Questions, oh my questions, I ask, receive no, I ask, receive no answers

[austin_dern]

I'd forgot about this, but The Price Is Right is still playing Pay the Rent, and they got to the game on Friday's show (which I saw Monday due to the most wonderfully distracting presence of bunny_hugger in my weekend). Probably needless to say, the contestant didn't win the $100,000, but this one actually walked away with a sensible win of $10,000.

The prizes this time were cherry pie ($6.99), a 16-ounce bottle of soda ($0.99), vinegar ($4.29), a Swifter sweeper delivery system ($10.99), Jet Dry stuff to make the dishwasher somehow complicated ($4.59), and throat lozenges (a startling $9.21). That seems like a lot for lozenges.

Anyway, the contestant put the vinegar at the base ($4.29 for the level), the soda and Jet Dry on the first floor ($5.58 for the level), the cherry pie and the lozenges on the second ($16.20 for the level) and the Swifter thing on top ($10.99 for the level). I thought he might have it, because I couldn't figure the lozenges being nearly that pricey.

If I don't miss one, there's the solitary winning path: cherry pie ($6.99); vinegar-and-Jet Dry ($8.88); soda-and-lozenges ($10.20); and Swifter ($10.99).

I feel like tracking statistics on the game, but I don't quite know just what to track. The range between most and least expensive prizes is something, $10.00, and between the most and least expensive levels, $4.00, another plausible range. But how to score it? I'm sure I'll think of something.

Trivia: Smith-Corona's ``Animal Keyboard'' of about 1935 attempted to teach children typing by having each key labelled for different animals (on the left hand, ``little finger is birdie finger, third finger is doggie finger, second finger is bunnie finger''), with a matching animal ring for each finger. Source: Wondrous Contrivances: Technology At The Threshold, Merritt Ierley.

Currently Reading: Rocketman: Astronaut Pete Conrad's Incredible Ride To The Moon And Beyond, Nancy Conrad, Howard A Klausner.

PS: Can A Ball Of Yarn Threaten Three-Dimensional Space? Well, no, not really. Maybe on Inspector Spacetime.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fluffy/]

Eh, the ball of yarn is just a whimsical restatement of Hilbert's work.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It is, although there's a lot of logic that has to be hastily backfilled in to make it rigorous.