar, and the
third most common creature is the same for both questions.
Special style points go to the wag who picked "God" as a mythical
creature.
Here's the distribution for answers to this question broken down by how
the contestant answered the previous question:
25 dragon ------> 7 unicorn
3 dragon
3 elf
3 griffin
2 minotaur
1 centaur
1 chimera
1 giant
1 God
1 leprechan
1 vampire
1 werewolf
22 unicorn ------> 4 minotaur
4 unicorn
3 dragon
3 phoenix
2 centaur
2 griffin
1 hobbit
1 Loch Ness Monster
1 sphinx
1 werewolf
6 centaur ------> 3 centaur
1 cyclops
1 dragon
1 sphinx
2 fairy --------> 1 fairy
1 elf
2 pegasus ------> 1 phoenix
1 unicorn
1 griffin ------> 1 mermaid
1 LN Monster ---> 1 Bigfoot
1 minotaur -----> 1 unicorn
1 Zeus ---------> 1 Poseidon
> 5. Name the most attractive celebrity alive today.
13 Julia Roberts
10 Britney Spears
7 Sarah Michelle Gellar
7 Jennifer Lopez
3 Catherine Zeta-Jones
2 Anna Kournikova
2 Christina Aguilera
2 Claudia Schiffer
2 Jennifer Aniston
2 Russell Crowe
1 Brad Pitt
1 Elisabeth Hurley
1 Elle McPherson
1 Gwyneth Paltrow
1 Heidi Klum
1 Jennifer Love Hewitt
1 Madonna
1 Michelle Pfeiffer
1 Nikki Cox
1 Shirley Manson
1 Tom Cruise
Although I didn't specify the sex of the attractive celebrity, the
newsgroup is 90-95% male, and everyone knew this, so virtually all the
contestants, regardless of their sex, picked a female. In fact, even if
the newsgroup was more gender-balanced, I would expect most people to
pick females. Only 4 of the 61 entrants picked male celebrities.
I had expected Julia Roberts and Britney Spears to do well. However,
despite the fact that I am a big fan of the TV show "Buffy the Vampire
Slayer," and that I extensively tested this question on other friends who
also like the show, I never even considered Sarah Michelle Gellar as an
answer. Subsequent questioning has revealed the strange fact that most
people who like the show aren't so interested in Sarah Michelle Gellar,
while most people who don't watch the show assume that she's the main
attraction. Odd. . .
Finally, I note that the current issue of "People Weekly" has "The 50 Most
Beautiful People" as their cover story. They don't rank the 50 in order, but
Catherine Zeta-Jones is on the cover. But I think the contest was almost
over when this issue came out. Also on the cover (with smaller pictures)
are Benicio del Toro and Katie Kouric, neither of whom got even a single
vote here.
> 6. Name any country in Europe other than Andorra.
38 France
6 Germany
5 England
4 United Kingdom (UKoGBaNI)
3 Andorra
3 Spain
1 Belgium
1 Britain
As in question #4, my main interest here was in the level of question-
defiance. When I first came up with this question, I thought that
almost everyone would pick Andorra, on the grounds that it was the only
country singled out in the question, and that it was singled out in a very
conspicuous and strange manner. When I tested this question on my friends,
I found that most didn't even consider Andorra, but I kept the question
anyway -- I thought it might do better on a puzzle newsgroup. As you can
see, it didn't. It appears that question-defiance is not a popular strategy.
I had thought that England, France, and Germany were all reasonable choices,
so I was surprised to see France make such an overwhelming victory. Of course,
if people anticipated that "England," "The United Kingdom," and "Britain,"
would all be counted as different answers, that would make them shy
away from those answers. I also wonder if the fact that Andorra borders
France might have helped push "France" up in some fashion.
Of the contestants, 36 sent e-mails from times zones -4 to -7
(presumably mostly the U.S. and Canada), 19 from time zones 0 to +2
(presumably mostly Europe, and predominantly from the U.K.), and 5 from
time zone +10 (presumably mostly Australia). Of the 10 contestants
who picked "England," "the United Kingdom", or "Britan", 5 were from the U.K.
time zones, and 5 from the U.S. time zones. There was no correlation
between time zone and the decision on what to call that non-Continental
European country.
> 7. State a proverb. (Entries which differ only slightly in phrasing will
> be considered the same.)
7 A penny saved is a penny earned
6 A bird in the hand is worth two in a bush
6 A stitch in time saves nine
4 Too many cooks spoil the broth
4 Look before you leap
3 Don't count your chickens before they hatch
3 He who hesitates is lost
3 He who laughs last, laughs best (=longest)
2 All's well that ends well
2 Let sleeping dogs lie
2 Many hands make light work
2 The early bird gets the worm
1 A fool and his money are soon parted
1 A rolling stone gathers no moss
1 An apple a day keeps the doctor away
1 Better late than never
1 Better safe than sorry
1 Haste makes waste
1 Information wants to be free
1 Make hay while the sun shines
1 More haste, less speed
1 Neither a borrower, nor a lender be
1 Pride comes before a fall
1 Slow and steady wins the race
1 To err is human
1 Waste not, want not
1 You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink
1 You can never understand the true value of something until
you don't have it any more
1 You shall reap what you have sown
I accepted "He who laughs last, laughs best" as the same as "He who
laughs last, laughs longest."
I expected this to be a hard one, but answers were even more spread out
than I expected. I was shocked to see that the Golden Rule ("Do unto others
as you would have them do unto you."), which I expected to be the winner,
didn't get even a single vote. I also note that no one picked "The grass is
always greener on the other side." These are the only two major proverbs
that I can think of that don't appear in the list above (although we can
always argue about what "major" means).
> 8. State the most contentious possible topic of discussion on
> usenet today.
12 abortion (=abortion rights)
10 gun control (=guns=gun control/2nd amendment)
7 religion
4 politics
2 George W. Bush (=George Bush)
2 pcs vs. macs (=mac advocacy)
2 spam
1 capitalism
1 China-U.S. relations
1 economy
1 escrow key storage
1 euthanasia
1 flaming
1 Holocaust denial
1 illegal drug use
1 internet pornography
1 is there a God?
1 Middle East
1 Napster
1 netiquette
1 posting binaries to text-only newswgroups
1 race crime
1 race relations
1 racism (especially Nazi/Jewish)
1 results of Common Entries contest MOJO1
1 U.S. presidential election
1 web privacy issues
1 what is the best computing platform?
1 which is better? IE or Netscape?
In most cases I ruled topics to be different even if they had
substantial overlap, as long as there were substantial areas in which
they differed.
I ruled "mac advocacy" to be the same as "pcs vs. macs," because, while they
aren't exactly the same topic, as I understand it, 99% of the time "mac
advocacy" involves advocating them over pcs. Similarly, I accepted
"George W. Bush" as the same as "George Bush," despite the fact that the
second is really more general, since I don't imagine that many people
are arguing about the current U.S. president's father.
I accepted "gun control" as the same as "guns," since I don't think too
many people are arguing over which sorts of guns are best, or the best
places to buy guns. I also decided that "gun control/2nd amendment" was the
same as "gun control." An answer of just "2nd amendment" would have been
distinct, by limiting the topic to only certain legal issues, and to
the U.S. However, I felt that "gun control/2nd amendment" encomapssed
the exact same issues as "gun control," and only changed the emphasis
very slightly.
On the other hand, the addition comment "(especially Nazi/Jewish)"
at the end of the "racism" entry did substantially change the focus of
the entry. So "racism (especially Nazi/Jewish)" would have been
different from "racism." While no one submitted "racism," there was an
entry of "race relations," and I'm not sure if I would have ruled
"racism" and "race relations" to be the same. I would have found this a
difficult call, so I'm glad the additional comment made the issue moot.
I had not thought rulings on which entries were the same would be
terribly important for this contest, except for the England/U.K thing
in question #6. However, "gun control/2nd amendment" was picked by the
2nd place winner, and "racism (especially Nazi/Jewish)" was picked by the
5th place winner, so these rulings were important. If you disagree
with my rulings, it's easy for you to recalculate the "real" winners from
the table of scores at the start.
I expected this question to be divided, but the responses were even more
split than I expected. 22 of the 61 entrants gave unrepeated answers (scoring
1 on this question). Obviously, one reason for the diversity of responses
is that everyone reads different newsgroups, and the contentious topics
vary from newsgroup to newsgroup. I thought that the best way to deal
with this diversity would be to pick the most contentious topic on a
newsgroup that everyone in the contest reads -- that is, the rec.puzzles
newsgroup. I would have gone with the Monty Hall problem. But, as you can
see, only one entrant went in this direction, picking "results of Common
Entries Contest MOJO1."
> 9. Name a book which was first published sometime in the last 100 years.
9 The Lord of the Rings
8 Gone With the Wind
5 Mein Kampf
4 The Bible
4 Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone (or Philosopher's Stone)
4 Ulysses
3 1984
3 The Hobbit
2 Catcher in the Rye
1 2001
1 Cat in the Hat
1 Chicken Soup for the Soul
1 The Diary of Bridget Jones
1 Flowers for Algeron
1 Grapes of Wrath
1 The Great Gatsby
1 Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
1 Harry Potter
1 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
1 Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy
1 It
1 Murder and the Millionaire
1 Quotations from the works of Mao tse-tung
1 Roots
1 Stranger in a Strange Land
1 To Kill a Mockingbird
1 Tom Sawyer
1 Valley of the Dolls
The responses to this question surprised me in a number of ways. I thought
that this question was by far the hardest. But there was as much consensus
here as on questions 7 and 8.
Also surprising is that almost 25% of the responses to this question are
wrong, including the winning answer! "The Lord of the Rings" is not a
single book, but a trilogy of three books, and "Harry Potter" is not a
book, but a general class of four Harry Potter books. And both the Bible
and Tom Sawyer were first published before the 20th century.
I added the condition "first published in the last 100 years," to prevent
everyone from picking "The Bible." It briefly occured to me that contestants
might decide that correct answers to the question would be highly
fragmented, and so go with the most obvious incorrect answer ("The Bible").
But given the low amount of question-defiance when I tested the Andorra
question, I didn't expect any such answers here, and dismissed this as a
potential strategy. For me, the idea of giving an intentionally wrong
answer to the Andorra answer seems much more striking, and immediately
jumps out at me, while question-definance seems a much trickier stategy
to come up with for this question. In fact, I was curious, and e-mailed
all four people who answered "The Bible" to see if they had just made a
careless mistake -- none of them had.
While only a small number of people answered "Andorra" to #6 or "The Bible"
to #9, given the fragmented responses to this question, the score of 4
for "The Bible" was quite good.
Well, that's it. I had a lot of fun running this contest, and will
definately run another contest in the near future. I was initially worried
about overlapping with Mark Brader's Rare entries contest, but on further
reflection, I suspect that my contest is easy enough to enter that some small
overlap wouldn't be a big problem (unless Mark has an objection). I
might try to make the questions a little harder in the next contest.
Thanks to everyone who entered!
Momo