Tuesday, September 3, 2013

A funny thing happened on the way to some free Ginter cards

I had to work 12 long hours of overtime this past Saturday.  I thought that would be a good time to have a little impromptu contest.  I decided to have people guess which red ink auto I pulled from a box of Allen & Ginter.  To make it more interesting, I required the winning guess to include both the subject AND the correct numbering out of 10.  I knew it was unlikely anyone would get it right the first time so I gave hints at the top of each hour (or as near as I could thanks to Blogger acting up).  Everyone got another guess with each new post.

Well, it took 9 posts before someone guessed the right combination of player/numbering.




Here is another look at the card.

The amazing thing was by the time I gave the final hint, it was obvious WHO the player was, leaving only the correct number to be guessed.

On post #7, Scott Crawford guessed Avisail Garcia #1/10.  Close, but no cigar.

On post #8, Chris Reed of Nachos Grande guessed Avisail Garcia #3/10.

When post #9 went live at 9:07 PM Central time, everyone still following along knew it was Garcia and here is how it played out in the comments.


Within 4 minutes, all but two numbers were off the board (with Dhoff unfortunately guessing a number that had already been guessed).

 This is where the real fun began.
  1. If I missed a guess for Shields, Diamond or Bauer somewhere, this will be REALLY funny.
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    1. I wrote a list of the guesses from each post, and I'm pretty sure only Garcia fit the last hint.
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    2. But I admit I was in a hurry to beat the flurry of comments I knew was coming, so my list may have been faulty.
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    3. I did the same as you and came to the same conclusion. I think we're okay.
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  2. Yep, just doublechecked. Still worth a chuckle.
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    1. I think Night Owl's on the can.
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    2. I'M WORKING!!!!!!!!!!

      (at my desk)
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  4. There are two numbers left...
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  5. Should make for an interesting 10pm post if no one else jumps in on this one
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  6. I really need to go food shopping, youse guys!
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  7. If it wasn't so sad it'd be funny.
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  8. Best part about it: someone can still guess incorrectly
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    1. And Murphy's Law says that they probably will. LOL
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30 full minutes went by with the group commenting, but no new faces to attempt to guess one of the two remaining numbers. Finally, at 9:41 PM Central time, Need New Cardboard came on and sure enough, just, as Scott Crawford and P-Town Tom had just mentioned, he guessed wrong.

At that point, we all began to think I was going to have to another post, with all the remaining people knowing exactly the card I had in my hand.  It was bound to be a mad scramble with only one lucky person getting their comment in first.

  1. So if no one gets it, now that we all know the answer, is it gonna be a dogpile at 10 Central, or are you gonna random it?
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  2. Need more cardboard should have it cause 3/10 was guessed at #8, unless we're all wrong...
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    1. There's still one number that hasn't been guessed.
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    2. Yep, it's on my other side!! Missed that one.
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    3. I seem to always lose when I flip a coin.
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  3. I do think we'll get a winner before then (it's taken everything in my power not to yell at my Twitter followers, but I'll keep it fair).

    The one thing that'd make a dogpile less entertaining is that the timestamp on comments doesn't include the time in seconds.
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  4. If no one gets in the right answer by 10, I'll do another post and the first correct comment to show up will win and EVERYONE else that enters within the first two minutes after the post goes up will be entered into a randomizer to win a second rack pack. Fair enough?
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Finally, 10 minutes later, a full 44 minutes after the post went up, we had a winner. Chris Reed from Nachos Grande came back and got the win with the right "guess".  I was glad we ended up with a winner from that post, but I felt as if I owed something to the great group that stayed with me for almost an hour while we waited for someone to win.  Heck, Scott Crawford put off a trip to the store just to see who won.  I decided that I'll be randomizing the name of everyone who made at least one comment on the post #9 and I'll give the winner a 2013 Ginter rack pack as well.

As an aside, because of the contest, I got more pageviews than I've ever had in one day.  It was 1094 views, which beat the old record of 743.  I don't pay attention to that nearly as much as I did in the early days of the blog, but it was still fun to see.  The contest also generated 166 comments which was also fun.

As I come upon my 4th blog birthday (October 1st), it's still fun to see how much excitement can be generated by a little contest.   Free stuff and great group participation make for a good time.  Thanks to all of you who participated in the contest and to everyone who has ever clicked on this humble little blog, I say thank you.

5 comments:

  1. no no... thank you.




    (just next time make it for an evening when I can be at home!!!)
    :)

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  2. It was a fun read when i woke up in the morning :-)

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  3. This was fun to watch while it was happening. I'm glad you recapped this contest, which ended in a pretty dramatic fashion.

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  4. That contest was EPIC. The more I think about the more preposterous the conclusion sounds.

    Almost 1100 pageviews in one evening is pretty impressive, too.

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  5. It was fun to watch! Especially with how unlikely it was that all of the wrong numbers would be guessed before the correct one. Thanks for the fun!

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