Nerd Olympics

The Nerd Olympics. Any resemblance to any real events is entirely coincidental.

^This needs updating to 2007, n'est pas? Or 2010! Wow we are old :(

Nerd Olympic Board

As many of you will know, we have decided to form an executive committee to decide the nature, content and venue of the Nerd Olympics, known as the Nerd Olympic Board, or NOB for short.

What we haven't discussed yet is a leader and forgive me if I am speaking out of turn, but I would like to nominate Marc as the head of this board. Would other nerd members please indicate if you think Marc is a NOB-head as well.

Marc should be the NOB-head	Marc should not be the NOB-head
Marc
Abi
Neil (Marc is a natural)
Lee

Participants

We need a list of definite competitors for the Nerd Olympics. It seems as though we may have a few new additions. All competitors should be willing to participate in the whole competition. The list of definitely competitors is as follows:

• Marc
• Lee
• Neil
• Abi
• Matt
• Elín
• Tim
• Sissy

Although this is the finalised list, we are allowed guest competitors. The guest competitors are allowed to win prizes but will not earn any points or affect the score of the main participants

Venues

The Nerd Olympics will be held at a variety of stadia around England. Each host should aim to hold about four medium sized events. People willing to host events are as follows:

• Neil / Abi - Hemel Hempstead
• Marc - Milton Keynes
• Lee - Birmingham
• Tim / Sissy - Leatherhead
• Elín / Matthew - East Claydon

Round 1 - Hemel Hempstead Stadium - 9 & 10 September 2005

Is any-one interested in having round 1 of the nerd olympics this weekend? At our flat (Neil & Abi)? It'd just be a good excuse to play SingStar. Abi's working on Saturday but people could come round Saturday evening and have some events on Sunday morning? I'll have to hunt out a good pool pub. We could formulate a final list of events for round 1 in the meantime via the Wiki.

Note: Tim can't make this weekend, and doubtless other people won't be able to too, so we'd have to think of another date. Any ideas?

Note: Lee also can't make this weekend as she is moving house!!!!! Her room is now a moving mess, but it is all very exciting.

Next weekend is proms in the park

Maybe the weekend after that (22nd & 23rd) or in six weekends time?

22nd & 23rd is good for me - Neil

Note: Please don't have it without Lee. She really wants to play too...

Note: Can I play? - Elín

Yeah, of course! - Neil

Note: ^_^ - Elín

Elín will have to get bonus nerd points before even starting the competition for going through all the effort of typing that funny unicode character in her name everytime! - Neil

NEWS FLASH - What about having the first round on the 9th September? It is also my bifday weekend so we can have a piss up for that (and Elin's and Lee's bifdays as well if they want). Whaddya fink? Abi

POSTMORTEM - Please note that the wrong scores were read out at the end of this round. I had forgotten to include the extra point for coming first. The positions, however, remain the same. Marc

Events

• Sudoku
• The Minute Game
• Death Tank
• Sing Star
• Typing

Round 2 - Birmingham Stadium - 23 & 24 September 2006

Events

• Paper aeroplane -oops
• Getting really tetchy when people don't know how to spell 'aeroplane'...
• Hearts
• Tetris

Round 3 - Milton Keynes Stadium - 7th August 2010

Events

• Scrabble (including animated debate before-hand, over the rules)
• Bop-it extreme
• Cheat
• Calculator relay test
• Something else?
• Something else?

Round 3 - Dorking Stadium - 12th OR 19th May 2007

Events

• Pool
• Eurovision
• Swingball?

Round 5 - Hemel Hempstead Stadium 2 - 24th & 25th November

The Hemel Hempstead stadium has been newly rebuilt with a much larger premises including a new garden outdoor arena (with shed facilities) and full wired and wireless network access throughout. The stadium is neatly located between two train stations with ample on-street parking nearby.

Events

• Swingball
• Super Mario War

Scoring

I propose three different methods of getting points in the olympics: main rounds, bonus rounds and bonus points.

Main Rounds

The main rounds score the most points and everyone competing will get a point.

As Marc suggested it'd be nice if everyone gets some points for each round so I propose that for each round you should get 1 point for coming last, 2 for coming 2nd to last and so on up to the number of competitors, but then you should get one extra bonus point for winning the round. If there are any ties then all people who finished at the same rank get the same number of points which is the higher score, (eg, if there are five competitors and two people place joint second then the winner gets 6 points and the two second place people get 4 points each). If anyone doesn't take part in a round then they get zero points but the other players still score as if everyone was taking part. So for example if there are 5 total competitors but only 4 take part in a particular round, with two people placing equal third then the scoring would be as follows:

1st place	6 points
2nd place	4 points
3rd place	3 points
other 3rd place	3 points
Non-partaker	0 points

As an additional twist I think that each competitor should be allocated one joker card (like they do in pub quizzes). Any player can adopt to play their joker card for any round, although it can only be played once. After playing the card the competitor will get double points for that round, but the competitor must choose to play the card before the round commences. So for example if Abi thinks she will do particularily well in the SingStar round, she can use her joker card then and get twelve points instead of six.

Note: Marc: I agree with most of this (and like the joker card idea), but I think it might be best for the winner to get 10 points and count down to 1. If few people participate in the event, it's not fair for the maximum amount of points scored to be less than they otherwise would be.

Reply: Neil: I think that was what I was trying to describe, eg "but the other players still score as if everyone was taking part". So if there are 8 total competitors in the whole olympics and one doesn't take part in a particular round then the winner of that round will still get 9 points, 2nd place would get 7 and so on but the person who didn't take part would get zero instead of the free 1 point they could have gotten for just taking part and coming last. I guess it doesn't really make any difference if you count down from 10 instead of counting down from the number of competitors (unless there are more than 10 of course..) except that it would be slightly more of a punishment if you didn't take part because you would be down more than one point.

Query: What if someone is taking part in the overall Nerd Olympics but can't make it to that particular round? - Lee

I guess as there are only eight competitors we could avoid hosting a round unless everyone can attend? Otherwise as the competiton gets more serious someone will organise an event during a weekday just so that no-one can turn up and they'd get all the points :) - Neil

Bonus rounds

For smaller rounds, such as the water tasting test or the Brain Training test, the winner gets two points and nobody else gets any.

Bonus points

Bonus points can be awarded by the NOB-head whenever he sees fit although if this is perceived to be unfair there may be a mutiny.

Comment: I like the idea of bonus points, for natural displays of nerdiness. (points to be allocated by the NOB-head) for instance: 'Elín' - typing her name in that way, 1 bonus point, Neil - going on about the scoring system for ages - 2 bonus points. etc. - Matt

Rough Event Ideas

Main Events

Musical interval recognition test

Can you distinguish major and minor chords, or a major second from a perfect fourth etc

Folding bike unfolding challenge

Specialist round

We could have a short quiz where everybody answers questions on somebody else's special chosen subject. We could agree the subjects beforehand to prevent people from picking stupid topics. We'd have to think of someway to stop people picking impossible to answer questions that nobody would ever know though.

Now that we've abandoned the joker cards, can we incorporate them into the specialist quiz round instead? You could get points for each quiz, but you could get double points if you play your joker card. Then the ranks could be taken from the total points. It'd be a lot easier to have joker cards just for this round because all of the categories are known before-hand. - Neil

Pool

Standard knock-out tournament, à la the world cup? I think the hotel across the road has pool but I'd have to investigate prices.

• Sudoku - Hemel Hempstead
• The Minute Game - Hemel Hempstead
• Death Tank - Hemel Hempstead
• Singstar - Hemel Hempstead
• Typing - Hemel Hempstead

• Paper aeroplane - Birmingham
• Hearts - Birmingham
• Tetris - Birmingham

• Dancing game - Milton Keynes
• Swerve (fun, four-player computer, high-paced game) - Milton Keynes
• Bop it extreme 2- Milton Keynes?
• Calculator speed relay - Milton Keynes?
• Geocaching time trial! - Milton Keynes?

• Lung capacity - East Claydon?

• Pool competiton - Leatherhead?

The following rounds are up for grabs

• Spaghetti and Jelly Baby

Competitors get a certain amount of spaghetti and Jelly Babies, and must build a structure strong enough to hold an egg/apple(we have free ones in the garden)/other object for a certain amount of time. Greatest vertical distance between ground and top of structure wins.

• Cranium

A board game that is like a combination of Pictionary and other games like it

• Success with the ladies

Most phone numbers collected wins?

• Arm wrestling
• Pin the tail on the donkey
• Variety of runs
• Cycle race
• Long jump (Long jump????????? - you what?)
• Spelin'
• IQ (or something like Raven's Matricies)- I must be very thick, what are raven matricies?
• Downing a pint - draught
• Not downing a pint and liking your ale in little sips test
• General grammmar and punctuation test (with extra points for the vehemency of your convinctions)
• Taste test (is this before or after the curry taste test?)
• Curry taste test (if you can handle a vindaloo test)
• Middle C
• Specialist round (like on Mastermind)
• Pictionary
• Table tennis
• Table football
• Darts
• Spot the dots
• The biscuit game
• Internet fact search
• Mallet's Mallet
• Name game
• Stop watch
• Banzai
• Guess the song
• Skimming (boing boing boing - not with my phone)
• Staring
• Eating doughnuts (no licking lips)
• Classing game, e.g. Street Firhget 2
• Lighting a fire
• Classic nerdy rock song lyric test
• ASAP
• Synonym game for rude body parts
• Super Mario Brothers on the Gameboy Color (remember that?)
• Scrabble! (so Abi can get some points..) - oi! I can get points! Maybe not in the biscuit game...
• Make a rocket like they did on Beauty and the Geek
• Complete the Red Dwarf quote
• Weight to height ratios (skinniest wins)
• Worst eyesight
• 'Success with the ladies' test
• Odd habits / phobias / general anti-social behaviour test
• Testo de povo kompreni esperantajn frazojn (A test of ability to comprehend Esperanto sentences? Facile! =D )
• The great "can you taste the difference between bottled water, tap water and filtered water?" test - wot like they did on BBC Breakfast News?
• The guitar game

  What is the guitar game? Does that mean Tim is going to bring his guitar? Yay - Neil

  The guitar game is on the PS2, it is so so so much fun! Like dance mat style, but with a guitar (Tim should bring his guitar anyway though) - Lee

  Does the guitar game have real strings or is it just normal PS2 buttons in the shape of a guitar? Does Tim get extra points if he brings his guitar? - Tim

  YES - Lee (but must be confirmed by the NOB head)

  Is this the guitar game? - Neil

  YES!!! - Lee

• Krypton Factor style game
• Monopoly/ Psionopoly
• Some kind of sci-fi quiz?
• Wiki Races! (It's soo much fun)
• What's the maximum height you can catch an egg from

Bonus rounds

• Cracker eating test

• Mental arithmetic: timing on Dr. Kawasomething's Brain Training on the Nintendo DS (go matt!)

• Powerball

• Chubby Bunnies - what is this? Sounds fun...

  - See how many grapes you can fit in your mouth

  ooh err...

Results

A spreadsheet, in OpenOffice.org/OASIS format is available here: Media:Nerd_Olympics_Scores.ods.

Overall results so far:

Rank	Name	Points
1	Matt	51
2	Lee	45
3	Tim	44
3	Marc	44
5	Elín	41
6	Neil	32
7	Abi	28
8	Sissy	12

Detailed results are available under each stadium's page.

^This is the Nerd Olympics. Shouldn't the ranking start at 0? =D