The "Final Answer To Everything" Game, Questions & Answers Thread

I learned that, if given the proper motivation, no one on this site has a life outside of ATS.

Just gotta say that I've really enjoyed playing w/ all of you over the last few days. It's been an amazing bonding process that we've all gone through, and defo one of the best brainstorming sessions I've ever been involved with.

To those of you on the "night shift", thanks for helping me to get through some really boring days at work.

To the 3 Amigos, what more can I say than, great game. While I may not have appeared to be very active to some, I've never been sucked into anything online like this before. 誠にありがとうございます。

And most of all, to silinous, congratulations!

Cheers,



Hokkaido Hillbilly

Still waiting for the long form of that equation...

The game was really fun. I wouldn't have found this site if it wasn't for prounreal.com which is a gaming forum for unreal tournament. Anyways great game, and now I'm addicted to all the stuff ont his forum.

For the next game make sure the delays don't last more than a day or so because we need some type of breakthrough every couple of hours or else we might suffer aneurysms. Maybe in one of the next games you could have some questions that require solving differential equations or having to sling some code(or crack some alien cryptography) to solve the problem, something that will make me feel a little more at home.

Springer, I'd be interested in knowing how many new members were picked up since this started.

Also, were the thread tags being added by people in the know? They caused a lot of wild-goose-chases...

Since this is turning out to be more of a praise thread than anything else, I'd like to make my own input. And to avoid repeating myself, I'll copy&paste the letter I wrote to Springer & S.O.
Oh, and because I'm lazy.
P.S. I'm also curious about the q_ feature...were there more questions that we missed? And, who is metaphysician?
cheers

"Springer & Skeptic O.,

I'm sitting here, after the end of the game, in awe; trying to understand what I've experienced for the last five days of my life. I went from excitement to frustration to obsession to desperation to excitement and all over again. This game was genius, I enjoyed every minute of it, even the times when I was going insane trying to figure it out.
But what you guys did was so much more than a game with a prize. It didn't really hit me until that last page.
You had an incredibly large amount of people glued to their seats, working together to get to that final answer. All the while I was expecting disappointment, I was expecting to go "That's it? That's what I waisted all these days for?" I guess the reason I was expecting that is because that's what I usually get. We are conditioned to expect mediocrity.
When I read that final page it was like you took that expectation, slapped me in the face with it and said: "No! We know there's better and we're giving you better and you should expect better!"
I am so grateful for that and so happy to know that there are people like you out there.
The internet is a powerful weapon. It's the fastest way to spread knowledge. People in your position have the power to influence thousands of people all over the world. People in your position also know human nature. They know what keeps them interested, their curiosity, their need to come to a conclusion. Most of these people use that knowledge for personal interests.
The game was structured in such a way that you made everyone search and search for more, you kept people interested. You did use people's curiosity and you did use their need to come to a conclusion; but you used it to everyone's benefit. And what an amazing conclusion indeed!
What a powerful and moving message!
I only hope that everyone who has participated in this short -but entangling- adventure, has realised that we all got a piece of the treasure.
Listen to each other. What a beautiful thing to say when you know you have hundreds of people listening. You had that power and you chose to say: Listen to each other. You gradually made everyone listen; and when everyone was finally listening, you said "Listen to each other."
You guys set an example. Your message is full of hope, truth and love. Thank you for not letting us down.
I only hope that the winner of the website will keep that standard and use that same power for the greater good.
I am proud to be an ATS member.

Love,
Theodora"

The game was really FUN just wish I coulda contributed more to the answers, ah well Ill be looking foward to the next game. I already have my Monkey Brainstorm group hard at work

[edit on 28-7-2006 by Revelmonk]

I really enjoyed the game and was truly amazed by the intelligence of my fellow ATS members. Well done guys (and girls?)!

Unfortunately I only stumbled across the game halfway through, but still wanted to be part of the action.
But as I tried to catch up, I was met with frustration. I would complete the sequence to the point where all the answers was solved, then as I tried some answers I soon found that the last question I got "right" broke, i.e. when the page was refreshed I got the "Out of sequence" message. Another refresh would turn up "the not correct" response. This meant that the whole thing had to be done all over. But the second time round about halfway through I would get the "Not Correct" response. That meant deleting all cookies and starting over again. You can understand that going through this exercise a couple of times is quite frustrating. And by the time I got the where I wanted to be the next answer was already out, meaning I was back at square 1. In the end I just gave up.

So what I'm saying is this Cookie dependent system is a bit frustrating - clever - but frustrating. Maybe it was part of the game, but it put me off.

Another thing - wasn't this a bit "Americanised"? Nothing wrong with that, but if it had a bit more of an international flair everyone would have fair chance?

(Sorry, there always has to be a whiner... This time it had to be me...)

Looking forward to the next game!

Firefox... They may only have 10% of the overall market share but the people playing this game represent the more "astute" users of the internet, people who do a little MORE than check the weather and the headlines. I bet in that demographic the percentage of Firefox users skyrockets!

Opera is better

Originally posted by Tuning Spork
Freenrgy2,
I know that you said you multiplied 240 * 4/3. But how did you get 4/3 out of "2/3 of 1/2 of 1/4"? Can you write it in long form?

[edit on 27-7-2006 by Tuning Spork]

[edit on 27-7-2006 by Tuning Spork]

I think most of us here think it was a goof. Apparently, the "of" was interpretted as division (should be multiplication) for one of the fractions, hence you multiply by the reciprocal. When I got to that question, I got 20 as well. Must have been some bad math.

ATS, glad I found it. This is a collective soul like no other. Kudos to the great minds involved. I wish I could have had more input, if nothing else, step back and take a look at what happened. Some of the ugly in humanity came out, but in the end the group was strong... strong together. I truely believe this site is ready for whatever the world throws at it.

There will be another game coming out shortly according to SO and Springer. It is supposed to be a UFO themed game. Keep your eyes out for it, should be a doozy.

Doubleplusagree with the postings on use of cookies. Clever idea, but painful execution that did nothing but make me want to stop playing due to frustration. I don't mind frustration at not being able to solve a riddle, but having to trudge trough the answers five or six times .... yug!

nice note Theowdra. I think we all agree that, while we didn't all win, the message was great and the teamwork was astounding.

Even nicer quote. I was reading the paper yesterday, on my way to work, praying the game wasn't over and praying that it was so I could get back to working and being normal and I came across an amazing bit of news that had me thinking of the game and I was laughing so much that the cab driver was getting nervous.

Seems David Hasselhoff also tried the urine.html thing, only he got it all over himself.

For those of you who were involved, if you don't see me in action when the next game is found, please drop me a line to alert me. I'd hate to miss out on the frustration of being completely stumped, only to have someone pop in, first post and all, and say "guys try anal probe."

this game was simple in the form but complex on the content (is this correct english? )

I think this formula is very interesting, even the cookie idea that caused alot of stress with people having to imput all the answers over and over again was a good idea, it required caution so the browser window had to be managed very carefully...

some of the questions were too easy for some specialy for those who live in USA...I woud never figure out the FARGO one that fast...But in general the dificulty level was ok for people who like this subjects.

If the next game is about UFO´s I´m sure Ill be more helpfull because I´m a bit maniac about that ...no I´ve never seen one and never bee abducted...lol but i like to read about that

once again, thank you SSO this was a great game, the best I´ve ever played

AND of course thank you guys, I loved to share this experience with you all

Finally, congratulations once again Sillinous, you deserve the prize no more no less than any other player, you just figured it ou faster i would say this to any other member withonly a few exceptions (but not me)
I have a website myself and it was all created by me, so, about websites i can tell you one thing, and i guess it´s the most important thing af all:

The content is everything

you may have alot of links pointing to your domain, but that is only a start, if you want to succeed you will have to work allot on it, you will have to give it life.
A website is a place you visit just like a phisical place, it has to have something to keep people going there , it has to be dynamic a fresh

good luck and hope to seeyou in the next game

P.S.

take a look at my new AVATAR


fred

[edit on 28/7/06 by derfred33]

[edit on 28/7/06 by derfred33]

I disagree that the game was US biased. Of the location pictures, we had Fargo, Tower of Babel and 885 Lexington for the answers. Take a look at the three of them.

Fargo is a small city made famous by a Cohen brothers movie (I only saw bits and pieces of it). I never would have guessed the city. I'm assuming the person that did get that has either been there or has seen the movie a billion times.

Tower of Babel. This was a picture of the tower that was constructed in the 1920's film Metropolis. German movie, not american and not a real location. Anyone could have nabbed that question.

885 Lexington. As discussed, the lipstick building, as it is called, is located in Third Avenue, not Lexington Avenue. To let you know how unbiased this one was, I live 4 blocks from the building and one block from the address that was the answer. I tried every variation of lipstick and building (including lipstick lesbian because I was bored, frustrated and god dammit I missed my porn). Never would I have guessed that the address they were looking for was one that was visible from the higher floors of the building in the picture.

Incidentally, as mentioned earlier in this thread, the courtyard building that is located at 885 Lex is Osborne Enterprises in Spiderman (the first movie).

I am going to go back and read thru the monster thread to see how some of these answers were found as the process of resolution was impressive and some of these answers were deemed impossible to solve by us all. Ok, only mechanic but he said that every one was the hardest one yet.

you didn quoted me but I talked about this on the post so...


I wouldn´t call it "biased" it´s natural that if the game was made by americans the questions are somhow related to american themes.

I was trying to point out (with my limited englsh) that some questions were easyer for people who live in usa so that way they could be more helpfull on those particular questions, but in general the questions were of very diverse nature so i think everyone had a chance to help

once agai, the game was fantastic...great moments I lived

fred

Once again, applause for sil and everyone else who contributed to the game/thread. It was a sleep-deprived blast for me and I can't wait til the next one.

I only have a few questions, a few of which have already been asked but as of yet not answered:

1) were there any more q_.html questions?

2) (more for S.O.) what kind of scripting were you doing server-side for this game? (if it doesn't disrupt the next one )

3) what question was the hardest for you guys to come up with? I thought the antiprize one as well as the uvula ones were particularly clever.

Cheers to all ... I got my tin foil hat on and I'm ready to go for round 2!!!

Originally posted by Fiverz
1) were there any more q_.html questions?

Yes. Players only discovered about 50% of the available questions.

2) (more for S.O.) what kind of scripting were you doing server-side for this game? (if it doesn't disrupt the next one

)

Nothing crazy. Plain old PHP with some Apache voodoo thrown in.

3) what question was the hardest for you guys to come up with? I thought the antiprize one as well as the uvula ones were particularly clever.

The final sequence took the most thought as we tried to zero-in on a theme, while making the theme obvious only at the last 2 or 3 questions.