I’m glad to see so many people took part in Dan’s Dingbats Challenge I; hope you all had fun. As promised, here are the results (and the answers). Don’t forget, the total time is the time taken plus a 30 second penalty for every wrong answer or skipped question. I did award a number of “half marks” for things, as explained further down, each costing only 15 seconds. Here we go:
| Position | Player | Time Taken | Right Answers | Total Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
suz
Slipped in at really, really the last minute. |
3mins, 2secs | 7 | 6mins, 32secs |
| 2 |
andyr
Slipped in at the last minute. |
4mins, 26 secs | 9 | 6mins, 56secs |
| 3 |
The Pacifist
Surprisingly, considering his negativity to it, almost won, ’til andyr slipped in while I was collating the scores. |
3mins, 50secs | 7.5 | 7mins, 5 secs |
| 4 | Statto & Chloe | 4mins, 52 secs | 9 | 7mins, 22secs |
| 5 | Ruth | 3mins, 45secs | 6 | 7mins, 45 secs |
| 6 | Dim | 5mins, 46secs | 7 | 9mins, 16secs |
| 7 | Jimmy | 5mins, 37secs | 6.5 | 9mins, 22secs |
| 8 | John K | 4mins, 55secs | 3 | 10mins, 45secs |
| 9 | Hagen | 7mins, 10secs | 6 | 11mins, 30secs |
| 10 | Sundeep | 7mins, 53secs | 5 | 12mins, 43secs |
| 11 | Matt In The Hat | 9mins, 10secs | 6 (two half-rights) | 13mins, 30secs |
| 12 | Hayley | 8mins, 39secs | 4 (two half-rights) | 13mins, 59secs |
| 13 |
Knobcheese
(Gareth@SD |
11mins, 58secs | 4.5 | 16mins, 8secs |
| 14 |
Claire
Disqualified because she saw some answers early |
3mins, 28secs | 14 | 3mins, 28secs |
Here are the answers. Click on any of the dingbat thumbnails to see the full-size versions:
Pick yourself up, dust yourself down, and start all over again.
Only one person got this right, but, to be fair, it’s perhaps the toughest of the set. For those that need an explanation, the letters to the left read “pick your self” (upwards), the
middle letters read “dust your self” (downwards), and finally there’s a picture of the word “again” with the word “start” all over it.
Looking back over my shoulder.
“Looking over my shoulder” isn’t good enough: there’s got to be an effort to point out that the word “looking” is spelt backwards. Most folks who didn’t fall into this little
trap got this one right, though.
Beauty (is) in the eye of the beholder.
One of my favourites. “Beauty and the bees” scores no marks. Explanation: the word “beauty” is “in” the letter I (“eye”) of the word hive, which is, of course, a “bee holder”.
Sickeningly kick-yourself-afterwards.
Little Italy
Almost everybody got this one.
An inside job.
Hideously difficult: I didn’t get this one when first I saw it. The word “an” appears within the word “job”, but it’s hard to see because they’re both very short words. Other
dingbats in this style try phrases like “BOPUSSOTS” (puss in boots), which are longer, or use colour or case to differentiate between the words. Keep an eye out for ones like this, only
a couple of people got it. Things about banjos aren’t even slightly right, but I can see where you’re coming from.
Just around the corner.
I accepted “Just on the corner.” and “Just in the corner.”, too. Pretty simple, afterwards, but a pain in the arse when you have to guess it.
Letters of the alphabet.
Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! I promise never to do one this bad ever again. Surprisingly, a few people got it, and not just ones to whom this phrase is an in-joke with me (for several days on
end, I found the phrase “lettuce of the alphabet”, and the image it conjured, hilareously funny). “Alphabet lettuce” gets half a mark, ‘cos I was feeling nice, but “The
sweedish alphabet” (what?) and “Cabbage with white letters on it” aren’t worth any. Sorry again.
Lioness.
It’s the word “lie”. On the letter “S”. Lie-on-S. Could it be any simpler? Apparently so, as only about half the people who participated got it.
Low Fat Milk.
Didn’t come out as well as I’ve have hoped, so I happily gave half-marks for “skimmed milk”, “condensed milk”, and “reduced milk”.
Blackout.
The word “out”. In black. Might have been easier if most of the word you’d seen weren’t in black, but what the hell.
Potatoes.
Another of my favourites. It’s a pot, followed by eight “O’s”. Incorrect answers included “A binary gardener gathers no moss” (what?) and “Planting seeds”.
Scrambled Eggs.
I’d also accept “Broken eggs” (‘cos it’s a better answer), “Eggs – beaten”, or a million and one other similar things. Lenient.
Just a tick.
You might have thought that the clue, “…hang on a minute…” might have been a giveaway here, but apparently it wasn’t. Anything even remotely similar to the phrase “just a
tick” got through, and “one tick” got half-marks. “I should have said I was Sian” doesn’t get any, I’m afraid, Andy.
What goes up must come down.
In a similar vein to the first dingbat in the challenge, this one had the word “what” upwards and the word “must” downwards. “What must” definately didn’t get any points.
So, congratulations to Suz, who slipped in at the last, last second, while I was adding Andy‘s score to the board, who had slipped in at the last second, while I was collating the scores, prior to which, Paul was winning. I really hope nobody else is submitting results right now, ‘cos I’m sick of re-collating the table (checks). No, they haven’t: big thanks to whoever they aren’t. And sorry to Claire, who’ll take part next time. Now that I’ve seen the patterns in the results, I’ve realised that the penalty needs to be larger (to increase the time people spend on individual dingbats, and to reduce the problems caused by people who “pass” fast), but hey – there’s always next time.