Out of Order: The Results!

[groza528]

This is a single-entry game. Below are ten numbered questions. Each question consists of ten alphabetically-ordered entries, an ordering mechanism, some flavortext, and maybe some supporting info. For each question, you must put the entries in order in one or more disjunct lists, and every entry should appear in exactly one list.

If the entries in a list are not in the correct order, you score no points for that list, but may still score for other lists written for that question. If the entries ARE in the correct order, you score points equal to square of the number of entries in the list. Entries need not be consecutive. If an entry is contained in multiple lists submitted by one player, all lists containing that entry are disqualified and score no points. There is no penalty for omitting an entry, except for the one point that you don't receive for not submitting it as a list of length one. Extraneous entries will be ignored.
In addition, you get a five point bonus for a question if all of your lists for that question score points, and an additional twenty point bonus if you successfully put all ten entries in a single valid list; therefore a perfect score on a question would be 125points. Obviously, the higher the score the better.
Your PM should very clearly distinguish between lists; it is recommended you separate entries with commas and separate lists with blank lines.

No outside resources are allowed. [Edit: Pencil and paper ARE allowed.] Please submit your answers via PM with the subject "Out of Order". Deadline is three weeks from today unless I'm still getting a lot of submissions by that point.

[referee]

/sent.
_________________
Jan 21st, 2008: The pillaging continues.
Mar 4th, 2008: Rest in Peace, Gary Gygax. May your dice always roll a natural 20 wherever you are.

Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!

[MatthewV]

Mmmmmm good questions... these will require some thought.

[lexprod]

/intend in a week or two

[3iff]

Is someone copying my ideas?? No prob...I'll send in answers as soon as I've caught up with things.

Just looked at the questions...I'm going to need a bigger brain!

[Zag]

Oh, it hurts. But submitted

[groza528]

MatthewV has correctly pointed out to me that I have a flaw in one of my lists: Beijing is in fact NOT the most populous city in China. If this affects your answer to that question please feel free to change it. The question itself will stand as is but with the erratum mentioned.

[MatthewV]

as a reward, he will be getting 50 points

[Internet Stranger]

Im going to win, you all suck.
_________________
"I didn't know she was your sister I swear!"
www.InternetStranger.com

[lexprod]

still intending to play, just haven't got round to it

[PuzzleScot]

ditto. Give me a few days to find the time to fill it out...

[groza528]

Deadline is today but I'm going to extend a bit for Puzzlescot... anyone else who wants to submit better make it snappy

[PuzzleScot]

Sorry - busy Easter weekend. Entry submitted (with very low expectations!)

[3iff]

Apologies. I was going to submit an entry but most of my answers were likely to be trivial (10 lists with one entry in each).

[groza528]

I haven't posted anything yet, you can still submit if you wish.

[groza528]

Submissions are closed and the results are tallied.

Ten players sent submissions for Out of Order, and I couldn't think of a more fitting number. As many of you guessed would be the case, the tiebreaker was not needed. I was surprised by how high many of the tiebreaker guesses were; for a while I wasn't sure if the players understood the scoring. It is very difficult to score highly; to get more than half of the points on a single question, you must have at a minimum a valid list of length 7; it was rare to see *any* lists of length 7, let alone valid ones. The highest guess for the average score was 673; but the kudos point for being closest goes to Projectyl who guessed 200 (actual average score 196.2)

A lot of players commented that they thought did quite poorly, and I don't doubt that some people were too intimidated by the questions to even submit. The questions were not easy, as evidenced by the fact that so many people were planning on getting low scores. Some of you pointed out that there is a "guaranteed" 15 points for every question just for not touching it (10 singleton lists + 5pt bonus for no invalid lists). Despite this, every player except one (and not even the winner at that) scored lower than the "guaranteed" 15 at least once through the course of the game. So thank you all for sending in submissions even when you were concerned that they'd score low.

I also must admit that I later discovered another erratum the nobody else pointed out to me, and in fact it was in the same question as the one MatthewV found: Lagos is no longer the capital of Nigeria. Oops

Before I go into results, here are the correct answers to the quiz:

1) Olympics
Italy (2006, Torino)
Greece (Athens, 2004)
United States (Salt Lake City, 2002)
Australia (Sydney, 2000)
Japan (Nagano, 1998)
Norway (Lillehammer, 1994)
France (Albertville, 1992)
Austria (Innsbruck, 1976)
Germany (Munich, 1972)
United Kingdom (London, 1948)

2) phi =
1.618033988749894848204586...
So the correct order is 1680397425

3) Tallest structures
CN Tower (553m)
Willis Tower (527m)
Shanghai World Financial Center (492m)
Petronas Towers (452m)
Empire State Building (443m)
Trump International Hotel and Tower (415m)
Kiev TV Tower (385m)
Stratosphere Tower (350m)
Sky Tower (328m)
Eiffel Tower (325m)

4) pH of household chemicals
Lemon Juice (1.8-2.3)
Vinegar (~2.5)
Beer (~4)
Hydrogen Peroxide (6.2)
Water (7)
Baking Soda (8.2)
Borax (9.5)
Milk of Magnesia (10.5)
Ammonia (11.6)
Lye (13)

5) Hot 100 toppers
Funkytown (May 1980)
I Love Rock and Roll (March 1982)
Billie Jean (March 1983)
Walk Like an Egyptian (December 1986)
Livin' on a Prayer (February 1987)
I Will Always Love You (November 1992)
I'd Do Anything for Love (November 1993)
Macarena (August 1996)
I Don't Want to Miss a Thing (September 1998)
Genie in a Bottle (July 1999)

6) Oscar-winners by age
Audrey Hepburn (24)
Julie Andrews (29)
Meryl Streep (33)
Russell Crowe (36)
Frances McDormand (39)
George C. Scott (43)
Gregory Peck (47)
Anthony Hopkins (54)
John Wayne (62)
Jessica Tandy (80)

7) Populous cities
Moscow (10.5M)
Beijing (10.1M)
Mexico City (8.8M)
Jakarta (8.5M)
Lagos (7.9M)
London (7.6M)
Bangkok (7.0M)
Cairo (6.8M)
Baghdad (5.4M)
Singapore (5.0M)

8) Deadly wars
Mongol Conquests (30,000,000 - 60,000,000)
World War I (20,000,000)
Russian Civil War (5,000,000 - 9,000,000)
Napoleonic Wars (3,500,000 - 6,000,000)
Korean War (2,500,000 - 3,500,000)
Iraq-Iran War (1,000,000)
American Civil War (618,000 - 970,000)
Crimean War (270,000 - 300,000)
Franco-Prussian War (190,000)
Wars of the Roses (50,000)

9) Popular book series
Harry Potter (over 400M)
Goosebumps (300M)
Noddy (200M)
Peter Rabbit (150M)
Chronicles of Narnia (120M)
Twilight (85M)
Discworld (55M)
Wheel of Time (44M)
Paddington Bear (35M)
Curious George (27M)

10) Board Game spaces
Noughts and Crosses (9)
Backgammon (27 including end zones and the bar - some people counted the bar as two but it doesn't affect the order)
Monopoly (41 including 'Just Visiting' - arguably you may not occupy the "Go To Jail" space but it doesn't affect the order)
Risk (42)
Trivial Pursuit (73)
Diplomacy (75)
Parcheesi (93 including nests and home)
Chinese Checkers (121)
Cluedo (197)
Go (361)

One of the things I've seen other moderators do that I quite enjoyed is to give each player an "award" of some sort. It was a lot of fun reading the submissions, seeing how other people thought, and there were a few different strategies and quirks that came out of it. Winners of the awards are invised for fun.

The 99% Perspiration award goes to MatthewV, for calculating the square root of five to at least 12 decimal places
The Average Joe award goes to Zag, for having a personal score within one point of the mean score of all players
The Bending the Rules award goes to lexprod, for providing a single entry twice in the *same* list, which was not strictly forbidden (but which did not affect the validity of the list), on question 4
The Biggest Upset award goes to referee, for submitting a 10-entry list with only one error, on question 10
The Discretion is the Better Part of Valour award goes to dethwing, for judicious use of singleton lists, resulting in NO invalid lists
The Impeccable Taste in Music award goes to Internet Stranger, for getting the only perfect score in the game, on question 5
The Laziness is Next to Godliness award goes to Amb, for not writing out or even copypasting all ten items for ANY question
The Oops! award goes to Projectyl, for (correctly) answering a question other than the one I asked (he was given the opportunity to fix this but never responded), on question 6
The Raw Score Only, Please award goes to PuzzleScot, for the (dubious) distinction of not scoring any bonus points
The Risky Business award goes to Lepton, for submitting a lot of long lists which unfortunately didn't usually pan out

Bonus award: The Unfair Question award goes to Question 9, ranking book series by sales. Only one person scored higher than the basic 15 (i.e. 10 singletons + 5pt bonus) for this question, and that was MatthewV, who got 17 for correctly identifying Harry Potter as the highest selling and not touching anything else. I'm sorry about this one guys. The more fair question would have been to order them by quantity of books in the series, though I'd have to change the list up a bit.

And now, without further ado, the victor of Out of Order is Internet Stranger! That 125 for question 5 just made him too hard to catch. Congratulations!

Final scores:
346 Internet Stranger
305 MatthewV
250 dethwing
197 Zag
189 lexprod
156 Projectyl
135 PuzzleScot
134 referee
129 Amb
121 Lepton

Detailed scoring

[dethwing]

Great fun, great idea, great win IS!

[referee]

Ah well. Congratulations to IS, and thanks for beating me by more than 125 points.
_________________
Jan 21st, 2008: The pillaging continues.
Mar 4th, 2008: Rest in Peace, Gary Gygax. May your dice always roll a natural 20 wherever you are.

Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!

[Lepton*]

Superb game. Thanks for the effort in moderating it!

[PuzzleScot]

way too hard, but great fun. thx.

[lexprod]

I like how I scored close to average, and had the best guess for the tiebreaker on the average score.

[MatthewV]

I am surprised at how well I did!

I guess knowing the pH of materials (I was -very- close with the actual numbers), finding the square root of 5, and figuring out how many squares are on each game worked well.

I would like to point out that I did brute-force-guess-and-check the square root of 5. But it is easier than it looks because you will always end up with 5.0000x or 4.9999x so when adding up the multiplied terms one can stop after hitting a 9/0 or two. It did still take awhile.

City populations vary greatly by the source and counting method. Of course, wikipedia has a page on it

[Internet Stranger]

I was concerned because of questions that I knew absolutely nothing about, like PH balance, Golden ratios and the damn books (what the hell is a Noddy?!?), so I kept splitting those lists up and hoped for the best. I got lucky with some, and failed miserably on others.

But I know my music and pop culture, bitchez! (Thank you goes out to all those hours of life wasted on the internet)

My biggest surprise was everyone scoring so low on the Olympics.
_________________
"I didn't know she was your sister I swear!"
www.InternetStranger.com