New Scaratings

This is about the "Stardust" question. We went with Neil Gaiman, who wrote the book "Stardust", later made into a movie. The answer was "Stephen Tall," who if you Google "Stardust series," doesn't even come up until the second page (and is someone I've never heard of).

So perhaps it was a really great question written by someone who thought people who knew sf/fantasy would be distracted by Gaiman having written a book by that name. Or perhaps the person writing the question had no idea Gaiman wrote such a book, and was just picking alternate (wrong) names at random.

(Although the real reason we lost tonight is that COOGS didn't go with me until after clues on two other questions, including the Charles Sheffield one.)

Brooke/AARDVK

The Sheffield Web Between the Worlds space elevator question has appeared multiple times, surprised Coogs bled some on that.

I also missed the Stardust question down to 200, but don't remember the exact wording.

He saw Arthur C. Clarke, and was remembering the concept behind "Fountains of Paradise," and while I was saying no, that's a different book, we lost the points.

Brooke/AARDVK

Aahhh. Gotcha.

I've noticed over the years that writers of specialty games have no compunction about ratcheting up the difficulty level; and rightfully so.
But this smells like the writer stumbled across the more obscure name during research and put in Gaiman as a "gotcha" option thereby achieving a similarly desired goal.
Game writers have to feel good about themselves too, you know...

p.s. You and I would have held hands walking down that same Gaiman primrose path. Gosh, I hope COOGS isn't the jealous type...

I got distracted on a couple of early questions so didn't play this game seriously. Stephen Tall is a fairly well-known SF//F writer. I haven't heard of his series, but IIRC the title seemed to me to preclude Stardust/Gaiman.

I thought Clarke was a great distractor on the space elevator question. I knew Fountains of Paradise had no sequels or prequels, so it didn't work for me. I still would have bled some points though.

The reason I posed the question is in part because I've seen problems with the "Get a Clue" round of Spotlight when the clue points to two equally possible answers, and I get the feeling that the question writer just didn't look at the supposed wrong answer in sufficient depth to realize it does have a connection to the clue and might therefore take someone who knew of the connection off the intended right answer. If in the Sci-Files game, the question writer knew about Gaiman/"Stardust" and was hoping it might pull people guessing off of Tall, then it's just my fault for not knowing the answer or thinking to differentiate between "Stardust", a single novel, and a Stardust series.

Brooke/AARDVK

Jeez, Vark, don't be so hard on yourself. Nobody expects you to know every crappy sf lit answer under the sun. I'm sure you remember my kvetching on the quality of the Sci-Files lit questions...
I suppose it is possible that Gaiman's name was up there coincidentally.
But it seems like an awful big coincidence.