Paucle wrote:Not sure I've ever heard of Mr Sullivan.
Not to be confused with G.W. Bush's Secretary of Health and Human Services.
econgator wrote:Never heard of Sullivan, blanked on Cassandra, and it's not that I didn't recognize the scenario, rather that I don't bother considering wagering strategy (except the very obvious, like lock-ties).
Cassandra actually told you it was Sullivan, but you refused to believe her.
TenPoundHammer wrote:Had Monday but backed away, fearing I'd get Liederkranzed.
Not sure I understand your use of Liederkranz as a metaphor there. How could an invention that everybody has heard of compare to a cheese hardly anybody knows? (Did you notice in retrospect, BTW, your odds of getting it right increased 100% by putting down a "wild guess" as opposed to leaving it blank?)
By that I mean, I backed away from telegraph, for fear that the actual answer would be something insanely obscure that no one's heard of.
TenPoundHammer wrote:Had Monday but backed away, fearing I'd get Liederkranzed.
Not sure I understand your use of Liederkranz as a metaphor there. How could an invention that everybody has heard of compare to a cheese hardly anybody knows? (Did you notice in retrospect, BTW, your odds of getting it right increased 100% by putting down a "wild guess" as opposed to leaving it blank?)
By that I mean, I backed away from telegraph, for fear that the actual answer would be something insanely obscure that no one's heard of.
But...
Why am I even asking this?
Wouldn't it be safer to put down an answer that somebody (especially yourself) has heard of, rather than leaving it blank?
I don't know how many times this has been explained to you:
Your chances of a blank answer being correct are zero.
The chances of a non-blank answer being correct, even if it's 0.00001, is always greater than zero.
Brian
...but the senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity.
If I had 50 cents for every math question I got right, I'd have $6.30 by now.
Wouldn't it be safer to put down an answer that somebody (especially yourself) has heard of, rather than leaving it blank?
Because I have absolutely no confidence whatsoever. I've had so many guesses bite me in the butt due to me mis-remembering a key detail, misreading the clue, etc.. And far more instances where I arrived at an answer that was miles off due to faulty logic or overlooking something blatantly obvious (e.g., guessing Celine Dion on that "best selling female Canadian singer" clue because I, someone who has listened to almost nothing but country for 25 years, completely overlooked Shania Twain).
tl;dr: I'm so accustomed to any possible answer that pops into my head being wrong that I will instantly doubt the heck out of it. I back out so often because my mind is screaming "No, no, no, don't you dare write that, it's WROOOOOOOOOONG!!"
I figured that the contestants would have the same answer I did, if they had an answer at all - Addis Ababa. Neither of the others occurred to me until Alex listed them.
"Elen sila lumenn omentielvo...A star shines on the hour of our meeting."
Wouldn't it be safer to put down an answer that somebody (especially yourself) has heard of, rather than leaving it blank?
Because I have absolutely no confidence whatsoever.
It seems to me that you have enormous confidence. Just confidence that your answer will be wrong, rather than right.
Just forget about the confidence. If something comes to you, no matter what, don't rethink it. Don't second-guess yourself.
On the other hand, if nothing comes to you, take a wild guess. It can never be more wrong than a blank. I admit, sometimes I don't even have a wild guess. But that is the only time I leave it blank. Even if there is the remotest possibility that I have heard of something close to the question, that's what I guess. I have been right more often than wrong in those situations.
Brian
...but the senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity.
If I had 50 cents for every math question I got right, I'd have $6.30 by now.
skullturf wrote:I like the following variation of the 7-8-9 joke:
Why was six afraid of seven?
Because seven was a registered six offender.
That reminds me of an incident from our recent stay in New Zealand when we were renting a car. Kiwis pronounce short e like our short i and vice versa. When my wife asked the female rental company employee how to get to (hwy) six, she was greeted with a look of alarm