h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Assuming that was it, here's another one to be getting on with:

If the third value in a well-known sequence is twice the second, and the fourth value is one third-greater than the third, then which h2g2 smiley represents the first?

Icy

Can I ask why, Leo, as you're pretty close, but it wasn't the more obvious one I had in mind.

Um... It's one of thos little leaps of logic that make sense until you try to explain them. I'll have to get back to you on that one.

Just to say that last one was right (the Seven Deadly Sins, as per the EG Entry, each moved on one place in the Concise Oxford Dictionary)

OK, here's a little demo of how to get these wrong.

The lowest integers that fit the series are :
x, 3, 6, 8...

So what kind of sequence is that? Kings, possibly?

x, Richard III, Henry VI, Henry VIII...

Whereupon we need a Smiley for Edward V, elder of the Princes in the Tower.
Close enough?

But then I realised that Henry Tudor was actually Henry VII.

Tough old game, innit?

Well that makes me wonder. Icy said it was a well-known series. The series of English monarchs is only well known in England. I mean, I can manage the royals of the 1550-1700 era, but that's about it.
So exactly how well known is this series?

It could also be x, 2, 4, 5.333.

x, 3, 6, 8
x, 6, 12, 16
x, 9, 18, 24

Can I just say how impressed I am at the way you are approaching this. Keep going, and you'll spot it.

I thought it might have been

Only the 4th is twice the thrid and the third 1/3 longer than the 2nd more or less so there goes that theory.

And it's not a word, because the 3rd, 6th, and 8th letters are 'cfh' while the 6th, 12th, and 16th, are "flp" and the 9th, 18th, and 24th are 'irx'.

It's not the Golden Ratio, which has only three numbers and they don't fit the pattern.

<>
for a while I thought it might be , because if the series is
x, 3, 6, 8
and you work backwards,
8 - 2 = 6
6 - 3 - 3
3 - 4 - -1
x = -1
And if you throw away your tomato, you're down one... </>

Leo - go back to posting 6708 and continue your unfinished analysis...

Icy

Oh yeah...
Well, we surely made hard work of it, but the subject is , as in scores of 15, 30, 40...
Not sure about the smiley though, 'cos the way the Q's worded, it should maybe relate to 15?
So I'm just going to put this up
because it always reminds me of a chainsaw-wielding albino penguin I once knew

Correct analysis, Pin.

I have to award it to you, but you didn't find the obvious smiley. Perhaps you'll supply the one I was looking for when you post the next quiz...

Icy

would be the first in sequence smiley then.


15
15 all
30 15
30 all
40 30


I never could work out why the umpire kept asking for Juice as a kid and nobody poured any of the Barley Water from behind his chair.

I didn't know you cared, DD

Yeah I care for all those poor officals who keep asking for juice sometimes every couple of points for long periods of time and never seem to have their thrist quenched.

I suppose as I've got the answer I'd better set the next question.

The 42nd PM of Britain
About whom no hootoo entry is written
But from a link tenuous
Through a project in genesis
If two eastenders don't lead to which fictional creation?

H2G2 has an empty entry for Clement Attlee - by my count the 42nd individual to be PM - at A6893977, edited by DD no less.

However, the last three lines of the clue are beyond me for the moment...