Rare Entries contest MSB58 begins

This is another Rare Entries contest in the MSB series.

As always, reply ONLY BY EMAIL to msb DeleteThis @vex.net; do not post to any
newsgroup. Entries must reach here by Monday, September 15, 2008
(by Toronto time, zone -4). I intend to post two reminders before
then. See below the questions for a detailed explanation, which
is unchanged from last time.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
0. Pick one of these three choices: gold, silver, or bronze.

1. Give a single English word that is a noun that names a type
(not a brand) of beer. (For all "word" questions see rules
4.3.1 and 4.3.2.)

2. Give a single English word that is a noun that names a type
(not a brand) of object meant to be used to put words on paper.
"Meant to" refers to an intended use of it; for example,
a screwdriver could be used for that purpose but would be a
wrong answer.

3. Name a country (see rule 4.1.1) whose land area, ignoring any
external territories or Antarctic claims, is entirely between
latitudes 10°S and 45°S.

4. Name a national capital city whose name starts with "Be".
This means its usual short name in English, like "Moscow".
"National" refers to countries as defined in rule 4.1.1.

5. Name a person who, as far as is known at the time you submit
your entry, will be the candidate in this year's election
representing one of the two major parties either for the
presidency or vice-presidency of the USA.

6. Name a war or series of wars whose most commonly used name
(in English) refers explicitly to a specific person.

7. Name an English word, at most 8 letters long, that is used
as a technical or semi-technical term in genetics.

8. Give a place name used in English that designates a part of
the ocean that may reasonably be considered to be at least
23 miles (37 km) in length or width -- where that name,
ignoring any initial article, consists of two or more words
where the first and last words have the *same number of
letters*. Variant forms of the same place name will be
considered as equivalent answers.

("The ocean" is to be interpreted in a broad sense that
includes all water of salinity similar to the open sea
and connected to it by natural channels. For example, the
so-called East River in New York City would be a correct
answer if the words "East" and "River" had the same number
of letters.)

9. Sometimes a movie (see rule 4.2), telling a fictional or
fictionalized story, uses *in its title* a name or slogan owned
or used by an actual business then existing, with intentional
reference to that business or its products. (The name could
be a trade name, brand name, corporate name, "doing business
as" name, anything like that.) Give such a movie title.

For example, "Tomorrow Never Dies" would be a correct answer
if the newspaper "Tomorrow" depicted in the movie actually
existed at the time it was made. Note: if the same business
name (or variant forms of it) has appeared in different movie
titles, they will be taken as equivalent answers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

* 1. The Game

As usual, for each of the questions above, your objective is to give
an answer that (1) is correct, and (2) will be duplicated by as FEW
other people as possible. Feel free to use any reference material
you like to RESEARCH your answers; but when you have found enough
possible answers for your liking, you are expected to choose on your
own which one to submit, WITHOUT mechanical or computer assistance:
this is meant to be a game of wits.


* 2. Scoring

The scores on the different questions are MULTIPLIED to produce a
final score for each entrant. Low score wins; a perfect score is 1.

If your answer on a category is correct, then your score is the number
of people who gave that answer, or an answer I consider equivalent.

A wrong answer, or a skipped question, gets a high score as a penalty.
This is the median of:
- the number of entrants
- the square root of that number, rounded up to an integer
- double the highest score that anyone would have on this
question if all answers were deemed correct

* 2.1 Scoring Example

Say I ask for a color on the current Canadian flag. There are
26 entrants -- 20 say "red", 4 say "blue", and 1 each say "gules",
"white", and "white square". After looking up gules I decide it's
the same color as red and should be treated as a duplicate answer;
then the 21 people who said either "red" or "gules" get 21 points
each. The person who said "white" gets a perfect score of 1 point.

"White square" is not a color and blue is not a color on the flag;
the 5 people who gave either of these answers each get the same
penalty score, which is the median of:
- number of entrants = 27
- sqrt(27) = 5.196+, rounded up = 6
- double the highest score = 21 x 2 = 42
or in this case, 27.

* 2.2 More Specific Variants

On some questions it's possible that one entrant will give an answer
that's a more specific variant of an answer given by someone else.
In that case the more specific variant will usually be scored as if
the two answers are different, but the other, less specific variant
will be scored as if they are the same.

In the above example, if I had decided (wrongly) to score gules as a
more specific variant of red, then "red" would still score 21, but
"gules" would now score 1.

However, this rule will NOT apply if the question asks for an answer
"in general terms"; a more specific answer will then at best be treated
the same as the more general one, and may be considered wrong.


* 3. Entries

Entries must be emailed to the address given above. Please do not
quote the questions back to me, and do send only plain text in ASCII
or ISO 8859-1: no HTML, attachments, Micros--t character sets, etc.,
and no Unicode, please. (Entrants who fail to comply will be publicly
chastised in the results posting.)

Your message should preferably consist of just your 10 answers,
numbered from 0 to 9, along with any explanations required. Your
name should be in it somewhere -- a From: line or signature is fine.
(If I don't see both a first and a last name, or an explicit request
for a particular form of your name to be used, then your email address
will be posted in the results).

You can expect an acknowledgement when I read your entry. If this
bounces, it won't be sent again.

* 3.1 Where Leeway is Allowed

In general there is no penalty for errors of spelling, capitalization,
English usage, or other such matters of form, nor for accidentally
sending email in an unfinished state, so long as it's clear enough
what you intended. Sometimes a specific question may imply stricter
rules, though. And if you give an answer that properly refers to a
different thing related to the one you intended, I will normally take
it as written.

Once you intentionally submit an answer, no changes will be allowed,
unless I decide there was a problem with the question. Similarly,
alternate answers within an entry will not be accepted. Only the
first answer that you intentionally submit counts.

* 3.2 Clarifications

Questions are not intended to be hard to understand, but I may fail
in this intent. (For one thing, in many cases clarity could only be
provided by an example which would suggest one or another specific
answer, and I mustn't do that.)

In order to be fair to all entrants, I must insist that requests for
clarification must be emailed to me, NOT POSTED in any newsgroup.
But if you do ask for clarification, I'll probably say that the
question is clear enough as posted. If I do decide to clarify or
change a question, all entrants will be informed.

* 3.3 Supporting Information

It is your option whether or not to provide supporting information
to justify your answers. If you don't, I'll email you to ask for
it if I need to. If you supply it in the form of a URL, if at all
possible it should be a "deep link" to the specific relevant page.
There is no need to supply URLs for obvious, well-known reference
web sites, and there is no point in supplying URLs for pages that
don't actually support your answer.

If you provide any explanatory remarks along with your answers, you
are responsible for making it sufficiently clear that they are not
part of the answers. The particular format doesn't matter as long
as you're clear. In the scoring example above, "white square" was
wrong; "white (in the central square)" would have been taken as a
correct answer with an explanation.


* 4. Interpretation of questions

These are general rules that apply unless a question specifically
states otherwise.

* 4.1 Geography
* 4.1.1 Countries

"Country" means an independent country. Whether or not a place is
considered an independent country is determined by how it is listed
in reference sources.

For purposes of these contests, the Earth is considered to be divid-
ed into disjoint areas each of which is either (1) a country, (2) a
dependency, or (3) without national government. Their boundaries
are interpreted on a de facto basis. Any place with representatives
in a country's legislature is considered a part of that country rather
than a dependency of it.

The European Union is considered as an association of countries, not
a country itself.

Claims that are not enforced, or not generally recognized, don't count.
Places currently fighting a war of secession don't count. Embassies
don't count as special; they may have extraterritorial rights, but
they're still part of the host country (and city).

Countries existing at different historical times are normally
considered the same country if they have the same capital city.

* 4.1.2 States or provinces

Many countries or dependencies are divided into subsidiary political
entities, typically with their own subsidiary governments. At the
first level of division, these entities are most commonly called
states or provinces, but various other names are used; sometimes
varying even within the same country (e.g. to indicate unequal
political status).

Any reference to "states or provinces" in a question refers to
these entities at the first level of division, no matter what they
are called.

* 4.1.3 Distances

Distances between places on the Earth are measured along a great
circle path, and distance involving cities are based on the city
center (downtown).

* 4.2 Entertainment

A "movie" does not include any form of TV broadcast or video release;
it must have been shown in cinemas. "Oscar" and "Academy Award" are
AMPAS trademarks and refer to the awards given by that organization.
"Fiction" includes dramatizations of true stories.

* 4.3 Words and Numbers
* 4.3.1 Different Answers

Some questions specifically ask for a *word*, rather than the thing
that it names; this means that different words with the same meaning
will in general be treated as distinct answers. However, if two or
more inflectional variants, spelling variants, or other closely
related forms are correct answers, they will be treated as equivalent.

Similarly, if the question specifically asks for a name, different
things referred to by the same name will be treated as the same.

* 4.3.2 Permitted Words

The word that you give must be listed (or implied by a listing,
as with inflected forms) in a suitable dictionary. Generally
this means a printed dictionary published recently enough
to show reasonably current usage, or its online equivalent.
Other reasonably authoritative sources may be accepted on a
case-by-case basis. Words listed as obsolete or archaic usage
don't count, and sources that would list those words without
distinguishing them are not acceptable as dictionaries.

* 4.3.3 Permitted Numbers

Where the distinction is important, "number" refers to a specific
mathematical value, whereas "numeral" means a way of writing it.
Thus "4", "IV", and "four" are three different numerals representing
the same number. "Digit" means one of the characters "0", "1", "2",
etc. (These definitions represent one of several conflicting common
usages.)

* 4.3.4 "Contained in"

If a question asks for a word or numeral "contained" or "included"
in a phrase, title, or the like, this does not include substrings or
alternate meanings of words, unless explictly specified. For example,
if "Canada in 1967" is the title of a book, it contains the numeral
1967 and the preposition "in"; but it does not contain the word "an",
the adjective "in", or the numeral 96.

* 4.4 Tense and Time

When a question is worded in the present tense, the correctness of
your answer is determined by the facts at the moment you submit it.
(In a case where, in my judgement, people might reasonably be unaware
of the facts having changed, an out-of-date answer may be accepted as
correct.) Questions worded in the present perfect tense include the
present unless something states or implies otherwise. (For example,
Canada is a country that "has existed", as well as one that "exists".)
Different verbs in a sentence bear their usual tense relationship to
each other.

You are not allowed to change the facts yourself in order to make an
answer correct. For example, if a question asks for material on the
WWW, what you cite must already have existed before the contest was
first posted.


* 5. Judging

As moderator, I will be the sole judge of what answers are correct,
and whether two answers with similar meaning (like red and gules)
are considered the same, different, or more/less specific variants.

I will do my best to be fair on all such issues, but sometimes it is
necessary to be arbitrary. Those who disagree with my rulings are
welcome to complain (or to start a competing contest, or whatever).

I may rescore the contest if I agree that I made a serious error and
it affects the high finishers.


* 6. Results

Results will normally be posted within a few days of the contest
closing. They may be delayed if I'm unexpectedly busy or for
technical reasons. If I feel I need help evaluating one or more
answers, I may make a consultative posting in the newsgroups before
scoring the contest.

In the results posting, all entrants will be listed in order of score,
but high (bad) scores may be omitted. The top few entrants' full
answer slates will be posted. A table of answers and their scores
will be given for each question.


* 7. Fun

This contest is for fun. Please do have fun, and good luck to all.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto "Then she got a Googling look."
msb DeleteThis @vex.net --Vernor Vinge, "Rainbows End"

My text in this article is in the public domain.

Once again, I wrote:
| As usual, for each of the items above, your objective is to give a
| response that (1) is correct, and (2) will be duplicated by as FEW
| other people as possible. Feel free to use any reference material ...

There were 28 entrants this time, plus a 29th entry that missed the
deadline by about 3 hours; that one is reported on below for interest,
but not scored. And, for the first time, the winner is BRUCE BOWLER.
Congratulations! Repeat champion Garmt de Vries-Uiterweerd finishes
second this time, and Dave Filpus takes third place.

These are their slates of answers (some abbreviated). As always,
you should be reading this in a monospaced font for proper tabular
alignment.

BRUCE BOWLER GARMT DE VRIES-U. DAVE FILPUS
[0] Silver Gold Silver
[1] Pilsner Porter Bock
[2] Quill Carbon Typeball
[3] Paraguay Comoros Uruguay
[4] Belmopan Beirut Bern
[5] Joe Biden John McCain John McCain
[6] Jenkins' Ear Kieft's King Philip's
[7] Clade Ploidy Diploid
[8] Gulf of Oman Strait of Sicily San Francisco Bay
[9] Greatest Show... ...Madame Tussaud's Tanga (Deu no NYT?)


| Please do not quote the questions back to me, and do send only
| plain text in ASCII or ISO 8859-1: no HTML, attachments, Micros--t
| character sets, etc., and no Unicode, please. (Entrants who fail
| to comply will be publicly chastised in the results posting.)

Erland Sommarskog, David Jondreau, and Dan Blum (listed in random order),
consider yourselves chastised!

To review the scoring:

| Low score wins; a perfect score is 1.
|
| If your answer on a category is correct, then your score is the number
| of people who gave that answer or an answer I consider equivalent. If
| wrong, or if you skip the question, you get a high score as a penalty.
| The scores on the different questions are *multiplied* to produce a
| final score. ... It is also possible that I may consider one answer
| to be a more specific variant of another: in that case it will be
| scored as if they are different, but the other, less specific variant
| will be scored as if they are the same.

See the questions posting for the penalty score formula.

Here is the complete table of scores.

RANK SCORE ENTRANT Q0 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9

1. 3840 Bruce Bowler 8 3 4 1 5 4 2 1 1 1
2. 12240 Garmt de Vries-Uiterweerd 17 9 1 1 5 8 1 2 1 1
3. 13440 Dave Filpus 8 1 1 3 7 8 5 1 2 1
4. 16320 Stephen Perry 17 1 2 3 5 8 2 2 1 1
5. 24192 Poul Mejlsted 3 1 WR WR WR 3 2 1 2 1
6. 24480 James Dow Allen 17 9 1 2 5 8 1 1 2 1
7. 32400 Nick Selwyn 3 9 1 3 5 4 5 2 2 1
8. 33696 Lejonel Norling 3 WR WR 1 3 13 1 1 2 1
9. 34560 Pete Gayde 8 9 4 3 5 8 1 1 1 1
10. 38080 John Gerson 17 2 1 2 7 8 WR 1 1 1
11. 46080 David Jondreau 8 2 WR 3 5 4 1 WR 1 1
12. 49504 Dan Blum 17 2 2 2 7 13 2 2 1 1
13. 58240 Dan Tilque 8 1 1 2 WR 13 WR 1 1 2
14. 77760 Leo Breebaart 8 9 3 1 5 3 4 3 2 1
15. 88128 David Breton 17 3 1 3 3 8 1 3 WR 1
16. 95472 Robin Rattay 17 WR 2 2 3 13 1 2 1 1
17. 111384 Robert Au 17 9 1 2 7 13 2 2 1 1
18. 130560 Alexei Kosut 17 2 3 2 5 4 4 1 2 4
19. 146880 Ted Schuerzinger 17 3 1 3 3 8 5 1 WR 1
20. 148512 Duncan Booth 17 1 3 2 7 13 2 2 1 4
21. 159120 Haran Pilpel 17 3 1 2 3 13 WR 1 4 1
22. 176256 Lieven Marchand 17 3 1 WR 3 3 4 1 4 4
Erland Sommarskog 8 2 2 3 3 13 4 2 1 WR
Don Del Grande 17 2 1 2 7 13 5 1 4 4
Rob Parker 8 3 1 WR 7 13 1 2 4 WR
Les Norton 17 9 4 2 3 13 2 2 WR 1
Peter Smyth 17 9 WR 2 3 13 2 1 2 WR
Joshua Kreitzer 17 9 4 3 5 13 5 3 1 2

Scores of 200,000 or worse are not shown.


Here is the complete list of answers given. Each list shows correct
answers in the order worst to best (most to least popular).

| 0. Pick one of these three choices: gold, silver, or bronze.

17 Gold
8 Silver (+)
3 Bronze

No settling for second or third place among Rare Entries entrants!


| 1. Give a single English word that is a noun that names a type
| (not a brand) of beer. (For all "word" questions see rules
| 4.3.1 and 4.3.2.)

9 Porter
3 Ale
3 Pilsner
2 Bitter
2 Mild
2 Stout (+)
1 Bock
1 Heavy
1 Hefeweizen (see below)
1 Lager
1 Lambic
WRONG:
1 Ballpoint (wrong question)
1 Mars (not found in dictionaries)

I'm somewhat astonished at the collision on porter.

"Hefeweizen" has apparently not made it into dictionaries yet,
but the entrant explained that it has become quite popular in some
areas and cited <http://www.easteuroconsult.com/beer/beerdict.htm>,
which seemed sufficiently authoritative to accept it.


| 2. Give a single English word that is a noun that names a type
| (not a brand) of object meant to be used to put words on paper.
| "Meant to" refers to an intended use of it; for example,
| a screwdriver could be used for that purpose but would be a
| wrong answer.

4 Quill
3 Stencil
2 Stamp
2 Typewriter
1 Autopen
1 Biro (brand name, but listed in dictionaries as informally
generic)
1 Carbon
1 Copperplate
1 Crayon
1 Embosser
1 Ink-jet
1 Laser
1 Nib
1 Pen
1 Printer
1 Stylus
1 Typeball
WRONG:
1 Bitter (wrong question)
1 Chalk (not intended use)
1 Highlighter (not intended use)
1 Rotary printing press (3 words)

Answers here were fairly well divided. Watch out for the quills,
though! The (+) answer was marker.


| 3. Name a country (see rule 4.1.1) whose land area, ignoring any
| external territories or Antarctic claims, is entirely between
| latitudes 10°S and 45°S.

3 Lesotho
3 Mauritius
3 Uruguay
2 Fiji
2 Madagascar
2 Namibia
2 Samoa
2 South Africa
2 Swaziland
1 Botswana
1 Comoros
1 Paraguay
1 Tonga
WRONG:
1 Australia (about 9°15'S in Torres Strait Is.)
1 Bolivia (+) (about 9°40'S at mouth of Abuná River)
1 Greece (wrong hemisphere)

The question was intended to admit exactly one of the world's large
countries as a correct answer, to see if people would collide on it,
but I blew it -- I forgot about the Torres Strait Islands. Most of
the actual possible correct answers were given, and well distributed,
but nobody picked Mozambique, Vanuatu, or Zimbabwe.


| 4. Name a national capital city whose name starts with "Be".
| This means its usual short name in English, like "Moscow".
| "National" refers to countries as defined in rule 4.1.1.

7 Bern (Switzerland)
5 Beirut (Lebanon)
5 Belmopan (Belize) (+)
3 Beijing (China)
3 Belgrade (Serbia)
3 Berlin (Germany)
WRONG:
1 Basseterre (St. Kitts and Nevis) (not "Be")
1 Germany (not a city)

This one rather startled me. When I wrote the question, I thought
"Beijing's just been in the news, Berlin is the other obvious one --
let's see if people collide on Bern." I didn't even bother thinking
about whether there were any others, because after all, there are only
about 200 national capitals in the world, so how many starting with
"Be" could there *be*?

Well, I found out. The total number of initial diagraphs among the
world's national capitals is only about half the number of capitals,
and four of them occur even more often than Be: 10 Sa's (mostly saints
of one or another flavor), 9 Ma's, 8 Ba's, and 7 Po's.


| 5. Name a person who, as far as is known at the time you submit
| your entry, will be the candidate in this year's election
| representing one of the two major parties either for the
| presidency or vice-presidency of the USA.

13 Barack Obama
8 John McCain
4 Joe Biden (+)
3 Sarah Palin (submitted on or after 2008-08-31)

I was hoping McCain wouldn't name his running mate until farther
into the contest period, creating a possible strategy of waiting
to enter until he'd done so and then naming that person. In fact a
large majority of entrants picked a presidential candidate anyway.


| 6. Name a war or series of wars whose most commonly used name
| (in English) refers explicitly to a specific person.

5 King Philip's War (1675-76, New England (USA))
4 Napoleonic Wars (c.1799-1815, Europe)
2 Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648-54, Ukraine)
2 Pontiac's Rebellion (1763-66, Ohio Valley (USA))
2 Torstenson's War (1643-45, Scandinavia)
2 War of Jenkins' Ear (1739-48, various locations)
1 Amadu's Jihad (1810-18, Macina (Mali))
1 Bar Kokhba Revolt (132-35, Judea (Israel))
1 Berke-Hulagu War (1262-65, Caucasus)
1 Black Hawk War (see below)
1 Dacke War (1542-43, Sweden)
1 Jugurthine War (112-105 BC, Numidia (Algeria))
1 Kieft's War (1643-45, New Netherlands (USA))
1 Te Kooti's War (1868-72, New Zealand)
WRONG:
1 Mahdist War (1881-99, Sudan) (name "Sudan Campaign" more
commonly used)
1 Queen Anne's War (1702-13) (name "War of the Spanish
Succession" more commonly used)
1 Seleucid-Ptolemaic Wars (274-168 BC, Middle East) (no specific
person named, and name "Syrian Wars" more commonly used)

Quite a few wars here that I hadn't heard of. Many of them were
uprisings against colonial powers, led by the eponymous individuals.
The "King Philip" of the most popular answer was the name given by
the English colonists to the leader of the Wampanoag Confederacy;
his actual name was Metacom, which sounds like some corporate name
from the present day!

There have actually been two different Black Hawk Wars, both named
after individuals, fought in different parts of the USA: in Illinois
in 1832 and Utah in 1865-72. As a matter of interest I asked the
entrant to clarify which one was chosen, but did not get a response,
and it doesn't really matter since nobody else gave this answer.

The (+) answer was King William's War. I did not check if this would
have been correct.


| 7. Name an English word, at most 8 letters long, that is used
| as a technical or semi-technical term in genetics.

3 Allele [= Alleles]
2 Haploid
2 Intron [= Introns]
2 Locus
2 Mutation
2 Ploidy
1 Autosome
1 Base
1 Clade
1 Cytosine
1 Diploid
1 Gamete
1 Gene
1 Meiosis
1 Morgan
1 Ribosome
1 Sequence
1 Triploid
1 Uracil
1 Vector
WRONG:
1 Homozygous (10 letters)

Answers here were well divided. The (+) answer was genome.


| 8. Give a place name used in English that designates a part of
| the ocean that may reasonably be considered to be at least
| 23 miles (37 km) in length or width -- where that name,
| ignoring any initial article, consists of two or more words
| where the first and last words have the *same number of
| letters*. Variant forms of the same place name will be
| considered as equivalent answers.
|
| ("The ocean" is to be interpreted in a broad sense that
| includes all water of salinity similar to the open sea
| and connected to it by natural channels. For example, the
| so-called East River in New York City would be a correct
| answer if the words "East" and "River" had the same number
| of letters.)

4 Red Sea (Eritrea; Sudan; Egypt; Yemen; Saudi Arabia) (+)
2 Bering Strait (AK, USA; Russia)
2 Bight of Bonny (Nigeria; Cameroon; Equatorial Guinea)
2 English Channel (England, UK; France)
2 San Francisco Bay (CA, USA)
1 Bristol Channel (England/Wales, UK)
1 Firth of Clyde (Scotland, UK)
1 Great Australian Bight (WA/SA, Australia)
1 Gulf of Oman (Oman; UAE; Iran)
1 Hecate Strait (BC, Canada)
1 Huon Gulf (Papua New Guinea)
1 Loch Fyne (Scotland, UK)
1 Lombok Strait (Indonesia)
1 Moray Firth (Scotland, UK)
1 Puget Sound (WA, USA)
1 South Australian Bight (WA/SA, Australia)
1 Strait of Sicily (Italy; Tunisia)
1 Torres Strait (QLD, Australia; Papua New Guinea)
WRONG:
1 Oyashio Current (not a place name)
1 Yangtze Estuary (China) (not ocean)
1 Yarra River (VIC, Australia) (not ocean)

The South Australian Bight is apparently an alternate name for the
Great Australian Bight, but since the question was "give a name",
not "name a part of the ocean", they count as separate answers.
The Bight of Bonny is an alternate name for the Bight of Biafra,
which would have been a wrong answer under the other name; the nearby
Bight of Benin is one example of a correct answer that was not given.

Estuaries are by definition zones where sea and river water mix,
so they might have "salinity similar to the open sea" at one end,
but not for their whole length. Some shallow bays actually have
a somewhat estuarine character, but I was able to find sufficient
salinity data to confirm that all such answers were acceptable.


| 9. Sometimes a movie (see rule 4.2), telling a fictional or
| fictionalized story, uses *in its title* a name or slogan owned
| or used by an actual business then existing, with intentional
| reference to that business or its products. (The name could
| be a trade name, brand name, corporate name, "doing business
| as" name, anything like that.) Give such a movie title.
|
| For example, "Tomorrow Never Dies" would be a correct answer
| if the newspaper "Tomorrow" depicted in the movie actually
| existed at the time it was made. Note: if the same business
| name (or variant forms of it) has appeared in different movie
| titles, they will be taken as equivalent answers.

4 Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
2 The Coca-Cola Kid (1985) [= A Thin Line Between Coke and Pepsi
(2002)]
1 Because of Winn Dixie (2005)
1 Chevrolet (1997)
1 Dinner at the Ritz (1937)
1 Dressing an Ape in Armani (2006)
1 Ferrari (2002)
1 Lloyd's of London (1936)
1 Masters of the Universe (1987)
1 Midnight at Madame Tussaud's (1936)
1 One Hour Photo (2002)
1 Roy Colt and Winchester Jack (1970)
1 Spider-Man (2002)
1 Tanga (Deu no New York Times?) (1987)
1 The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990)
1 The F.J. Holden (1977)
1 The Goldwyn Follies (1938)
1 The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
1 The Kentucky Derby (1922)
1 The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964)
1 You've Got Mail (1998)
WRONG:
1 (no answer)
1 The Meaning of Life (1983) (no corporate reference)
1 Thermos (2006) (documentary)

The answers I had in mind when asking the question were "Breakfast at
Tiffany's", "The Coca-Cola Kid", "The Yellow Rolls-Royce", and "You've
Got Mail", all of which were chosen, plus two railway movies, "Canadian
Pacific" (1949) and "The Harvey Girls" (1946), which were not.

I would have liked to rule out movies where the title mentioned their
own production company, like "The Goldwyn Follies", but I couldn't
think of a way to express such a rule clearly that might not rule
out some other answers, and anyway I didn't think there'd be many.
I did not think of movies where the "existing product" mentioned in
the title were the title characters themselves, as in "Spider-Man"
and "Masters of the Universe", but they're clearly legitimate under
the question as written.

In a few cases I had to guess whether the title really referred to an
existing business, but I gave the entrants the benefit of any doubt,
except for "Thermos". That one was dubious because the word is no
longer a trademark in some countries, but it didn't matter because
it was wrong in a different way. The (+) answer was "Super Size Me",
which would have been wrong for the same reason.


Thank you all for playing.
--
Mark Brader "People with whole brains, however, dispute
Toronto this claim, and are generally more articulate
msb DeleteThis @vex.net in expressing their views." -- Gary Larson

My text in this article is in the public domain.