Year: 2005

Great turnout for Dan’s Dingbats Challenge II. Thanks for playing, all of you who did! Here’s the scoreboard:

Position	Player	Time Taken	Right Answers	Total Time
1	The Amazing Wonko Best score, great time to boot… beat Jimmy by just three seconds.	3mins, 42secs	13.5	4mins, 2secs
2	Jimmy Fastest overall time and a very good score. So very close to winning…	3 mins, 25secs	13	4mins, 5secs
3	Dimmer	3 mins, 51secs	13	4mins, 31secs
4	Claire	4mins, 36secs	12.5	5mins, 36secs
5	Paul	4mins, 41secs	12	6mins, 1sec
6	Gareth @ SD	5mins, 32secs	13	6mins, 12secs
7	JTA	5mins, 57secs	13	6mins, 37secs
8	Ruth Unfortunatley for her, her second attempt [total time 3mins, 1sec] doesn’t count)	3mins, 46secs	9.5	6mins, 46secs
9	Andy K	5mins, 6secs	10 (two half-marks)	7mins, 46secs
10	“scatman” (not me!)	4mins, 10secs	8	8mins, 10secs
11	Jen W	5mins, 52secs	8.5	9mins, 32secs
12	Matt @ SD	6mins, 24secs	8.5	10mins, 4secs
13	Hagen @ SD	10mins, 28secs	11	12mins, 28secs
14	Hayley	10mins, 51secs	9	14mins, 11secs
14	John K	9mins, 50secs	7	14mins, 30secs

Here are the answers. Click on any of the dingbat thumbnails to see the full-size versions:

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Just like the previous challenge, this one began with a particularly difficult puzzle. The words “bird” and “two” appear inside the words “hand” and “bush”, respectively, and the equals sign states that they have equal worth. Devillishly difficult, but an impressive number of people got it. Half-marks for “a bird in the hand beats two in the bush”, because it was so very nearly there.

Three cheers.
Finally, a dingbat that everybody can get.

Rock around the clock.
It’s a clock, with the word “rock” repeated around it. Well?

Drinkin’ to forget.
The word “drink” appears in the phrase “24get” (“to forget”), so “drink in 24get”. Anything vaugely close got the marks, but “some kind of low fat drink” didn’t, and neither did “24 hour drinking”. Difficult.

Head over heels in love.
The word “head” over two (different, just to be confusing) kinds of “heels”, inside a heart (love). Most people got this one, but “feel it head to heel” and “grr argh” remain the two most spectacularly wrong answers.

History repeats.
I thought this one was really easy, but apparently it isn’t. “History follows history”, “history is history”, “two versions of history” and “past” are all wrong answers.

Mixed vegetables / tossed vegetables.
Everybody saw the word “vegetables” in here, it seems, and even “chopped vegetables” is worth a half-mark. I thought it would be tougher to put the word back together than it obviously was.

Once in a blue moon.
Easy, again: the word “once” on a blue-tinted moon. I’ve had complaints from two colourblind participants, but they both got it right anyway.

Green with envy.
More complaints from colourblind participants, one of whom had to hold up something that they knew to be green and squint at them both together to be sure they were actually looking at something that was green.

Capital punishment.
The word punishment written, quite clearly, in capital letters. “Punishment takes a lifetime” is very, very wrong.

Backseat driver.
My favourite from this set. It’s the words “seat driver” written backwards. Many participants hunted for inner words, anagrams, and all sorts, not bothering to try to read it from right to left. My favourite wrong answer was “Argh! It looks like revision! Help!”

Tickled pink.
Unpopular again with the colourblind participants. Nonetheless, everybody got it right.

Big Trouble In Little China
The correct answer, which only a few people got, was “Big Trouble In Little China”: it’s the name of a film. “Big Trouble In China” and “Trouble In Little China” miss the bigger (or littler) picture, and only get half-marks, while “Trouble In China” gets none. Get over it.

No harm in trying.
My second-favourite in this set; one which many people got wrong. The word “harm” is being crossed out from the middle of the phrase “tryharming”, which of course leaves the word “trying”, with no “harm” in it: therefore, “no harm in trying”. Wrong answers included “self harming”, “out of harms’ way”, and “trying to disarm”.

So, thanks again to everybody who participated, and big congratulations to The Amazing Wonko! Congratulations also due to Jimmy (great fast time – if only you could have shaved three seconds off it or got one more half-mark you’d have one) and Dimmer. Also well done to all those who participated in this and the last one, and got better as a result of the practice.

I’ll leave things there for awhile, but I think that Andy may be working on his very own “Dingbats Challenge” (or something like it) in the near future. Watch this space.

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Hot on the heels (that’d make a good dingbat!) of Dan’s Dingbats Challenge I (results and answers here) comes Dan’s Dingbats Challenge II! The dingbats are, on average, a little easier (and a little more logical), but the penalty for skipping one or getting it wrong has been increased to 40 seconds added to your time. I’m the only person who’s seen them this time around, so Claire is allowed to compete this time.

Will Suz, Andy and Paul struggle to steal first place from one another again? Will Statto or Ruth jump in and take the lead? Will Hayley and Gareth pull their respective fingers out? There’s all to play for…

Play Dan’s Dingbats Challenge II!

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.

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Think you can think laterally: think again!

Remember Dingbats, that board game with the cards with the phrases on them, expressed through cleverly laid-out words and pictures (a bit like Catch Phrase, that old TV show [is that still running]). Well, anyway, it involves pictures a bit like this:

The picture shows the word “somewhere” mysteriously suspended over a sylised rainbow. So what’s the phrase: “Rainbow under somewhere?” Not quite… it’s obviously “somewhere over the rainbow.”

So I’ve set up a challenge: 14 puzzles to challenge your lateral thinking. You’re against the clock, and you sacrifice 30 seconds for every wrong answer or passed question, so you’ve got to judge the challenge to suit you. I’ll publish the answers – and the high scorers – here in a day or two.

Go try Dan’s Dingbats Challenge I

Enjoy.