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

... where's the instructions for scoring? I forgotten what scores what and I know you've been involved in conversations about it.

B

Correct answer +3

Klaxons -5

Reducing General Ignorance Bonus +1 (A new category for something relevant but neither correct nor quiet interesting)

Quiet Interesting Bonus. +6 A relevant or tangental observation that makes the question setter go "ooh that's quiet interesting.."

Elf Bonus +2
To the question setter for doing the research

Brill.

Ta.

I'm enjoying the coinage one. Dunno how you make 'em so sneaky.

Ask Icy; I'm fiendish.

You got the GI bonus for getting us onto coins and away from scatological humour.

And the QI bonus for the stuff about Tokens and Cranford. I did not know that. Quiet Interesting, I thought. De facto bonus.

Yor other guesses have all been outstanding and have narrowed the field remarkably, but none have quiet had the same definitive quality as the coins manoeuvre did.

>>Dunno how you make 'em so sneaky.<<

Now that the coin forum is concluded, let me take the opportunity to answer that question more fully.

The genesis for this question was actually a history documentary on the middle ages with David Starkey. He was just adumbrating the history of English monarchs when he got to the 1100s and began talking in these stark terms about Stephen's reign. And Starkey said this was such a dramatic time because of the disruption to the currency. My ears pricked the QI wheels started spinning.

I've included in my explanation all the references I've been using. I had this one in mind since before Christmas, and I've been sitting on it. Looking for the right question to ask.

So a little insight to my method: I take a fact I know or have recently learnt. and I kind of look at it askew. That is to say: an easy question would be to ask what happened in 1139? Slightly harder would be a question about the legitimate heir or something. The askew view is to come at the idea from the avenue of the currency itself. The *effect* of Stephen and Matilda's civil war was the multiple valid currencies declared by royal (or baronial) fiat. So rather than take that as a consequence I use that as the question.

Hence this idea about coins in Bristol not being somehow 'valid', quiet omitting to mention Bristol was Matilda's fortress, or that this is the 12th century.

I don't know if you remember the 'what hath god wrought' geo-magnetically charged telegraph question I did. But that was essentially the same process.

It'd have been easy to to write a question *about* solar flares but I took the effect of the solar flare powering the telegraph network as the basis of the question and let everyone work back to the origin through that.

I think that's why my questions are usually seen to be more coded or 'sneaky' because I always look to put in extra layers of complexity or this kind of inverted pyramid approach, and I can;t deny, I enjoy the kudos!

I also always *try* and include a clue in my QI Titles. You got the "Die sloley!" gag, pretty swiftly, as I recall: pointing 'spend a penny' away from the idiom and klaxons and toward coinage. I'm kind of surprised no-one checked a road map for Sloely. That's how I found it! How wonderful I thought that it's in Norfolk - one of Stephen's powerbases!

And that's an insight into my QI question-forming method.
I like to think I earn my elf bonuses!

I like the inverted pyramid metaphor. I've got what I hope is a peach that I've had since before Christmas and I *still* can't get the right route in. I'll wake up at 3 one morning and realise I have to post it *right now*!

One challenge is that your QIs, and Icy's, are so finely nuanced that I find myself assuming that other elfs (elves?) typos have an entirely spurious significance. I have now learned to just unsub, rather than stay in the thread and demand accuracy.

By the way - kudos for the steady but slow dropping of clues. A couple of elfs (I prefer that spelling in this context for some reason) have just answered "no" "no" "not that" "no" which doesn't move one forward at all.

Good luck with the interview.

B

About the steady drip of clues.

Having set up this elaborate series of masks to hide the theme of the answer, and possibly including a few bluffs along the way (), it would I think be churlish and entirely self-defeating to not help someone along who is perilously close to getting the right answer, particularly with google or wikipedia forbidden. The joy of it is to have your riddle unpicked. I think that's why I was so much in favour of the 'decreasing General Ignorance Bonus' as a legitimate way of both responding to and rewarding correct-ish guesses, that help propel the entire discussion, but without giving anything away.

Looking at the things I scored, coins, false pretender, pretenders, civil war, etc. It's clear that the whittling down of my riddle was well-advanced. I'm always pleased if my QIs last for between 80 - 100 posts before someone gets it.

Thanks. Didn't get the job.

On the other hand am currently working on two new QI questions. Will let you know when they are ready to debut.

Any progress with yours?

I think I've got everything set for one, just need to kalxonise it, and make sure I get the wording right wording...

Sorry to hear that.

Not any nearer posting another one. I'm less deliberate than you - I think "Ah ha! QI question", and slap it up and away we go. I do wonder how long the Belgrano one would have lasted if Trout hadn't googled.

I look forward to your next one.

B

I hope so, I'm doing quite a bit of research for this one, I've even got an idea I might do a series of QIs on it, contingent upon getting the last one right. There's so much to this trying to pack it all into one seems an impossibility so I may have to go with that.

The balloon's gone up to use a metaphor.

My new QI is live...

ALIVE!!!