twelvefootboy wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 11:15 pm
I thought this was one of the hardest Periodic table clues to get from first principles. I'm curious how the boardies parsed it whether they got it or not. I was narrowing down from Radon to Lead but it was the alkali metal TOM that got me to Francium, which is possibly the rarest element on earth (real elements, not fake manmade ones). (PSA - Astatine is the rarest element, with 25 grams present at any given time, compared to Francium with a whopping 30 grams.) There are a bunch of elements named after countries so harvesting a guess is tough and Scandia is cromulent imho.
How a non-chemist would parse this clue.
1, memorize the table, just element and number. Not difficult and makes many chem clues cake.
2, there's only a few elements named after countries, what nationality does the person sound like? Certainly not German, Polish, or Japanese. That just leaves France, guess you could go with Gallium!
The heaviest element part of the clue was just filler and not relevant. At least for a non-chemist.
Over the years had several chem profs on our trivia team so perhaps that's made it easier for me(a non-chemist) to learn how to maximize limited chem knowledge to answer these clues.
And of course any answer to a clue is better than no answer. My point was that on a DD, a clue with no competitors and much longer time to parse and answer, it shouldn't be an issue to give an answer that satisfies the main part of the clue.
It's been a really rough week for game play. Monday's DJ30 DD3, Wednesday's Clavin DD3, and now this game. Not being prepared to win 5 or 6 figures in cash is just such a foreign concept to me.