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    You know, Cambridge should adopt that as the City motto. It would sum the place up perfectly.

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      In this week's episode (Motorheads vs Time Ladies), points were awarded on the basis of revealed clues for answers that were 'not on the card' in each of the first two rounds.

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        Missed it this week, I'll have to catch up at the weekend. My wife told me that she scored "at least 11 pts", I was very impressed. Then again, she might have lied to me. I'm a bit peeved, I don't think I've ever managed 11 pts, even by cheating (in the Connecting Walls).

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          In this week's episode (Motorheads vs Time Ladies), points were awarded on the basis of revealed clues for answers that were 'not on the card' in each of the first two rounds.
          Yes, there's no consistency. if I remember rightly, the answers, given after two clues, did not fit with clue 3. Poor show by VCM.

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            In round 1 the team's answer matched the first three clues - more specifically than the expected answer - and not with the unseen fourth. In round 2 they came in after seeing two clues and gave a plausible explanation of what the sequence could be. (My reasoning matched theirs before they buzzed.)

            My argument is that they shouldn't be penalised for what they have chosen not to see. To go back to last week's example, if T = 3, Q = 4... could justifiably lead either to H = 6 or S = 6 as the fourth in the sequence and only the answer on the card is acceptable, you're playing 'guess what the setter's thinking'. There shouldn't be a disincentive to go for more greater reward by coming in early.

            Of course, I'm not suggesting that I'd be entitled to 5 points if picture 1 in a sequences round is of a chicken and I buzz in to say 'four chickens'. It's when there's enough to suggest an OC-type connection that I think it's valid to award the points. It's the job of the question editor(s) to filter out clues where a cogent alternative connection could be offered, unless they're deliberately laying a red-herring trail.

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              I think it's very difficult to draw a line somewhere on the spectrum, one end of which is your "four chickens" example. I think that to win any points, an answer to R2 should fit with all the first three clues, with a decent explanation of how it fits. Whether it's the answer the question setter thought of is irrelevant, but you shouldn't get marks for taking a risk and guessing something that only works with the first two clues (or in R1, guessing a connection that doesn't fit all 4).

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                In the R1 case this week, the team's answer included the expected connection (C) and gave a more specific, subsidiary connection (c) that was accepted as applicable to the three clues they'd seen. Should they have lost out on two points on the basis that the unseen fourth clue fitted with C but not with Cc?

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                  Ah, that's a trickier one, where I reckon some leeway is appropriate and VCM made the right call.

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                    Just catching up with this weeks show and what a load of bullshit.

                    First the Motorheads get points for a sequence which doesn't work and then they get points on the Wall round when they incorrectly identify them as "70s films" only giving the correct answer when prompted by VCM.

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                      Absolute carnage tonight, I only got 4 points tops, maybe 3.5 even. I thought the first 2 rounds were particularly obscure (only managed 2 pts, if that), then the Connecting Walls completely stumped me (0 point), and I only got 1 correct answer in the Missing Vowels... I made up for it in University Challenge, really smashed it, got about 13 pts.

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                        Gave OC my full attention for the first time this evening, and did surprisingly well - and far happier than I should have been to get the Discworld one. Agree, the Walls killed me too.

                        Did really well on the Missing Vowels. I usually just catch the end of the Vowels before UC, and it dawned on me that I always tend to do well on that round, despite usually being very bad at spelling.

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                          Originally posted by Pérou Flaquettes View Post
                          Absolute carnage tonight, I only got 4 points tops, maybe 3.5 even. I thought the first 2 rounds were particularly obscure (only managed 2 pts, if that), then the Connecting Walls completely stumped me (0 point), and I only got 1 correct answer in the Missing Vowels... I made up for it in University Challenge, really smashed it, got about 13 pts.
                          In a game where you score in 10s and 5s, that's quite an achievement.

                          Come to that - why isn't University Challenge just scored with 2s and 1s?

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                            Originally posted by Kevin S View Post
                            In a game where you score in 10s and 5s, that's quite an achievement.

                            Come to that - why isn't University Challenge just scored with 2s and 1s?
                            You’re right, my points system is bit confusing written like that. I meant "correct answers" regardless of how these answers are graded. So I roughly got 4 correct answers for the whole of OC and 13 for UC.

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                              Not happy with that picture they had for "gathers" (sorry if that's a mild spoiler by the way): regular gathers are made using parallel lines of long stitches, you wouldn't use a length of elastic for that. What they showed would give you some kind of basic ruching instead. It would have been so easy to find a picture of proper gathers as well.

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                                My wife, an experienced sewer, wasn’t happy either with that photo (here, at 11 minutes in, https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...ews-v-forrests, you can hear one contestant wondering if it's not a life jacket). I can’t remember exactly what my wife said last night (too technical for me I’m afraid) but she thought it was a bit far-fetched and "gathers" wasn’t the right term or something, although I think she added that "gathering" is indeed a sewing term, and the verb "to gather in" is used in sewing, as far as I remember.

                                She mentioned the word "ruche" too, so I said to her (she's learning French): "I’m glad your French is improving but I can’t say that this pic reminds me a beehive", to which she replied, "I mean ruche in the sewing sense, you dipstick" (???), which of course went way over my head. Anyway, I'm dead glad I learnt the word "ruche", I will defo use it in a casual conversation next time I happen to talk about sewing matters.



                                How to Ruche or Gather with Elastic

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                                  I believe "seamster" (or "seamstress") is a better way to describe someone good at this than a "sewer".

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                                    High five Mrs/Ms Flaquettes! Yeah "gather" is a perfectly legitimate sewing term but proper gathers look like this:


                                    You could say that in their picture the elastic "gathers" the fabric in an informal way but it's not what people who sew would really refer to as gathers.

                                    Rogin, a lot of people on that there internet use the neologism "sewist" to avoid the unfortunate association with alligators. Seamster or seamstress isn't great because it suggests one does it professionally. I usually just say "I sew" and that does the trick.

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                                      Oh, how I love those discussions about sewing!

                                      Streamstress is more elegant but it's a different thing, isn't it? My wife herself uses "sewer", although she would probably say "I'm good at sewing" rather than "I'm a good sewer" (which I didn't write, I wrote "My wife, an experienced sewer").

                                      Sewer (as in sewing) is pronounced differently from the other sewer anyway, so no risk of confusion either.

                                      10s of 1000s of occurences from BE or AE sites on Google for sewer (sewing) BTW, eg:

                                      I'm not a talented sewer, but Homemade Aprons would be a cute gift!

                                      I'm really not a very good sewer, and I didn't have any other fabric around

                                      We are looking for a talented sewer, that has experience sewing denim or similar materials,

                                      Claudia Winkleman, the presenter of The Great British Sewing Bee, has admitted that she's not a very good sewer

                                      Etc.

                                      There is a difference between the 2 terms too, sewer is more for hobbyists, seamstress is for s.o who does that for a living:

                                      Seamstress 1.a woman who sews, especially one who earns her living by sewing.

                                      Seamster. a person whose occupation is sewing; tailor.

                                      Sewer. a person that sews.

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                                        Originally posted by Fussbudget View Post
                                        High five Mrs/Ms Flaquettes! Yeah "gather" is a perfectly legitimate sewing term but proper gathers look like this:


                                        You could say that in their picture the elastic "gathers" the fabric in an informal way but it's not what people who sew would really refer to as gathers.

                                        Rogin, a lot of people on that there internet use the neologism "sewist" to avoid the unfortunate association with alligators. Seamster or seamstress isn't great because it suggests one does it professionally. I usually just say "I sew" and that does the trick.

                                        You could say that in their picture the elastic "gathers" the fabric. Ah yeah, I get the use of "to gather" now in this context, makes sense (hence the folds).

                                        "Sewist"... excellent!

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                                          In case the three question marks after dipstick were angling for some explanation, do you remember a recent discussion about using names of kitchen utensils as insults? Well, the dipstick is a part of a car that managed to succeed in doing just that.

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                                            Originally posted by Kevin S View Post
                                            In case the three question marks after dipstick were angling for some explanation, do you remember a recent discussion about using names of kitchen utensils as insults? Well, the dipstick is a part of a car that managed to succeed in doing just that.
                                            Ah, no, I know what dipstick means, the exclamation marks for were for this, in bold "I mean ruche in the sewing sense, you dipstick". When my wife said that to me I had no idea what she meant by ruche, I'd never heard the term before, that's what I meant.

                                            This discussion really is going off on all sorts of unexpected tangents!
                                            Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 29-11-2018, 22:32.

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                                              A further tangent, then: it appears that it's not only on Discworld that "seamstress" can be a euphemism:
                                              https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Seamstresses'_Guild

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                                                Originally posted by Lymeswold Snork View Post
                                                A further tangent, then: it appears that it's not only on Discworld that "seamstress" can be a euphemism:
                                                https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Seamstresses'_Guild
                                                Where do you think he got it from? Common answers on census when you didn't want to write prostitute under 'occupation'.

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                                                  Doing a bit of catch up on OC today, and saw the question where the sequence was army ranks going upwards - clues 1-3 were some Lieutenant, Kirk (a captain), and Barbara (a major). You were supposed to answer "Mustard" (or I guess "Blimp") as an example famous colonel. VC-M said hundreds of people would write in to comment. "Too right!" I thought, that's obviously not a sequence because the next rank up after Major is Lieutenant-Colonel. Turns out that she meant some ridiculous bit of Captain Kirk trivia re being an admiral, but honestly, very poor show.

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                                                    It tickled me somewhat, re: the discussion on the previous page, that the picture question in this week's sequences round opened with one chicken.

                                                    For a time I was in Twitter correspondence with the guy who finds the pictures for OC, so if you like I can send some tutting his way about 'gathers'.

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