SHORT RULES

The purpose of this game is as follows: for each of the questions, your
objective is to give an answer that
(1) is correct, and
(2) will be duplicated by as FEW other people as possible.

** Answers must be submitted by email only. DO NOT POST ANSWERS HERE **

THE QUESTIONS

0. Name two companions who met each other in exactly one story

1. Give a word associated with "Doctor Who" which returns 250,000
or more hits from an uncustomised Google search, according to the
approximate count given at the top of the first results page.

2. Name a three-word story title which amounts to a concrete
noun-phrase describing a person or thing seen in the story.
(Definitions: a noun-phrase is one or more words which together
function as a noun, such as "long scarf". A concrete noun is one
referring to a physical object, such as a scarf, rather than something
intangible like an idea.)

3. Give a nickname that one Doctor Who character has used for another.

4. Name an alien race played (at least at times) by performers in
costumes where those costumes have always been designed to completely
conceal the performer within.

5. Name an actor who has appeared in speaking, credited roles (and not
just as a voice) in four or more separate stories and who has played
two or more different characters.

6. Name a character who appeared in exactly one episode of a
multi-episode Doctor Who story, and who did not die in that episode.

7. Name anything belonging to or associated with the Time Lords whose
name follows the pattern "The [BLANK] of [BLANK]".

8. Name a woman who has written or directed an episode of "Doctor
Who"

9. Name a story which featured the return appearance of a character not
seen during the present or previous season.

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In order to participate in the contest, send your answers to me by
email (tomsalin...@googlemail.com) before noon on Friday 4 August 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!

If there are fewer than 10 entrants, I may not bother working out who's
won, so if this sounds like fun, do encourage others to play.

Make sure you have read the rules before submitting your answers.

YOUR ATTENTION IS SPECIFICALLY DRAWN TO RULE 3. Please supply the
information asked for and only the information asked for. If you supply
two answers, I will take the first one. By way of example, in DWRE2 one
question read: "Some regular or recurring characters have met their
identical doubles. Name one of these doubles". Those who submitted
"Romana / Princess Strella" were deemed to have answered
"Romana" (the first of two answers given) and this was marked
wrong, since I asked for the name of the double, not the name of the
regular character. You have been warned.

1. Answers
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.

2. Scoring
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

2.1 More Specific Variants
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.

2.2 Scoring Example
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.

3. Entries
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. You can expect an acknowledgement when I
read your entry. If this bounces, it won't be sent again.

3.1 Clarifications
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.

3.2 Supporting Information
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.

4. Scope
Unless a question indicates otherwise, all 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 (in this case 26 July 2006) are included, and all other Doctor
Who related works are excluded. This excludes audio plays, comic
strips, spin-offs, TARDISodes, novelisations and probably more.

4.1 "Story" refers to one or more episodes, generally with the same
production code, writer and director, which tell a complete tale. For
the avoidance of doubt, the list of stories with their correct names is
taken to be the list presented on the Outpost Gallifrey Episode Guide
(http://www.gallifreyone.com/epguide.php), with the exceptions that
"Children in Need Special" and any stories listed under "Other
Stories" are excluded. "The Trial of a Time Lord" is considered
to be an honorary story title, as are the individual episode titles for
modern two-parters (which are generally referred to by both episode
titles, thus: "The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances").

Anything which is seen only in the "Previously on..." or "Next
week on..." segments of the 2005- series is not deemed to be part of
that episode. Any other flashbacks, recaps or the like are deemed to be
part of that episode.

4.2 "Companion" refers to anyone who travelled with the Doctor for two
or more consecutive stories. For the avoidance of doubt, the following
all have companion status: Katarina, Sara Kingdom, Brigadier
Lethbridge-Stewart, Adam, Captain Jack, Mickey. No other UNIT soldiers
have companion status (Harry Sullivan, Liz Shaw and Jo Grant obviously
are companions).

4.3 "Appears" or "Seen" mean seen on-screen, as opposed to merely
referred to in dialogue or implied. If a character is clearly heard to
speak, then they, and the actor who played them, are deemed to have
"appeared" regardless of whether we see them or not.

RULE CHANGE 4.4 "Alien" means not originating from the planet Earth. In
the absence of other clear evidence, a character is considered a member
of an alien race if they do not look entirely human, or if despite
looking human, their planet of birth is not Earth and they are not
referred to as human (or it can be shown that they are not accurately
referred to as human).

4.5 "Actor" includes both male and female performers, but excludes
stunt-people, stand-ins doubling for a credited actor etc. unless the
question indicates otherwise. Generally a performer who does not
receive a credit is not regarded as an actor.

RULE CHANGE 4.6 Unless otherwise specified, different incarnations of
the same character are the same character and will be treated as
equivalent answers, and equivalent to specifying that character without
reference to incarnation. In other words, "Romana", "Romana I"
and "Romana II" are all the same answer.

5. Judging
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.

6. Results
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.

Cheers