You may have heard of the JREF's million dollar paranormal challenge. Regardless of my feelings about the contest, which I'll discuss in depth in a future blog post, it's very well-known, and I decided I wanted to have some fun, myself. That's why I'm introducing The Polite Skeptic's $17.50 Paranormal Challenge. The setup is simple and straightforward.
I wrote five nouns on a piece of paper that I have shown to nobody else. I sealed the paper in a bubble mailer, and hid it in a top secret location. All someone has to do to win seventeen dollars and fifty cents USD is post, in a comment to this blog, the five secret nouns that I wrote on the paper. You can use any method to divine the words, excluding interrogating me and ransacking my property. You can guess once for each blog post.
I hope we can have some fun with this. The ultimate fun would be if someone actually guessed correctly, and I had to give up the green. This is not likely to happen by chance. Even if there were only 100 nouns in the English language, there would be a 1 in 10,000,000,000 (ten billion) chance of guessing it right. And we all know that there are more that 100 nouns even in a small pamphlet, much less a dictionary, so I don't expect anyone to get this by rolling dice.
So feel free to guess, and invite your friends to do the same. I expect to never have to mail that money order, but will anybody step up to prove me wrong?
edit 2018: This is no longer active. I do not have the energy to hold a contest.
It would be cool just to get one of the words. That would be worth more than the money. Ha ha.
ReplyDeleteHow about:
note
lantern
earthquake
spool
wasp