Anton is the new Wizard Judge for Round 106! Round 105 Summary: Theme - Happy Holidays in FRC-Land! Garth Rose is the Judge, Ed Murphy is the Wizard. Player Eligibility expires Style ---------------------------------------------- Anton 8 Jan 17:01:48 +3.0 Chuck Ineligible -0.5 Stein Ineligible -3.0 Andre Ineligible +0.8 Jason Ineligible +0.5 Andrew Ineligible +0.5 Everyone else Ineligible +0.0 Rule Author Posted at Judgement Style ------------------------------------------------ 105:1 Chuck 16 Dec 23:32:39 VALID -1.5 105:2 Jason 17 Dec 01:21:45 INVALID +0.5 105:3 Andre 17 Dec 17:16:03 VALID +0.8 105:4 Andrew 17 Dec 17:25:27 INVALID +0.5 105:5 Stein 18 Dec 12:21:45 VALID -3.0 105:6 Anton 20 Dec 17:20:11 VALID +2.5 105:7 Chuck 23 Dec 18:31:19 VALID +1.0 105:8 Anton 1 Jan 17:01:48 VALID +0.5 Note: The round was frozen from 00:00 25 Dec to 00:00 30 Dec 1999. Rules and Judgements: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 105:1 - Chuck - 16 Dec 1998 23:32:39 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Federal Republic of Conundra has 12 holidays each year. (Conundra uses the standard Gregorian calendar we are familiar with.) The same 12 holidays occur every year, although a given holiday does not necessarily fall on the same date in each year. Each rule this round shall provide information about when the holidays occur which could not have been deduced solely from the previous rules of the round. No more than two holidays ever fall in any month in a single year. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Judgement: VALID, of course. It takes real effort to submit an invalid first rule. Style: It suits the theme, in a way I hadn't expected, and I like that. And it's brief and to the point, covering the holes that need covering. Unfortunately, the restriction is far too vague. In principle, the second rule could have won the round simply by saying, 'The first day of each month is a holiday.' Not terribly interesting, I think everyone will agree. (Anyone trying this will face a proposal to designate them Heinously Unstylish. :) I give it -1.5 Style. (I like 'the Federal Republic of Conundra', btw. Is it from a previous round? I don't recall.) Judge Garth ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 105.2 - Jason - 17 Dec 1998 01:21:45 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Conundra celebrates the Feast of the Revisited Chicken on the first day of the season of kindness. The holiday commemorates the tale of a kind woodsman who promised a sad hen to recover her stolen eggs and returned a week later with chicks. The season of kindness lasts 56 days, starting on the first Tuesday in June and ending exactly two weeks later. (Conundrans are thoughtful and generous throughout the year. Kindness is the coldest season in Conundra, and charity is taken more seriously then than in other seasons.) Each future rule shall name and describe one of Conundra's holidays until each holiday has been named. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Judgement: INVALID. Er, maybe I'm missing something, but it doesn't seem likely that the season of kindness could last both "56 days" and "exactly two weeks". I might let this slip by if Chuck hadn't explicitly stated that Conundra uses the Gregorian calendar - which includes a seven day week. Perhaps you meant to type "eight" instead of "two", Jason? Even then there might have been trouble, though; one could easily interpret the eight weeks as ending on a Tuesday rather than a Monday, yielding 57 days. (ie, 'exactly one week after Tuesday' always means the following Tuesday.) Style: I feel warmly inclined toward this rule. I very much like the idea of naming and describing the holidays. And Jason added a good deal of atmosphere very quickly with just a few touches - for example, I note that Conundra is in the southern hemisphere. Though the proposed holiday and the season of kindness are perhaps a wee bit dull, just before Christmas I'm prepared to make allowances in the direction of good cheer. :) +0.5 Style. Validity would have made it higher. I'll come out with a round summary soon. Judge Garth ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 105:3 - Andre - 17 Dec 1998 17:16:03 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The first holiday of each year is New Year's Day, which is celebrated with the eating of Conans, small cookies that, according to foreigners, are supposed to be over-baked. Of course the Conundrums (that's how the inhabitants are called) disagree, saying Conans are best if they have been in the oven for at least 12 hours. New Year's Day in Conundra is not celebrated on the first of January, as it is in our countries, but on the day of the first new moon of the year. As such, it is one of the 4 holidays that neither has a constant date nor a constant day of the week. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Judgement: VALID. At first I thought there was a contradiction regarding agreement and disagreement over Conans, but I don't know just what sort of cookie dough is used in Conans. Besides, the Conundrums can *say* whatever they want - they presumably like conundrums, after all. :) (BTW, the only Conan *I've* ever come across was severely *half*-baked. ;) Style: Bringing the phase of the moon into things is sure to make things interesting. Until defined as otherwise, I am going to assume that Conundra is on Earth, and so the synodic period of the moon is what we expect it to be. (Note that the Gregorian calendar has absolutely nothing to say about the moon's period.) And Andre chose to describe the holiday, though he didn't have to, which I appreciated. On the other hand, there is no restriction on future rules, save that which arises from fixing a holiday. Later in the round this won't be as important, as fixing the holidays will get quite interesting enough; but 105:1 leaves things wide open. +0.8 Style. Judge's Note: If the discussion of my judgement is unclear, it arises from the phrasing, 'that, according to foreigners, are supposed to be over-baked' - ie, they *should* be over-baked, but they're not. I suspect that Andre might have meant 'that, according to foreigners, are over-baked'. In any case, it doesn't affect validity. +0.5 Style to whoever incorporates a restriction similar to Jason's 105:2 in a rule. Judge Garth ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 105:4 - Andrew Stefanski - 17 Dec 1998 17:25:27 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conundra is a religious republic. In fact, all twelve of it's holidays are religious holidays, though it doesn't always seem that way to foreigners, due to the fact some of them are not named as such. All twelve holidays are also linked to a series of events in their religious books. This gives them an interesting property - all of the holidays can be described in terms related to other holidays. So should a citizen only remember the date of one holiday for a year, they can deduce all of the other twelve from that one date. The holiday that occurs in August occurs on the same day of the month as the holiday in June. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judgement: INVALID. The last sentence essentially says there are thirteen holidays, when we know there are only twelve. It's a pity, too, as this rule would have created some very interesting traps in combination with 105:3. Style: In combination with 105:3, this rule would have made some positively devious openings. Unfortunately, Andrew couldn't possibly have known that when he submitted it. :) Still, I really like tying all the holidays together - it would have given the round structure. 'The holiday that occurs in...' is breathtakingly dull, though, even if the sentence does create a few potential pitfalls. Overall, including the fact it's invalid, I give it 0.5 Style. Judge Garth ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 105:5 - Stein Kulseth - 18 Dec 1998 12:21:45 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Midsummers day is the only holiday in the official 13 week long summer season, and as the name suggests it always occurs on Wednesday of the 7th week of summer. This means that otside of the non-leap-yeared whole-century-years it will occur in June exactly 5 times in every 28 year period, otherwise it will occur in the first week of July. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Judgement: VALID. But I'm not happy about it. OK, the 'official 13 week summer season' clearly is not dependent on the astronomical season of summer, as that always starts on June 21st or 22nd. And since the middle of the season is a Wednesday, it must always start on a Sunday. Further, we can deduce that it must be a Sunday in May. So far, so good. But there just simply is no fixed Sunday in May that causes the 7th Wednesday after it to occur in June 5 times in every 28 year period. The closest is the third Sunday in May, which causes Midsummer's Day to be in June 8 times in 28 years. So, the only way things can work is to kludge up some ridiculously arbitrary rule to shift the starting date of the season from year to year so things work out just so. And one starts thinking along *those* lines, one bumps up against the other big hole in the rule, namely that we aren't told *when* in June the holiday falls, when it does fall in June. We had been implicitly assuming that it falls in the last weeek in June in the prior paragraph, but the rule in no way justifies this assumption. One is forced to conclude that the summer season can start anywhere from the third Sunday in April to the fourth Sunday in May, depending in some complicated way on the status of the leap year and the day the year starts on. So, no holidays in May, June, or July, or in portions of April and August. Unfortunately, none of this mess invalidates the rule in itself. Stein should have given us some idea of when the season started, so that his dangling 'This means that' would have something to refer to. But I see no logical contradiction, just a gross mismatch of the tone of the rule to the reality. If anyone can think of a reason why I can and should invalidate this rule, please let me know and I will happily alter my judgement and reward the individual in question with Style points. Style: The rule is valid only because Stein left himself a great deal of wiggle room - and I suspect that his assertion of '5 times in 28 years' is a miscalculation. The Judge also is not exactly thrilled to have had to spend three hours poring over a perpetual calendar, writing up a page of notes, and repeatedly retyping this judgement in the process of figuring that out. -3.0 Style. Judge Garth ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 105:6 - Anton - 20 Dec 1998 17:20:11 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The most erratic holiday in Conundra is the Feast of Fate. This never occurs in the same month, nor on the same day of the week, in two successive years. In fact it is ridiculously difficult to determine when this holiday actually takes place! There are several theories as to the origin of this festival. The official line is that it celebrates the unpredictable nature of Fate. However, most people subscribe to the more romantic notion that it was created by an eccentric anarchist in protest against the undue complexity of the existing calendar (after all - why does summer always start on the 20th Sunday after the 1st Friday of January?). Hence its more popular title: Rebel's Revenge. More recently, the cynics in Conundra have noted that this holiday dates from a time suspiciously close to the advent of the commercial production of diaries, and have suggested it is actually just a plot to boost sales. Their unwieldy description of this day as the Calendar Cartel's Creation has never caught on however. It is known that the Feast of Fate is not as random as first appears. However, no future rule will ever enable us to pin down precisely when it occurs each year. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Judgement: VALID. Whipping out my perpetual calendar again, I have carefully checked out Anton's results concerning the beginning of summer. (This was relatively easy, as I still had all my notes and tables.) It checks out fine. Congratulations, Anton! Summer will begin on the third Sunday in May, except that 3 years out of 28 it will begin on the fourth Sunday. The earliest the summer season can begin is May 15th, and the latest is May 22nd. Other details, such as the date of Midsummer's Day and the end of summer, I leave to the players. No reason why I should do all your work for you. ;) The Feast of Fate is consistent with prior rules. In fact, it neatly steps around the apparent requirement of 105:1 that the round end when all holidays are completely described. Some might object that the last sentence implies that the date of the Feast is not finitely describable, and thus *is* random... but I don't think that anyone really believes that we will generate an infinite number of rules in this round. :) Style: This rule has a lot going for it. First, it plugs the gaping holes in 105:5. Second, it provides the marvelously devious Feast of Fate. And finally, the description of the Feast of Fate made me laugh aloud! It's always nice when a rule brightens one's day. The only nit I have to pick is that we aren't told how the Feast is celebrated. It's also a tad long, but I don't mind that if it's *good*. :) +2.5 Style. Judge's Note: Once again, I offer an extra +0.5 Style to anyone who requires that the celebration of holidays be described. And I'll throw in another bonus of +0.5 Style to anyone who requires that the holidays be linked in some fashion, as Andrew's 105:4 would have if valid. 105:7 - Chuck - 23 Dec 1998 18:31:19 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Conundrums (as their name suggests) love puzzles of all types. In order to honor this pasttime of theirs, no Rule which is the first to mention any specific holiday may give enough information to fully determine the date of that holiday in every year, lest it become too easy to determine when a holiday occurs. The holiday Symphonia commemorates all non-original music. While Conundrums love music, they do not love it as much as puzzle-solving or puzzle-making. For much of Conundra's history, it was thought that newly composed music had to be entirely original; the composition of such music took much time away from their beloved puzzles. The composer Confragrum was the first to realize that this need not be so, and Symphonia is celebrated every year with performances of his First Reorchestrated Concerto. Now very little music written in Conundra is fully original, with most of it being adpated from or borrowing from previous works. (This is not, of course, to say that there is not much room for creativity in the writing of such works.) In 1998, Symphonia fell on Friday, February 13. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [Note: I do not believe that 105:3 fully specified the date of New Year's Day -- even if Conundra is on earth, which time zone(s) it is in may affect the date on which the first new moon of the year falls. Thus, my requirement that the first Rule to mention a holiday cannot fully determine its date is not in conflict with 105:3.] Judgement: VALID. This one took some careful thought, though. 105:3 states that New Year's Day occurs on 'the day of the first full moon of the year.' We are not told how one determines the day of the first full moon. This may sound like extreme nit-picking, but it isn't - it makes a difference whether you choose the exact astronomical moment of conjunction, or when the full moon can first be *observed* in the sky. My interpretation of 105:3 is the former; if we had some sort of system for reporting observations of lunar phases (as the Muslims do for setting Ramadan) it would have had to have been mentioned. So, one finds the moment of conjuction and assigns the holiday to the day (starting at midnight, as per the Gregorian calendar) it falls in. Given this interpretation, Chuck is right - time zones can potentially affect the date of the holiday. In the extreme case, different parts of Conundra could celebrate the holiday on different dates! Since this is completely against everything implied in the rules thus far, I am forced to the conclusion that Conundra is entirely within a single time zone (or else, by national law they share the same time regardless of zones, as some countries do). For the same reason, Conundra can not straddle the International Date Line. All that said, Chuck's restriction holds. (On the other interpretation of 105:3, this would *not* be the case - as the full moon is always observed to rise close to sunset, never as late as midnight. Though I admit, things could get tricksy if Conundra happens to be inside the Arctic or Antarctic Circles.) Style: This rule barely squeaked through, but it should certainly liven liven things up, now that we can't just fix holidays at whim. The description of Symphonia was at least interesting. I give it +1.0 Style. The Judge apologizes profusely for the delay in judging this rule. I have been quite ill, and have had to deal with a number of other things despite it. I realize this is a bit hard on Chuck, but it seems that Anton is the new Wizard Judge. Judge Garth ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 105:8 - Anton - 1 Jan 1999 17:01:48 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ It is unsurprising - given its recycling theme - that Symphonia occurs on the same date every year. What is much less clear however is why the related festival of Amnesia occurs precisely one (or is it two?) week(s) later (I forget which). Whereas Symphonia celebrates continuity and a remembrance of things past, Amnesia looks forward to the shape of things to come. Traditionally it was observed by the cancelling of debts and the releasing of prisoners. With the rise of capitalism across Conundra however, the authorities are keen to promote less economically harmful pursuits - so it is now usually celebrated by the purchase of one or more of the very latest consumer products. One notable feature of Amnesia and Symphonia is that they are the only two holidays which are always separated by the same number of days (in any calendar year). The rest of the holidays in the Conundran calendar also fall naturally into pairs. For example New Year's and Midsummers Days, or The Feast of Fate and Foundation Day (whose date is, naturally, fixed). Future rules must, if introducing a new holiday, indicate with which other festival it is linked. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judgement: VALID. There's nothing particularly controversial about this rule, despite the intimations of a couple sentences. Style: The pairing of holidays would have been bound to make things interesting, had the round continued. I liked the bit about the latest consumer products, too. :) 0.5 Style.