Amazing Race Contest: WEEK 5 QUESTIONS

I agree. On the show, people make enemies based on their behavior. Here, we don't get that "luxury" For good-natured fun, I vote to leave them public.

 

Remember folks, once you actually "use" the Yield, you can't use it again the rest of the contest (although I guess if you want you can still say who you would have yielded. You may however be victim of a yield as many times as people aim your way.

(I need to remember to put that in each week's question. I forgot this week).

 

Danny,

I don't understand your error in week #3. The rules state that if you answer your scavenger hunt question incorrectly, you will be penalized with the worst scavenger hunt score for that question (or at least that's the way I read it). So, if the worst score for a correct answer was 3 days added, why is answering incorrectly not a 3 day penalty automatically, regardless of time taken to answer the question?

I'm just trying to get this all straight in my head...

 

I don't understand your error in week #3. The rules state that if you answer your scavenger hunt question incorrectly, you will be penalized with the worst scavenger hunt score for that question

Yup, unfortunately thats what I wrote, but not what I intended. The error is not in how the rule was written, but in the unfair effect the rule has if a large number of people miss a question. Thus the change.

As mentioned in the official rules, the scoring would be by grouping into quads. What I want to happen is for incorrect answers to be scored as worse than correct ones, even if they come in faster. Thus as written, they would have the worst score.

The logic flaw comes into play because I didn't really consider a question where half the folks who answered it would answer incorrectly. I don't want to penalize those who got it right because of those who got it wrong.

If I grouped only the correct answers for scoring, then scoring this week would go along these lines:

Rather than the current scores of:
1st: saulres -1
2nd: mwgiii 1
3rd: unthinkable 1
4th: Marvin 2
5th: cdru 2
6th: lowjeep 2
7th: CoriBright 3
8th: Tusk 3
9th: Buzzdalf 3
10th: JBKing 4
11th: bgilmore 4
12th: Tstorms 4

we would have this (correct answers groups into 4ths):
1st: saulres -1
2nd: mwgiii 1
3rd: unthinkable 2
4th: Marvin 3
5th: cdru 4
6th: lowjeep 4

(incorrect answers given worst score)
7th: CoriBright 4
8th: Tusk 4
9th: Buzzdalf 4
10th: JBKing 4
11th: bgilmore 4
12th: Tstorms 4

As you can see, by missing a question, one can greatly penalize the folks who got the question correct. I don't want this happening, thus the correction to how incorrect weeks are scored.

I guess another interpretaton of the rule would yield a scoring like this:

1st: saulres -1
2nd: mwgiii 1
3rd: unthinkable 1
4th: Marvin 2
5th: cdru 2
6th: lowjeep 2

(missed quesitons are given worst score of those who got it right, ergo 2)
7th: CoriBright 2
8th: Tusk 2
9th: Buzzdalf 2
10th: JBKing 2
11th: bgilmore 2
12th: Tstorms 2

However thats really not what I intended either and rewards those who missed the question with a better score.

I hope this doesn't come across as an arbitrary change. I'm just trying to make the scoring consistent and fair.

 

OK, that makes sense, and I see the problem that you're facing. I've been there many times myself, as you well know...

I'm now going back and forth between the way you're doing it now, and making all incorrect answers worth 1 day more penalty than the last person to get it right, rather than further penalizing someone for being slow and getting it wrong an additional day (or even maybe 2 if most people get the question wrong).

Just bouncing ideas around here. In no way being critical... (I think you know that.)

 

OK, that makes sense, and I see the problem that you're facing. I've been there many times myself, as you well know...

Making a game up from scratch is harder than it looks.

making all incorrect answers worth 1 day more penalty than the last person to get it right

Good point, but I think I want to keep the time factor most important. If someone is being very slow, they do still have the option of choosing another detour and hoping others don't take that route. Interestingly enough, nobody did that this time (well, you did, but you thought you had the right answer for it). Several folks could have saved themselves some points by guessing the wrong answer on D2.

 

I'm with ya there, buddy! Feel the pain!

Works for me. The thing is that when you're answering the questions, you don't have any idea who's answering the one you're answering, and who's answering the other one. I thought that I was going to get killed on D2 last week (ie third or fourth at best) because I took 45 minutes to answer it, and figured there had to be other people that watched The Amber Room special on DiscHD. So, bailing on one question or the other would be a terrible strategy for someone to use it seems to me.

 

Not necessarily. One week I started Detour 2, and after looking for a couple of minutes I said, "Shoot, I don't have time for this this week" and switched to Detour 1. I figured losing 2 minutes on that one would be better than losing several hours on the other.

But I see your point. When I looked at Detour 2 this week I said, "There are no clues whatsoever for me here; someone w/a background in art history probably knows this off the top of their head, so my best shot is Detour 1." Now, if I knew no one else was going to answer it, I would've spent as long as it took, but w/o that knowledge, it wasn't worth it.

 

When I looked at Detour 2 this week I said, "There are no clues whatsoever for me here

Actually you didn't really need all that many clues. All one really needed to know was the name of the pit stop, and that was given in the show: Catherine's Palace.

Google: "catherine's palace" artwork

6th link down goes to an image page, one of which features our piece of artwork as it appears in the Amber Room.

http://www.mehras.net/russia_pages/01_28_tsarskoe_selo/025_v_amber_room.jpg

Once you recognized the painting and discover the name of the famous room its located in, its not that difficult to find the name of it, unless of course you get a badly translated page.

 

Danny - for Q3 this week, I don't remember seeing a "nobody" option listed. Was there one there and I just didn't see it? I remember thinking seriously about not answering that question at all, because I wanted to answer "nobody", but then thought that no answer would automatically be wrong. I was in a hurry to answer the questions, so it's certainly possibly that I missed that option, but would you please check?

EDIT: Nevermind, I see three people must have answered "nobody" in the scoresheet...that'll teach me not to take a few seconds longer to read...

And uh-oh...looks like I'm a prime YIELD target now...

Which brings me to my next question - what will happen if I get YIELDED the same week that I win the FAST FORWARD? Which will take precedence?

 

Mark, there wasn't an implicit choice for "nobody". All one had to do was not check any of the choices.

A Yield beats a Fast Forward. Therefore you'll jump to a tie with the first place winner, and then add a day.

 

Danny, I really apologize for being a pain in the ass about this, but according to the rules:

Question 3 did not say anything about not answering the question being equal to voting "nobody". So, I assumed the rule would be in play, meaning not answering the question would be counted as an incorrect answer.

(You can see some of the pain I was going through now trying to make absolutely sure that there were options in my Survivor polls to cover any possibility, however remote...it certainly ain't easy...)

Either way you want to rule on this is fine with me, but if you use that question again, I'd highly suggest adding the "nobody" option in the list.

 

So, I assumed the rule would be in play, meaning not answering the question would be counted as an incorrect answer.

Since selecting none of the teams is a valid answer for this particular question, its not the same as "not answering a poll".

I'm going to leave the scoring as is, but in the future I'll add the nobody column if I use this sort of question again.

Besides which, I worded the question exactly the way I wanted it.

 

Oh sit down and quit being a PITA Your in first anyways.

"Each correct selection subtracts a day from your time and each team you select which changes their position adds 1 day."

I answered nobody as it was a free question. Answering nobody did not subtract time, but it did not add time either. So even if everyone stayed the same place, since you didn't select any teams, time wasn't added.

On the issue of rescoring the question talked earlier, how about this: Everyone is divide up into quarters based off of the total number of people answering. Those with correct answers are listed first in time order, then those that missed it are afterwords, having the higer penalties. Then, everyone who got it incorrect gets the highest time. So I think it would be like:
1st: saulres -1
2nd: mwgiii 1
3rd: unthinkable 1
4th: Marvin 2
5th: cdru 2
6th: lowjeep 2
7th: CoriBright 4
8th: Tusk 4
9th: Buzzdalf 4
10th: JBKing 4
11th: bgilmore 4
12th: Tstorms 4

Incorrect answers still get the worst penalties and it will reward those that answer it correctly. Imaging that everyone 1 week answers it wrong except 2 people. The quickest gets a -1, but everyone else gets 1

 

As for scoring incorrect answers, I think I'll leave it as is for now, with incorrects just being grouped last behind all the correct answers and scored accordingly.

As I said before, I like the time pressure.

If all the wrong answers are automatically given a 4, that means there is no pressure if a person doesn't know the answer immediately. They can sleep on it and hope to find one later.

With the clock running on the other hand, they have to make a hard choice, hoping other folks get it wrong as well and admitting defeat, or trying to work the problem even more.