Results to Common Entries Contest MOJO7.ANTONYMS
These are the results to MOJO7.ANTONYMS. There were 22 entrants,
which is low for a common entries contest, but reasonably high for a
novelty contest. See the original contest posting for the rules.
The winner was Andrew Krywaniuk, who scored 1/75th of the
hypothetical maximum score. (The hypothetical maximum score is the score
that an entrant would have received, had he or she entered the highest
scoring answers to all questions, not taking into account the fact that
their answers would have changed the scores for those answers.) Heidi King
came in second, and was the only entrant who was able to avoid scoring 1
on any question. And Dave Zahn came in third. Congratulations to all!
Here are their entries:
1st:Andrew Krywaniuk 2nd: Heidi King 3rd: Dave Zahn
1.moth 1.bee 1.bee
2.science 2.chaos 2.science
3.inscribe 3.confuse 3.motion
4.clear 4.clear 4.clear
5.noodle 5.stew 5.soup
6.Andersen 6.success 6.Microsoft
7.chess 7.bridge 7.bridge
8.zipper 8.zipper 8.zipper
9.incident 9.pandemic 9.extinction
10.king 10.dictator 10.congress
First, some comments about the scoring. Unlike in previous
common entry contests, I said that certain answers could be ruled wrong.
I said that answers had to be a single word, could not be a nonsense
word, and could not contain the original word as a substring. (See the
original contest posting for the full formulation of these rules.)
These conditions were the only constraints on possible answers.
This was apparently not clear, for at least one entrant said
> I'm basing my entry on the assumption that you will mark an entry wrong
> if there is no defensable argument that it could be considered an antonym
> of the referrant word.
Nope, as long as an answer was a single word, wasn't nonsense, and
didn't contain the original word as a substring, I accepted it. Thus,
one person answered "antonym" for every question, and I accepted that.
I also accepted "Norne" as an antonym for "Enron," since (as the entrant
pointed out) "Norne" is the term for one of the Nordic goddessess of
destiny. This clearly has nothing to do with the company Enron, but is
simply the word "Enron" spelled backwards --- but since "Norne" is a
real word, it was acceptable. Incidentally, I considered having a rule
of the type described above, but couldn't see a way to formulate it that
wouldn't be highly ambiguous. If I run more Common Antonym contests,
I'll need to find a way to close up these loopholes; but probably I
won't run any more such contests.
"unbutton" was rejected as an answer to #8, since it contains the
original word ("button") as a substring. And "cement truck" was rejected
as an answer to #1, since it is not a single word.
I also wrote
> Two answers will only be ruled the same only if the same word, up to
> capitalization and regional variations in spelling.
I couldn't quite justify ruling "zip" and "zipper" as "regional
variations in spelling." This seems to be, rather, a regional variation
in usage, such as "lift" and "elevator." In a normal Common Entries
Contest, I would have ruled "lift" and "elevator" the same, but since
here the focus is on words, I would have ruled them different. I really
wanted to rule "zip" and "zipper" the same, to minimize cultural (U.S.)
bias, but it really doesn't seem consistent with the rule stated above.
Similarly, "honest" and "honesty" are different words.
As many entrants noted, the questions for this contest were very
difficult --- perhaps the most difficult of any of the common entry
contests. There was only one question (#4), where more than half the
entrants gave the same answer. This difficulty was why, for the first
time, I allowed answers to be marked wrong. Otherwise, I strongly suspect
that most people would have simply repeated back the original word as an
antonym. I think perhaps it was a little too hard, since, combined with
the low number of entrants (for a Common Entries Contest), it makes the
scores a little random.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Here are the scores of all the entrants. "WR" indicates that the answer
was marked wrong, thus receiving a score of 1/5.
Name #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 Score Score/Max
---- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ----- ---------
Hypothetical Maximum 10 10 3 13 3 4 5 9 4 6 5.05e+07
1.Andrew Krywaniuk 6 10 2 13 1 2 4 9 1 6 6.74e+05 1.333e-02
2.Heidi King 3 2 3 13 3 2 5 9 3 2 3.79e+05 7.500e-03
3.Dave Zahn 3 10 1 13 3 4 5 9 1 1 2.11e+05 4.167e-03
4.Ray Newport 10 10 2 13 1 1 5 4 4 1 2.08e+05 4.115e-03
5.Clay Blankenship 10 10 1 13 1 4 5 2 3 1 1.56e+05 3.086e-03
6.Henrik Eriksson 10 10 2 1 1 4 1 9 2 6 8.64e+04 1.709e-03
7.John Gerson 6 1 2 13 3 1 5 4 3 2 5.62e+04 1.111e-03
8.Mark Brader 10 3 2 2 1 2 4 9 4 1 3.46e+04 6.838e-04
9.FatPhil 3 3 2 13 3 2 1 4 1 6 3.37e+04 6.667e-04
10.Sharon Smith 6 10 1 13 1 2 4 2 2 1 2.5e+04 4.938e-04
11.Jim Ward 10 1 3 3 3 2 1 9 4 1 1.94e+04 3.846e-04
12.Michael Mendelsohn 10 3 1 3 1 1 3 9 1 2 4.86e+03 9.615e-05
13.Andrew Hartley 6 10 1 1 3 1 1 4 1 6 4.32e+03 8.547e-05
14.Ben Davidson 6 1 1 13 1 1 3 9 1 2 4.21e+03 8.333e-05
15.Nis Jorgensen 1 10 1 13 1 1 4 1 1 6 3.12e+03 6.173e-05
16.Richard Bean 10 10 1 1 1 1 3 2 4 1 2.4e+03 4.748e-05
17.Duane B. Cahill 10 1 1 13 1 2 3 WR 2 6 1.87e+03 3.704e-05
==.Kevin Stone 10 2 3 13 1 2 3 WR 2 1 1.87e+03 3.704e-05
19.Chris Kirkwood-Watts 10 1 1 2 1 4 1 9 2 1 1.44e+03 2.849e-05
20.Jarmo Monttinen 6 1 1 3 1 2 3 2 1 1 216 4.274e-06
21.Stephen Perry WR 10 1 13 1 2 1 WR 2 1 20.8 4.115e-07
22.Eytan Zweig 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1.978e-08
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Here are the answers to all the questions.
> 1. butterfly
10 caterpillar
6 moth
3 bee
1 antonym
1 cement truck [marked wrong]
1 larva
"caterpillar" was the intended answer here. This was supposed to be an
easy starting question, but #4 turned out to be the easiest. In fact,
none of the top three entrants picked "caterpillar."
> 2. art
10 science
3 craft
2 chaos
1 antonym
1 crap
1 mess
1 nature
1 Paul
1 sculpture
1 trash
> 3. describe
3 confuse
2 conceal
2 ignore
2 inscribe
1 abstract
1 antonym
1 cover-up
1 demonstrate
1 imagine
1 lie
1 measure
1 motion
1 obfuscate
1 prescribe
1 rescribe
1 scribe
1 vague
This is the only verb (other than "button," in #8, which can be a verb,
but was treated as a noun by most of the entrants).
> 4. fog
13 clear
3 sunshine
2 sun
1 antonym
1 clearness
1 shadow
1 sky
This is the only question where more than half the entrants gave the same
answer. I thought that this one of the more obvious questions. However, I
thought that the "obvious" answer was "lighthouse." Go figure.
> 5. dumpling
3 soup
3 stew
1 antonym
1 biscuit
1 chicken
1 drink
1 filling
1 giant
1 goose
1 noodle
1 pie
1 potato
1 rake
1 skinny
1 souffle
1 stringbean
1 stuffing
1 wonton
On the other hand, I thought that this one was impossibly difficult. I
had no idea what was a good answer here, and by the looks of it, neither
did anyone else.
> 6. Enron
4 Microsoft
2 Andersen
2 Exxon
2 honesty
2 IBM
2 success
1 antonym
1 government
1 honest
1 innocence
1 Norne
1 power
1 rich
1 Scientology
The answer I'm most happy with here is "honesty," although I didn't think
of it when I came up with this question. I think this is one of the most
culturally biased questions that I've had on a Common Entries contest,
although my impression is that Enron (Europe) has at least made quite a
few lead stories in the U.K. I'm not sure about elsewhere, though. At any
rate, I liked this question a lot, so I kept it despite its bias.
> 7. poker
5 bridge
4 chess
3 blackjack
3 roulette
1 antonym
1 fluffer
1 hearts
1 patience
1 pincers
1 snap
1 war
> 8. button
9 zipper
4 zip
3 unbutton [marked wrong]
2 hole
2 lever
1 antonym
1 menu
> 9. epidemic
4 health
3 pandemic
2 endemic
2 isolated
2 rare
1 antonym
1 cluster
1 cure
1 drought
1 extinction
1 healthy
1 incident
1 localised
1 virus
My answer here would have been "vaccine." But apparently that's just me.
> 10. president
6 king
2 dictator
2 voter
1 antonym
1 candidate
1 citizen
1 commoner
1 congress
1 emperor
1 intelligence
1 Monica
1 peasant
1 people
1 private
1 subordinate
The aspect of this question which I found most interesting, was the
decision as to whether to pick an alternate political leader (such as
"king" or "dictator"), or someone at the bottom of the political totem
pole (such as "commoner" or "private"). As it turned out, the former was
the correct choice.
Well, that's it for now. I'm going to be moving soon, after which I'll be
pretty busy, so I suspect it will be at least several months before my
next contest. Thanks to all who entered!
Momo