Mastermind - Results

Top 6 on the Game

(1=40, 2=30, 3=20, 4=10, 0 = did not play that round)

Balaji 0/2/2/2/1/1/3/1/1/3 = 290/9 =32.2
Bharvi 1/1/2/3/1/1/3/2/3/1 = 320/10 =32
Gauri 1/2/2/3/1/1/?/1/2/2 = 300/10 =30 or 310/10=31
MeBlogs 0/2/1/2/3/2/1/3/2/2 = 270/9 =30
Dilip 4/3/2/1/3/2/4/2/4/4 = 210/8 =28.2 (joined at round4)

Declaring Balaji and Bharvi as joint winners and Gauri and MeBlogs as runners up!

mention on request :

s.b./v.b 0/0/0/0/3/ / /1/2/2 = 120/6 =20

Dilip and s.b. started cracking clues but unfortunately they already had many earlier round clues in front of them.. sure they would have scored higher if they started playing earlier.

Thanks to everyone who played the game!

This is the first time this blog has had a game on it. Have learnt a couple of lessons here.

1. There will be another game, hopefully within a month or so. This was a great experience!

2. It will have 10 rounds like this one.

3. But we will just play it over 4 consecutive days (starting with Thrusday night USA time) gives everyone in US and India/Singapore/Hongkong a fair chance, and most of the game will run over the weekend..

4. All 10 rounds will have clue 1 on first day at midnight, clue 2 on second day at midnight etc.. That way it is easy for me to keep score!

5. Next time, we will have a more elaborate description, rules, example at the beginning so more people can play and not feel left out after round 2 because I didn't explain it well enough. (Karcar got a lot of clues and even traced my line of thinking with the clues. . . wish he had just gone for the game!) So many of you gave me isolated guesses to some clues but did not play through the rest of the rounds.

6. Will also restrict it to only real people or characters played by real people. That way, the fullyautomatix and Barney type clues will be out!

On a closing note, San refused to play till round 5, then got 4/5 in 6-10 right on first pass! She would have placed in top five....but she knows how I think so it is not fair to let her play!

Finally, thanks to all who played! You made this really enjoyable.

Here are the final answers...

Round 1

Clue 1 : Completely
Clue 2 : Smithy
Clue 3 : *
Clue 4 : Gaul

Answer : Fulliautomatix

Completely ~ fully
He is the Blacksmith in the Gaulish Village in * (Asterisk ~ Asterix ) comics.
Round 2

Clue 1 : Pillar
Clue 2 : Triumphs
Clue 3 : Sanghamitta
Clue 4 : Emperor

Answer : Ashoka the Great

The Pillar that is there in Indian currency (the emblem of India) is the
Ashoka Pillar and the inscription at the bottom of it is "satyameva Jayate" or "truth alone triumphs". Sanghamitta is Ashoka's daughter who became a buddhist and Ashoka was "The" Emperor with what history records as the largest empire with its capital in current day India.

Round 3

Clue 1 : Missile
Clue 2 : Maverick
Clue 3 : Mission
Clue 4 : Suri

Answer : Tom Cruise

Cruise Missile , He acted as Maverick in Top Gun, Mission Impossible seris, his daughter is Suri.. that last clue was a dead giveaway.

Round 4

Clue 1 : Summer
Clue 2 : Bite
Clue 3 : Gradenko
Clue 4 : Police

Answer : Sting

Stings real name is Gordon Sumner (~Summer) and one of his band members is Andy Summers, bite=sting, Miss Gradenko was the least popular Police song, and he was the lead in the band Police.

Round 5

Clue 1 : Shaken
Clue 2 : Secret
Clue 3 : Walther
Clue 4 : Seven

Answer : James Bond

His favorite drink is a Vodka Martini, which he has "shaken, not stirred", he is a Secret agent who has a Walther PPK as his favorite Gun in a majority of Bond movies, and of course the 007 is the dead giveaway..

Round 6

Clue 1 : Tyrannosaurus
Clue 2 : Encounter
Clue 3 : Holocaust
Clue 4 : Shark

Answer : Steven Spielberg

He gave us Jurassic Park (the T-Rex connection), Close encounters of the 3rd kind, Shindler's List and Jaws!

Round 7

Clue 1 : Prey
Clue 2 : Guatemala
Clue 3 : Alien
Clue 4 : Shriver

Answer : Arnold Schwarzenegger

Prey -> Predator(word association) , the movie starts in the Guatemalan jungles, it is about an Alien (also Alien vs. Predator link), and he is married to Maria Shriver.

Round 8

Clue 1 : Hastings
Clue 2 : Sidekick
Clue 3 : Belgian
Clue 4 : Suchet

Answer : Hercule Poirot

Arthur Hastings is his sidekick, Poirot was Belgian and he keeps mentioning it when everyone mistakes him for a Frenchman, David Suchet played the most memorable Poirot in TV history!

Round 9

Clue 1 : Purple
Clue 2 : Toddler
Clue 3 : Friends
Clue 4 : Babybop

Answer : Barney!

Purple dinosaur that is the star of "Barney and Friends", with two other dino characters BJ and Babybop, which has captured the attention of toddlers worldwide since the early nineties.

Round 10

Clue 1 : Glasses
Clue 2 : Salt
Clue 3 : Independence
Clue 4 : Charkha

Answer : Mahathma Gandhi

You can pretty much do a line sketch of Gandhiji with the glasses, he was behind the Salt Satyagraha which epitomized the non violence movement, was the lead behind India's Independence and used a Charkha to make his own cloth!

Next game most likely last week of February ! So watch for it.

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Playlist for the clinically depressed

A buddy asked me yesterday, "What is this connection to Bob Dylan and the bailout man? Why do you keep connecting them in multiple posts?"

For some reason, when I am depressed there is a tendency to seek out even more depressing songs. That seems to be silly, because one would try to listen to upbeat songs when in a sad mood, or at least that would make sense, right?

It also happened that two Dylan CD's were in the CD player at the time and a few of the songs were so in with my mood and thoughts at that time, that they kept playing in my head. The same thing happens with old Ilayaraja songs or Kannadasan songs at times.

The lyrics do the damage, but it is the sad voice that makes it all the more depressing (all lyrics courtesy of this link)

Like a rolling stone

Postively 4th street

Stuck inside of Mobile

and the really fitting..

Subterranean Homesick Blues

Time to stop worrying about the economy and focus on the daily routine.

No more depressing posts on Bailout related topics...

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