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rec.arts.drwho |
SHORT RULES The purpose of this game is as follows: for each of the questions, your ** Answers must be submitted by email only. DO NOT POST ANSWERS HERE ** QUESTIONS 0. Name a person we have seen who was a member of UNIT other than The LONG RULES In order to participate in the contest, send your answers to me by If there are fewer than 10 entrants, I may not bother working out who's Make sure you have read the rules before submitting your answers. 1. Answers 2. Scoring 2.1 More Specific Variants 2.2 Scoring Example 3. Entries 3.1 Clarifications 3.2 Supporting Information 4. Scope 4.1 "Story" refers to one or more episodes, generally with the same 4.2 "Companion" refers to anyone who travelled with the Doctor for two 4.3 "Appears" or "Seen" mean seen on-screen, as opposed to merely 4.4 "Alien" means not originating from the planet Earth. 4.5 "Actor" includes both male and female performers, but excludes 5. Judging 6. Results Have fun! Cheers Tom
objective is to give an answer that
(1) is correct, and
(2) will be duplicated by as FEW other people as possible.
Brigadier, Captain Yates, or Sgt Benton
1. Name a word which occurs in at least two Doctor Who story titles.
For the purposes of this question, "word" does not include words of
three letters or fewer.
2. Name an alien race which appears in at least four separate stories.
3. Name an alien race which appears in exactly one story.
4. Name one of the ten actors who have officially played The Doctor.
5. Name any performer who has played The Doctor on the BBC tv series
other than the official 10.
6. Name a character other than The Doctor who has been played by more
than one actor (programme credits will be used to determine this).
7. Name a character, other than The Doctor or a companion, who has
appeared in more than one story and was always played by the same actor
(again, going by programme credits).
8. Name a character other than a companion who has travelled in the
TARDIS with the Fifth Doctor.
9. Name a married couple we have seen.
email (tomsalin...@googlemail.com) before noon on Friday 9 June 2006.
It is of course essential that nobody sees the answers given by other
entrants before the deadline, so please do NOT post your answers here!
won, so if this sounds like fun, do encourage others to play.
For each of the questions above, your objective is to give an answer
that (1) is correct, and (2) will be duplicated by as FEW other people
as possible. Feel free to use any reference material you like to
RESEARCH your answers; but when you have found enough possible answers
for your liking, you are expected to choose on your own which one to
submit, WITHOUT mechanical or computer assistance: this is meant to be
a game of wits.
The scores on the different questions are MULTIPLIED to produce a final
score for each entrant. Low score wins; a perfect score is 1. If your
answer to a question is correct, then your score is the number of
people who gave that answer, or an answer I consider equivalent. A
wrong answer, or a skipped question, gets a high score as a penalty.
This is the median of:
- the number of entrants
- the square root of that number, rounded up to an integer
- double the largest number of entrants giving the same answer (right
or wrong) as each other on the question
On some questions it's possible that one entrant will give an answer
that is a more specific variant of an answer given by someone else. In
that case the more specific variant will usually be scored as if the
two answers are different, but the other, less specific variant will be
scored as if they are the same.
Say I ask for someone the Doctor has kissed. There are 27 entrants: 19
say "Rose" or "Rose Tyler", 2 say "Cassandra in the body of Rose
Tyler", 4 say "Captain Jack", 1 says "Daphne Ashbrook" and 1 says
"Lynda Moss". The 4 people who answered "Captain Jack" get 4 points
each. Since "Cassandra in the body of Rose Tyler" is a more specific
variant of "Rose Tyler", those who said "Rose Tyler" get 21 points
each, and those who said "Cassandra in the body of Rose Tyler" get 2
points each. The Doctor never kissed actress Daphne Ashbrook (although
he may have kissed Grace Holloway) nor Lynda Moss,
so those answers are both wrong. The persons who gave them both get the
penalty score, which is the median of:
- number of entrants = 27:
- sqrt(27) = 5.196+, rounded up = 6:
- double the most popular answer's count = 21 x 2 = 42:
or in this case, 27.
Entries must be emailed to me personally by email:
tomsalin...@googlemail.com. Do NOT post your answers on the the forum!
In general there is no penalty for errors of spelling, capitalization,
English usage, or other such matters of form. Sometimes a specific
question may imply stricter rules, though. And if you give an answer
that properly refers to a different thing related to the one you
intended, I will normally take it as written. Once you intentionally
submit an answer, no changes will be allowed, unless I decide there was
a problem with the question. Similarly, alternate answers within an
entry will not be accepted. Only the first answer that you
intentionally submit counts.
Questions are not intended to be hard to understand, but I may fail in
this intent. (For one thing, in many cases clarity could only be
provided by an example which would suggest one or another specific
answer, and I mustn't do that.) In order to be fair to all entrants, I
must insist that requests for clarification must be emailed to me, NOT
POSTED in any mailing list. But if you do ask for clarification, I'll
probably say that the question is clear enough as posted. If I do
decide to clarify or change a question, all entrants will be informed.
It is your option whether or not to provide supporting information to
justify your answers. If you don't, I'll email you to ask for it if I
need to. If you provide any explanatory remarks along with your
answers, you are responsible for making it sufficiently clear that they
are not part of the answers. The particular format doesn't matter as
long as you're clear.
Questions refer to the transmitted episodes of the BBC television
series "Doctor Who" in its original run from 1963 to 1989, the TV Movie
of 1996 and the current series which began in 2005. Only episodes
transmitted at the time of posting are included, and all other Doctor
Who related works are excluded. This excludes audio plays, comic
strips, spin-offs, TARDISodes, novelisations and probably more.
production code, writer and director, which tell a complete tale. Where
story names are in issue, the most common name will be used. This will
generally be the name used for the DVD, VHS or novelisation ("The
Daleks", rather than "The Mutants" or "The Dead Planet" for example).
For the avoidance of doubt "Mission to the Unknown" is one story and
"The Trial of a Timelord" is four stories.
or more consecutive episodes. For the avoidance of doubt, the following
all have honorary companion status: Katarina, Sara Kingdom, Brigadier
Lethbridge-Stewart, Adam, Captain Jack, Mickey. No other UNIT soldiers
have companion status (Harry Sullivan and Jo Grant obviously are
companions).
referred to in dialogue or implied.
stunt-people, stand-ins doubling for a credited actor etc. unless the
question indicates otherwise.
As moderator, I will be the sole judge of what answers are correct, and
whether two answers with similar meaning are considered the same,
different, or more/less specific variants. I will do my best to be fair
on all such issues, but sometimes it is necessary to be arbitrary. I
may rescore the contest if I agree that I made a serious error and it
affects the high finishers.
Results will normally be posted within a few days of the contest
closing. They may be delayed if I'm unexpectedly busy or for technical
reasons.