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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Perplex City » PXC: Questions/Meta
[COMPETITION] Win every s2, wave one, red to purple card
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Rand0m
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Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 271
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 		[COMPETITION] Win every s2, wave one, red to purple card
The thing about buying a whole box of cards is that you end up with a lot of swaps and nothing to swap them for. So when I found myself with a complete spare set of red to purple season two cards, I decided to offer them as a competition prize. It was supposed to be a few simple questions, but then it got a bit out of hand until I'd designed a set of cards of my own. Solve them all to win...

I'm posting this over at the Other Place too, to give everyone a shot at it. That means that entries can't be by PM here - please use the form on this page instead. You will also find the full-sized versions of the cards there.

Some rules:

1. Closing date is Midnight London time on my birthday, March 20th 2007

2. The first entirely correct answer to be submitted before the closing date wins

3. If there is no entirely correct answer, the closest wins

4. If more than one answer is, by my reckoning, equally close, the tiebreak come into play and the winner will be whoever provides my favourite end to this sentence: I know Elvis is really alive because...

5. You can only enter once - if you send more than one, I'll accept the last one to arrive. This means you can change your mind about your answers if you need to.

6. I'll send the prize anywhere in the world - there are no geographic barriers to entry

7. If you want to try the puzzles but don't want the prize, say so clearly on your entry

That's all - good luck!
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 6:08 pm
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Curlytek
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 		Way to go Rand0m, very nice puzzle cards there, great job (does the winner of such a grand prize always have more spare time on their hands?)

I was wondering about your #5 rule, it seems to negate itself, is that true?

PostPosted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 12:32 am
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Rand0m
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Curlytek wrote:
Way to go Rand0m, very nice puzzle cards there, great job (does the winner of such a grand prize always have more spare time on their hands?)

I was wondering about your #5 rule, it seems to negate itself, is that true?


It's not meant to... at first I was going to say 'enter as many times as you want' but changed my mind as I didn't fancy wading through 40 different guesses from the same person. Then I thought 'ooo eck, what if someone changes their mind after entering?' So that's how I ended up with what's there.

And you know how it is with spare time - when there's loads of important stuff you ought to be doing, it's usually possible to find plenty for something fun and distracting Wink
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 4:28 am
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poozle
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 		I find a trouble with getting just red to purple cards as well, its expensive to buy the black and silvers :S Still not sure what I will do for S2W1 but will probably hve a look at these when i get more time.

PostPosted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 7:16 am
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Whiternoise
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 		Awesome job Rand0m Smile - the first thing that cropped into my mind when i saw the thumbnails was "Damn that guy.. he had to pick the 6 cards that i haven't got" and then i read the blurb Razz

It's the silvers that are a pain to get hold of, i ordered 12 S2W1 boosters, and i got at least 6 or 7 blacks, but only one silver (which i think is a bit poor..). Still, i'm going to give it a shot purely for the fun of the tiebreaker Smile

PostPosted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 1:48 pm
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Rand0m
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 		Update time.

Thanks to the wonderfully generous Mima, there is now a second set of reds to purples available as another prize.

Also, it's become clear that the difficulty is pitched rather harder than I intended - particularly the green card. So here are some hints.

Red:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Make sure you've considered all the possible ways of scoring.


Orange is, I think, mostly a case of picking through events - though where it's subjective it is, of course, the way it looked to me from where I was at the time and immediately afterwards.

I'm not getting any sense that hints are needed on the yellow!

The green is proving far harder than I planned, at least in part because images are difficult to research - and the only thing that links these five people's deaths is the effect they had on me. So here's a hint on each.

1
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
English musician-turned-politician who became a national institution. I met him at a by-election in 1993 and thought he made a lot of sense.


2
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Mexican-American sportsman or entertainer, depending on your view of his profession. He was just a couple of months older than I am.


3
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
English singer-songwriter killed aged 41, giving her life to save her son in a dreadful, stupid accident for which no true justice has yet been obtained.


4
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist, famed in the late 70s and early/mid 80s for two bands and for his distinctive guitar style. I met him in 1999 and found him to be a lovely, modest, unassuming man.


5
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Irish actor who found fame in the US as one of the leads in a cult TV show. The last minutes of his final episode in the show are now almost unbearable to watch.


Blue:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
All three people are real, and are alive today.


Purple:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Working out what the arrows are for, and why there aren't more of them, might be a good route into it

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 11:07 pm
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rose
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Joined: 26 Nov 2003
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 		What if I don't think Elvis is really alive? Then clearly I shouldn't have these cards, not enough imagination...Although maybe Elvis is really alive because we have shows like American Idol. Somewhere there is a connection.

This is a great contest Rand0m - thanks for making it and for Mima for donating cards as well.

I don't suppose you would go to simply drawing names out of a hat? Wink
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 10, 2007 6:44 pm
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Rand0m
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 		OK - time's up!

No completely correct answers, although a few came close. Am digging up a consolation prize to avoid having to invoke the Elvis tiebreak clause. Will post all the details tomorrow (too dam' late tonight).

Edit: And the good news is that Aliendial's offered a third set of cards, so the three entries that were clearly ahead of the field each get one Smile
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 8:20 pm
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Curlytek
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Joined: 30 Jul 2005
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 		Thanks for the competition Andy...and because no one else has said it: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! Hope you had a great celebration...perhaps you even listened to some fine Elvis tunes...now get some sleep!

PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 10:14 pm
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Rand0m
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 		So, yay, we have three winners, each of whom get a complete set of red-purple season two cards (and, once again, serious thanks to Mima and Aliendial for the extra prizes).

First we have (long silence, Davina gurns at the camera) Gamma, who nailed the red, green, blue and purple puzzles and made one small slip on each of the yellow and orange cards.

Next is cjr22, who answered tham all correctly except the blue.

Finally FranG, who never did crack those purple flags, but got everything else.

Major congrats to those three (I'll email you all to get your postal addresses) and many thanks to the other entrants - hope you had fun, anyway.

ANSWERS (Spoilered in case someone comes along later and fancies a go for fun)

Red
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
The highest break possible in snooker is, of course, 147 but there are a couple of other scoring opportunities here too. The foul on the black is worth another seven, and the free ball effectively adds a sixteenth red-black pair. So the final frame score is the thoroughly emphatic 162-0.


Orange
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Nothing tricky here, really, apart from question four, which was a bit subjective. One was Ollie Keers (I checked it with him: he blamed it on "indolence"). Two was Ixalon, pictured here in a photo by Guin, and Guin was himself the answer to the third question. Question four was a reference to Team Alice, which included Chimera245 from Australia and LHall from the Great State of Texas - there was no intent to imply that they were the only people from their two countries involved, and apologies to anyone who might feel excluded (other names that got mentioned in entries were UKver2.0, ambskunk, Chamelaeon and Achenar). Finally, Chippy was the answer to the fifth question.


Yellow
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
One nasty trap in here, which caught a few people, but other than that a pretty easy card for fans and Googlers alike. The first quote was actually from the Buffy movie, not the TV show, which means it was spoken by Kristy Swanson not Sarah Michelle Gellar. Two was Alan Tudyk (as Wash, in the Serenity movie). Three and four were from the Buffy TV show - James Marsters (Spike) and Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia). Five was from Firefly, Nathan Fillion and Gina Torres as Mal and Zoe. Finally, six really was Sarah Michelle Gellar in the TV version of Buffy.


Green
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Hmm. Sorry, didn't mean this one to be so hard. Although, if you recognised one and then did a Google Image search on their surname plus "Gone to Soon", right up near the top of the results for all five is a post in my blog where I first used that graphic and named them all.

Anyway, one is David Sutch (link), better known as Screaming Lord Sutch, who started out as a 60s rocker but became a national institution as the leader of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, contesting more than 40 Parliamentary elections and by-elections. Away from the public eye he suffered badly from depression (as well as severe financial difficulties) and he killed himself in June 1999.

Two is the former world wrestling champion Eddie Guerrero (link). Eddie seemed to have lost everything some years ago because of addictions to alcohol and prescription painkillers, but instead cleaned himself up and returned to become one of the biggest names in the sport. He died in November 2005, aged 38, of heart failure - no-one had known it, but the years of addiction had left him with heart disease and, although he'd stayed clean, you might say the drugs got him in the end...

Three is the singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl (link), killed in December 2000 by an illegally-driven speedboat while swimming in the sea with her sons at a Mexican holiday resort. And if you've ever listened to Fairytale of New York and thought 'hey - this isn't half bad for a Christmas song', or still remember the words to There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis, get you over to justiceforkirsty.org to see what's what.

Number four is probably the most obscure of the four - he's there because, having met him and liked him a lot, news of his death just crushed me. It's singer / songwriter Stuart Adamson (link), who founded punk band The Skids, with Richard Jobson, in the seventies and Big Country in the early 80s. In his final years he'd moved to Nashville and was establishing himself as a country songwriter and musician, but he was never more than one step ahead of depression and alcoholism, and in November 2001 he disappeared. A month later, his body was found hanging in a Hawaii hotel room.

Finally, number five is the actor Glenn Quinn (link), best known as Doyle in Angel. Doyle was initially one of the core characters when the show was launched in 1999, the only one not to have previously been in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but he was unexpectedly killed off half way through the first season. Producers denied rumours that Quinn had been dismissed because of drug use and said they'd always intended to write it that way - but in December 2002 he was found dead on a friend's couch, almost certainly killed by a heroin overdose.


Blue
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
OK, this one's more for the Americans in the audience - it's possible that Brits might not have heard of any of these people, even though one of the sons is among the most famous sportsmen in the US at the moment. The photo is of New Orleans, by the way.

I don't think in fairness you'd call me a winner
Not a very helpful line, I admit, but it might be enough to suggest we're looking for someone involved in competitive sports, and one who's famous despite being unsuccessful. Of course, there's failure and failure in sport... a big range of possibilities between, say, Tim Henman and Eddie the Eagle.

Though I know for a certain I'm no sort of sinner
Not a sinner - so presumably therefore the opposite. Which is a Saint. Plenty of sports clubs are known as the Saints, but only one of them has ever been so bad that its supporters wore paper bags over their heads at games so they wouldn't be recognised on TV - and that was the New Orleans Saints in American Football. This is pretty much all you need for the answer if you know your football - the most famous of the Saints in those dismal 1970s days was quarterback Archie Manning, who was widely recognised as one of the best in the league but who played on such atrocious teams that he never once had a season in which he won more games than he lost. He did, however, have some sons...

There's places I'd hoped for and never did go
But two sons have been there and put on a show
Manning's Saints never once qualified for a play-off game, but the two of his sons who followed him into the NFL as quarterbacks have both taken their teams into the post-season knock-out stages.

One's a colossus whose praises they sing
That's Eli Manning, the current quarterback of the New York Giants - he came into the league a few years ago to a great fanfare of expectation, which he hasn't yet completely lived up to.

The other a horseman who brought home a ring
And that's Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts (named for the horses, not the firearm). Peyton is statistically one of the best QBs to ever play the game, and a familiar face in TV commercials, but until this year he had a reputation for failing to win big matches. That changed this January, when he took the Colts to the Superbowl and won it, being named Most Valuable Player in the process. The traditional prize for players and coaches on Superbowl-winning teams is a chunky (some might say tasteless) gold and diamond ring.

I hope all my riddles can give you a sign -
To answer this puzzle find their names and mine
No clues in here...

I knew this one would be tough if you didn't have the necessary niche interest - what I didn't expect was for there to be a second plausible set of answers. I got one entry early on that caught me completely on the hop by naming Grigori Rasputin and sons Mikhail and Piotr. I knew nothing about the sons, so I researched them and found they were both X-Men, one a horseman of the Apocalypse and one known as Colossus. What were the odds of that?


Purple
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
One enterprising entrant found the background photo to this card on my Flickr stream - it's Battersea Park boating lake and, if you combine that part of London with the title of the card, you might be able to short-cut the whole puzzle...

...which works like this:

The two arrows indicate that you use those flags for a second time, in the places they point to. Fifteen flags are a lot easier to lay out neatly than 17! But you might wonder why, if repeated flags are indicated with arrows, there are two the same in the top and bottom right-hand corners. And you might conclude that it's because they represent different countries.

The full list is: Isle of Man, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Tonga, Belgium, Thailand, Egypt, Uruguay, Thailand (again), Austria, Iceland, India, Switzerland, Argentina, Georgia, Austria (again) and Monaco.

And if you take the two-letter code used as each country's internet TLD, you get the following letter pairs: IM SA ID TO BE TH EG UY TH AT IS IN CH AR GE AT MC. "I'm said to be the guy that is in charge at MC." Sadly, you can't spell 'Mind Candy' out in full using TLDs - but you should still end up with Michael Smith as the answer.

And what's with the 'said to be' bit? Partly to make the sentence longer and get more flags, but mostly because it was so long between the Cube-finding and actually meeting him that I was beginning to suspect that he was an in-game invention and not a real person at all... I even asked Dan Hon at the Cube party who 'wrote' him. Dan looked at me kinda funny, disappeared, and returned a moment or two later dragging a startled-looking Michael in his wake.


Sorry about this being such a long post. 'Cause, you know, I hate to do that...
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 4:15 pm
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aliendial
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 		Dang. I didn't know Doyle was dead.
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 5:52 pm
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Rand0m
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aliendial wrote:
Dang. I didn't know Doyle was dead.


Makes the end of 'Hero' even more of a choker, don't it? Sad
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 6:08 pm
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