KUALA LUMPUR, 27 Jun 09: Oooooaaaaah! A relief really, to get the monkey off our back! After an unenviable streak of a trio of consecutive second place finishes stretching back to the Global Indian Shopping Festival Hunt in May 2008, we finally came good in a Purple Antz event.We were part of a large group of 500 people that had gathered in Padang Timur (in front of Amcorp Mall) early this morning. Dressed in various shades of green, this assembly could easily have been misconstrued as a show of solidarity for Mousavi and the people of Iran. Rather, we were all here to take part in the inaugural MENGO Green Hunt, an event organized to promote sustainable living through the 3Rs concept of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
Participants in Green, Marshals in Purple, Keh-Poh-Chees in All Other Colours
The hunt required participants to use public transport (KL Monorail and Rapid KL) in search of answers to 25 questions. However, much to the hunters' chagrin, the bulk of answers were to be found on the train looking outside (with the rest to be found on foot) - a task tolerable at the onset that turned unbearable as the hunt progressed when the weekend crowd turned up. A scavanger hunt to collect reusable items, 3 treasure riddles and 10 GK challenges made up the other tasks for the day.
Immediately after the horn sounded, we saw teams rushing off to the nearby Taman Jaya Rapid KL station, obviously to scramble for window seats. We had to stay back for a good 15 minutes to get oriented with the navigational instructions - cannot understand the COC's logic for delibrately leaving out these instructions from the Extra Set.
The questions were decent but not imposing. The train ride itself had provided the real challenge. One blink of the eye and in reality the answer could have shot pass. It was obvious that the train driver was not going to slow down his vehicle in the hunting sector. Neither was he going to stop or reverse the train to allow us to recheck a small sign. Our team must have blinked a dozen times or more in search of this elusive answer, as I could have sworn that was the number of times we went up and down the KL Sentral - Maharajalela stretch.
Q20: Back there after center project.
Ans: Janas
Not overly cryptic. Center of proJect is J while back there is simply a reversal of sana (there).
And if I were to be asked to pick one question that had stood out in this hunt, it would have to be this one which employed a neat trick of implying a singular insertion but requiring a plural insertion instead. This also turned out to be the match-winning question for us!
Q8: Large surrounding for a trademark. What and where?
Ans: Abe @ Kolej Kemahiran Minda
In my opinion, since the word "Large-s" does not exist, it is perfectly okay to allow Large to also imply more than one (of the word large). If one could see through this trick, the rest would be fairly straight-forward: L+(abe)+L = Label (or trademark).
It remains to be seen if this victory will be the start of a purple patch for HRU in Antz's events, or just a one-off wonder!
MENGO Green Hunt
(Maximum possible score: 110 pts)
1st: Chai Koh Khai, Margaret Sha, Claire Chin, Chong Voon Kiat (107)
2nd: Mengo Tango (104)
3rd: Wong Chiang Chuen, Julie Tan, Goh Teck Koon, Teoh Cheow Teong (104)
4th: Alexander Hoh, Liew Kok Seng, Ramesh Rajaratnam, Chong Foo Seong (104)
5th: Lim Say Chye, Yeong Kig Siew, Tommy Ng, Lee Ling Fei (104)
6th: Venkateswaran Nagappan, Buvanes Tharmalingam, Eeeswaran Kanesalingam, Simon (98)
7th: Muhammad Razif Ahmad, Darmataksiah Abai, Lily Loh, Loh Siew Fun (98)
8th: Adrian Wong, Michael Pang, Lim Kim Meng, Richard Tan (95)
7 comments:
Q) Large surrounding for trademark
A) ABE
In my opinion, the question is not whether there is such a word as "LARGES". Rather, whether we can agree to the equation:
LARGE = Ls or LL or even LLLL?
Or, can
MEDIUM = MM or even MMM?
The simplified version of the question is like this:
Q) L surrounding for a trademark.
Where L = LARGE
So now can we take that single L to "surround" the intended answer?
If you are asking me, I've already shared my opinion haven't I?
Oops, talking about "a purple patch" too soon, I may have unwittingly put a whammy on the team!
In my opinion, if we can all accept this kind of explanation for the solution, the problem which may potentially arise is that of consistency. For once it's accepted here, it will be very difficult to reject it in the future.
Let me rephrase my question and see what you make of it:
Q) Many having large business here.
Now imagine that there is a signboard bearing: MANLLY SDN. BHD. within that sector. Would this signboard qualify as the answer? The CoC uses LARGE to mean LL because although LARGE = L, he means it in the plural sense, i.e. 2 "L"s.
Based on the ABE answer, can we now reject MANLLY?
Now imagine that also within that sector, there is a smaller sign: MANLY ENTERPRISE. Is this sign superior to that of the MANLLY board; and is it enough to reject MANLLY?
I can accept both signs.
To me, as "Large" is commonly an adjective, there is no plural version of it (-s) as commonly applied to nouns.
Even some unique nouns can appear to be plural in nature but take on both singular and plural form: eg. scissors.
I must beg to differ.
"The setter may not mean what he says; but he must say what he means."
The second part of that "rule" compels the setter to "say what he means", but here I think as long as he has said it, he is not at fault if the solver misunderstood his meaning.
Some words can have many meanings, e.g. may have a noun meaning and also verb meaning, or also adjective meaning etc. But some words can only have, say, noun meanings.
In the case of LARGE, especially when used in it's context here, i.e. LARGE = L, can only take the adjective meaning. The setter doesn't have the flexibility of using LARGE here to mean it as a noun so that there is a plural to that word. Therefore, I can accept LARGE = L, but not LL or in any other plural forms.
It is not the same as, say, SHEEP, which is a noun, of which is spelt the same way for both the singular and plural versions. In this case, the setter may say SHEEP when he intends the plural meaning. He is not obligated to tell the solver that he means it in the plural form. It is up to the solver to figure that out himself. As far as the setter is concerned, he has said what he means - and correctly so too - and it's not his fault if the solver misunderstood what he said. And so, although he said SHEEP, and that looks like singular, the setter may not mean what he says. But on the other hand, he did say SHEEP, meaning more than one of the animal, and he said so without violating the grammatical rules too.
But the thing that really attracted my attention as far as this hunt's concerned is the requirement of spotting answers while riding in a train. I would surely fail miserably in this hunt!
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