Thursday, May 1, 2008

Announcing: The L&TM5K Decathlon!


OK, People! Seeing as how it's been a while since we had a large-scale fiasco on these pages, it's now time for the first running of

The L&TM5K Decathlon!!

That's right, 10 contests of skill and creativity spread over two weeks in a festival atmosphere of bloggy merriment! And there are relatively sweet prizes!

The Prizes!

The Gold Medal (first prize) = a $35 gift certificate to online
retailer Amazon.com, plus bragging rights on a humungous scale!
Plus, in responding to any comments you leave until July 1, 2008, I
will address you "Hail, Victor!"


The Silver Medal (second prize) = a $25 gift certificate to online
retailer Amazon.com, plus bragging rights on a massive scale!


The Blue Medal (third prize) = a $15 gift certificate to corporate coffee juggernaut Starbucks, plus bragging rights on an impressive scale!

The Green Medal (fourth prize) = bragging rights on a largish scale!

The Red Medal (fifth prize) = bragging rights!

(All of the above may also receive a little graphic that they can proudly display on their own home page, but frankly only if everything goes well and then I get around to it. But I'm usually pretty good about that sort of thing.)

The Games!

  • Six challenging tests of knowledge on traditional L&TM5K themes like history, geography, and the arts!

  • Three provocative contests of creativity!

  • One test of athletic prowess, kind of!

The Action!

All begins Monday, May 5th!


Details, Details….

A new event will be announced on every weekday, May 5 through May 16. Some events may allow more than one day for completion; a deadline will be given for each event. The Monday Quiz XXVI & XXVII and The Thursday Quiz XXXVI & XXXVII will be incorporated as Decathlon events, with some changes to their usual format.

Creative entries will be judged with obvious and lighthearted subjectivity by michael5000 and/or independent outside observers.

If this concept really tanks, I reserve the right to turn it into a pentathlon.

Scoring will happen like so: For the Knowledge Events, 1st prize is worth 1200 points, 2nd =1000, 3rd = 800, 4th = 600, and 5th = 400; other participants get up to 200 points per event for participating.

For the Creative and Athletic Events, 1st prize is worth 1000 points, 2nd = 900, 3rd = 800, 4th = 700, 5th = 500, and other participants get up to 300 points for taking part.

The awards ceremony will be held Saturday, May 17.


Questions? Send 'em to M5Kdecathlon@gmail.com. No, really.

10 comments:

d said...

what i don't understand is why creativity and athleticism are deemed as less worthy in your mind. smarts ain't everything you know. (said the dumb guy who fancies himself both an artist and a jock.)

Unknown said...

@d: Ah, excellent question! I actually deem creativity and athleticism quite highly indeed, and thus expect those events to be worth a little more in the aggregate. True, first and second prizes are a little lower. This is because I have "bunched" the scoring. Since the scoring will be subjective, I wanted there to be less scoring differential, and I achieved this by awarding somewhat fewer points for first and second but more points for fourth, fifth, and participation. So that's what that's all about.

Nichim said...

When I moved into my new office there were a bunch of flash cards of bad black and white xeroxes of art, including some art like Spiral Jetty that I remember from previous quizzes. I am going to study them so I can bring honor to my house in the Decathalon. (I'm also going to continue studying everything else I usually study, in case you'd like to sway things in my favor by having events in Spanish grammar, English grammar, techniques in ESL pedagogy, parts of a syllabus, international student reading comprehension problems in Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Chinook Jargon/chinuk-wawa, or research in community translation and interpretation. Jes sayin.)

Rebel said...

You know, Powells.com ships everywhere Amazon does. I may have to boycott the decathalon....

yeah.... or not.

Michael5000 said...

@Rebel: A fine point! However, the proximate cause of this entire fiasco is that I have through unusual circumstances ended up with a very large credit balance at Amazon, and so can offer prizes without it feeling like I'm spending much money. Otherwise it would be Powells all the way, baby! (The ultimate cause is just that I always thought it would be fun to have a Decathlon.)

@Nichim: I'm sure you would be the skookum high muckymuck of any Chinook Jargon quiz I threw down.

Rebel said...

Well, fine... it's not like you're offering gift cards to Barnes & Nobles... then I'd really have to boycott.




or not. ;)

mhwitt said...

The action starts on my birthday and the awards ceremony coincides with my wife's. Somehow, I don't think these facts will help our odds.

Anonymous said...

Recommend all tests are about state capitals. Or Beatles. Or KarmaSartre.

Dan Nolan said...

Wow, you're putting your money where your blog is. Ambitious and impressive. I'll give it a run.

McGuff said...

Can we move quickly to the athletic prowess while I'm still warmed up from the weekend?