It’s Pentathanerd week. The Summer Games will play out over the noon hour all week long with Friday BottleCap Talk replaced this week (4:30) by the grand finale and closing ceremonies. Reasonably good seats remain available. (Much) more on this later…
MSP WordPress user group meeting, Thursday, 6:30-9 p.m. at The Nerdery (free)
Topics:
- BuddyPress for Dummies (Toby Cryns, presenter)
- Moving WordPress to a new domain/server (Ray Champagne, presenter)
Please RSVP here so we can order enough food.
The Pentathanerd Summer Games
- Darts: Monday, July 19
- Chess: Tuesday, July 20 (preliminary rounds occurred Monday, July 12)
- Scrabble: Wednesday, July 21
- Pinewood LEGO Monkey Ball: Thursday, July 22
- “Air Quotes” Quiz Show: Friday, July 23 (Quiz Show will also have a championship round at 4:30)
Sticklers on rules (from Pentathanerd founder Mark Seemann):
“Air Quotes” Quiz Show
Setting the scene: You’re in a game show. You’ve been given the answers. Well, some of the answers. Can you remember them? End scene. Freeze frame. Star wipe. The preliminary round of “Air Quotes” Quiz Show involves taking an online quiz about a database of questions, some provided before the competition. Some questions will also be about the Pentathanerd itself, such as “Who won the Darts Event?” The competitors with the top three scores will advance to the Championship Round (Friday). The top three will truly test their skills at memory, competing against each other in three final rounds:
- Icon Recall – an image of 15 icons is shown at the start of the event for a period of time. After the second round, the finalists will take turns calling out an icon from the master image. If it’s there, 10 points. If not, the finalist is done with this round. Getting five correct earns a maximum 50 points.
- Nerdy Numerics – finalist must recite as many digits in order as possible from one of three numbers: pi, e (euler’s constant), and the square root of 2. One point for each digit past the decimal point, to a maximum of 50 points. Hint: the numbers start with 3, 2, and 1, respectively. Now remember, after this recitation comes the recall portion of Icon Recall!
- Showdown – three categories, one question each. Finalist in third chooses their category first, then second place. Get the question right, get 50 points.
Pinewood LEGO Monkey Ball:
Competitors design crafts that convey a LEGO person (or a reasonable substitute thereof) down a short ramp onto a field of point-valued areas. Where the LEGO person ends up determines the score for that run. Crafts may be constructed of anything (within reason: non-lethal, non-oozing, legal, etc) with the following three stipulations:
- Must fit within a specific size (to be determined, for now say roughly a shoebox)
- Must not have any external controls (no remote-controls)
- Must be activated/initiated by the deadfall mechanism common to Pinewood Derby ramps
Scrabble
Competitors will be ordered randomly. Each competitor in turn will take seven new tiles and then have one minute to place a word on a standard Scrabble board, scoring points as per the game. Unused tiles are not retained. After seven competitors have placed valid words on the board, the board will be reset, allowing the next competitor to place the first word. The words will be tested against the SOWPODS [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOWPODS ] word list. Invalid words will be removed, and the player attempting an invalid word will score zero points. After every competitor has had a chance to place a word, the order of competitors will again be randomized, and play will continue with any existing words in play on the board. There will be a third round, after which the total scores will determine overall placement for the event.
Chess
- Clocks will be set to five minutes per side with a three second delay.
- Players will be randomly seeded into pools of four (or as close as possible).
- Everyone in a pool plays everyone (there’s only time for one match each, random color selection).
- Top 50% of each pool advance to the next round – ties advance together.
Darts
Competitors will have two sets of three throws each to get the best combined scores. Top 50% advance to the next round (ties advance together) until the field reduces to the top four competitors. Final round of four will determine top four placement. Ties in the final round will be broken by single sets of throws.
More rules may be added as needed (not that we’re just making this up as we go). Some rules may be made to be broken…
More here: http://pentathanerd.com/
Still more here: http://blog.nerdery.com/tag/pentathanerd/