KK CHALLENGE 9 - HUNT REVIEW & OTHER DISCUSSIONS: Some of you who know me and my blog would know that I had the habit of posting hunt reviews in my blog, and went through the long and often boring process of analysing several interesting questions. But while I had strong followers, my discussions often became unpleasant because I was just too brutal in the way I criticized some questions. I have therefore stopped posting hunt discussions in my blog. But I propose to comment on KKC9 here on this wall. I dont mean this to be an authority in the hunting scene, but since Im one of the only TWO parties organising hunts here in KK, it may benefit you to know my style! Before that, however, Im embarrassed to announce that I received a text message from VK Chong this afternoon, informing me that I made a mistake while marking his paper. In fact, he did not achieve the perfect score, because he, too, failed in the MILLENNIUM question! The Treasure Hunt God is smiling upon me right now, because even though I made this mistake, it did not have an effect on the positions of the teams. Still, a mistake is a mistake, and for that I am sorry. Edward marked the answers for me, but I take full responsibility. I had, in the past, been quite obsessed with trying to prevent teams from getting the perfect score in my KK Challenge hunts. Each time, I would allow the teams to get very close to achieving the perfect score, but not actually achieving it! I did this with the employment of one or two extremely tricky questions that would take the best of the best to solve! But over the years, when none of my KK Challenge hunts ended with the perfect score, I had the reputation of never allowing the perfect score. And that is not exactly a good thing too! I feel that is unfair to me, because in each hunt, I do allow the possibility to achieve the perfect score. I am still convinced that sooner or later it will happen! And I will let it happen! I had an interesting discussion with Master VK Chong through Whatsapp. That Millennium question was just one of 3 so-called red herring questions yesterday. The first was THE HUT which was unique in the sense that that THE HUT practically shouted out to the hunters to be picked. But while the usual style of the red herring was that the correct answer is located on a different board, THIS red herring employed a more sinister approach - the required answer was the inclusion of SALAD, as well as THE HUT to be complete! Then the second was that MILLENNIUM question; and the third was the FAJAR question in Kolombong. The original set of questions had yet another red herring in it, but I cut out one, because having too many would absolutely killed off the new teams! I will get back to the MILLENNIUM questions shortly. VK and I discussed about the question difficulty. He felt that it would have been better to add a few more of the tougher questions to make it more challenging for the stronger teams. I had in fact adopted that approach in the past. But what I realised was that most of my masterpieces - the questions that I spent a lot of time and efforts crafting - went to waste because most of the teams did not even bother to attempt them! It is something like the great painter spending a lot of time creating a master piece, but nobody even spend a moment admiring his finish product! There is another thing that I noticed in the past; the leading team, Main Tembak would win the hunt with a huge unassailable lead. They would finish with say 95% and the next best team would achieve something like 80% or even lower. Teams started the hunt resigned to the fact that they totally had ZERO chance to beat Main Tembak. By setting the questions the way I did in KKC 9, that gap was not that big. Main Tembak scored 81/90, whereas Cili Padi scored 79/90. Had Cili Padi been able to solve T4, they COULD have beaten Main Tembak. That, I think, makes the hunt much more exciting! Let us now turn our attention to the Millennium question... Q) 10 centuries, and it contains 16 numbers? (What and Where?) I have said that MOST of the intended answers in KKC9 would be huge and highly visible from the car. THIS wasnt one of those! In fact, it is the only one that is tiny, but I included it anyway because I took into account the amount of time, the quiet hunt sector etc. As I had expected, many teams were able to find the signboard after a bit of work scanning the sector. But having found the signboard, they came to another problem, which was the real point of my riddle! On that board were the words MILLENNIUM and MILLENNIUM RED. To the regular teams, it was obvious that theres some sort of trick behind this question. Some teams spent a lot of time standing in front of that board trying to decide which to take, MILLENNIUM or MILLENNIUM RED? 10 centuries agrees with MILLENNIUM, but where does contains 16 numbers come in? To those of you whore not there yesterday, how would you choose? What would you do if you cant explain the second part of the clue? When setting the clue, I asked that same question to myself: What would I do under such circumstances? And I answered myself very quickly. I would choose the one with RED without doubt! I would do that even if I dont have the explanation for that word. My logic is that IF the intended answer was just MILLENNIUM, then 10 centuries would have done the job sufficiently. Theres no need to add more words there in the clue. And here, I think it pays to know the style of the CoC. Im aware, of course, that SOME CoCs would add plenty of words that arent really necessary to be in the clue, but that is NOT generally my style! The only exception is my treasure clues. But thats a different story! Although Im not a fan of Taylor Swift, I read about her concert in Malaysia to promote her album RED some months ago, and I kept that knowledge in my head. I knew that I could use that in one of my questions sooner or later. Googling up on RED, I found that that album contains 16 songs in it. But of course, I said 16 numbers, which is the same thing! OMG!...I did it again, dint I? I let my mind flow, and then when I scrolled up, it has become such a long post! I will post this first... and perhaps continue later!
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 13:59:21 +0000
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