Okay, time for some more info about the contest.
OFFICIAL RULES
1.
The contest will take place in this thread on May the 26th 2016 (Thursday). While everyone is invited to join the party at their convenience,
the game will start officially at 20:00 CET.
2. At the a.m. time I will post the video of a song from
The final countdown album (YouTube link) and a set of three questions related to that song. The participants will be given
seven minutes(starting from the posting time of my questions) to submit their answers. While during the game everyone (contestants included) are free to post whatever they want (comments, greetings and so on),
only one answering post is allowed for each contestant, meaning that it should include the answers to all the three questions (the three answers cannot be splitted in separated posts). They are of course allowed to answer to just one or two questions but the important thing is that
only one answering post per participant will be considered as valid for the points counting.
That post cannot be edited.
3. For every
correct answer the participant will earn one point but the
first user to submit the correct answer will earn three points for that answer.
4. After the seven minutes expire, I will submit a “Stop answering” post. Any answering post coming after that will not be considered valid.
5. After a break of approx. three minutes I will post a second video and three more questions. The rules for answering and the point-earning criterias are the same as for the first questions. The cycle will repeat for all the ten songs of the album.
6. In order to take part to the game is sufficient to submit even only one valid answering post. Of course the more you answer the higher are your possibilities to earn points. But you are not obliged to answer to every question/set of questions.
7. At the end of the last song the points will be counted and the winner will be proclaimed.
Strategy suggestions.
I think it might be helpful to give you some hints in advance, in order to help you deciding your strategy. Since the time for answering is pretty short and some of the questions can be very difficult and tricky you will have to think and act fast to increase your probability of winning.
There are two main strategies that can be followed:
A. You can decide to go for the
quick answer in an attempt to earn the three points for the fastest correct answer. A wise move would be to go for this if you are sure to have the right answer to one of the questions at hand. In this case just post your answer as fast as you can, ignoring the other two questions of the set (
or, better, guessing the correct answer). If you are fast and lucky enough you might get three to nine points. That’s a pretty good deal. But this is a
very risky strategy, if someone’s faster than you, you might find yourself with only one to three points.
B. You can decide to go for a more
conservative strategy. Take your time in order to be sure that your answer is correct, you might try to perform a quick google search or a quick research in this site in order to confirm that you have the right answer. If your researches fail you are always in time for a last-minute guess. Another not-to-underestimate opportunity is to take a look at the first answers that arrive from the other contestants. They could make you change your mind or confirm your first thought. And if people are really flying blind on a set, it could happen that, even if you have taken a little time, one of your answers could always be the first correct one.
Let’s make it clearer with a
simulation. The considered song is
On broken wings (this will not be part of the real game). The set of the three related questions is:
1. Name two other Europe songs that have the word “
broken” in their title.
2.
On Broken wings is also the name of a metalcore band formed in 2001. Where are they from?
A) Germany B) Sweden C) USA D) UK E) Australia
3. The first verse after the chorus says: “
Now he’s feeling bad, his heart is cold, he’s oh so sad” Who is he?
After reading the questions a virtual user that will be called
User Alfa, immediately has at hand the answer to the third question. That could be also because he has pressed play on the video that I posted along and at the second verse it is said clearly: “
Johnny did not rest, he did what he thought was best”. So the correct answer is “Johnny”. But
User Alfa doesn’t have a clue about the answer to question n. 2 (but it’s a multiple choice question so he can try to guess) and he remembers only one (
Broken dreams) of the two songs required by question n. 1. Now
User Alfa can go for the quick strategy and post immediately an answering post like this:
1 Broken dreams and…?
2 A)
3 Johnny
If
User Alfa has been fast enough he has earned the three points from the correct answer to question n. 3 and if he’s also lucky he might have got three more points from the right guess to question n. 2. But he wasn’t so lucky (the guys from that metalcore band are American, so the correct answer was C)). So he got a total of only three points. Now let’s see what
User Bravo does. He thinks he knows the answer n. 3 but he’s not sure. Was that Johnny or Jimmy? He could guess but it’s too risky because he hasn’t a clue of who these guys of the metalcore band are and he would have to guess also on that. So he decides to try the conservative way. At first he googles
On broken wings and surprise! The first result is a Wikipedia link to the band. He doesn’t even have to open the link, Google already says that they’re American. Cool! He opens instead a link below where the lyrics to
On broken wings are reported. So it was Johnny! Ok, last question.
User Bravo loves
Angels (with broken hearts) but he can’t remember another title with “
broken” in it. He’s about to go checking the “Songs” section of the
wingsoftomorrow.com site but, before doing that, he takes a look at the forum and sees the answer of
User Alfa:
Broken dreams! That’s the other one (that was a bad mistake from
User Alfa, he should have better left the answer n. 1 blank!). So
User Bravo posts the following answer:
1 Broken dreams and Angels (with broken hearts)
2 C)
3 Johnny
This way he is sure that is has earned three points (one for each correct answer). But then he finds out that he has also been very lucky because, even though he has taken his time, he still has been the first user to post the correct answer to question n. 1 and 2. So in total he has earned seven points!
