Erma Bombeck

Samir Mehta | March 9, 2021
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Steve West | March 9, 2021
I guess some goos are semi-Google proof. When I made this it was with the logic of which author writes about homemaking and would be hurt if there was a maid to do it. I saw Erma Bombeck give an interview years ago and she referenced that exact thing. I believe it was Carson's Tonight Show. Her annual salary at her height in the 80's is listed on her Wikipedia page as between $500,000 and $1,000,000. The source image is one of the first pictures in Google Images. But you have to guess her name first, of course.

Samir Mehta | March 9, 2021
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Scott Hardie | March 9, 2021
I didn't bother to verify Steve's clue with research; if I had, I might have asked him what Samir asked, and/or I might have labeled the goo "very hard" like it should have been. I don't always verify information in clues; I prefer to take players' word for it. Part of the point of player-created goos is to save me time. :-P

Unsearchable goos should be fine in principle, right? The goo game is supposed to be about guessing goos on sight, not researching them. (Insert Agnes wink here.)

But realistically speaking, unsearchable usually means unsolvable, and that's not ok with me. Every goo should have some plausible way to solve it. I have both rejected and rewritten player-created goos in the past that I considered unsolvable, especially after certain players acknowledged that they had submitted unsolvable goos to get ahead in the competition. Does anybody really want to play a goo game where we can't actually solve the goos because the hints are based on offline knowledge? And that's assuming that we would keep it above board, and no one would start lying and making up information because hey, who could prove them wrong? "I met Stephen King once and he told me his favorite game show is The Price is Right so it was fair to write a clue where that was the only hint" is not the sort of thing that any of us wants to hear from a fellow player accused of making up a clue. I've caught several of the game's top players cheating over the years, so I don't trust the honor system.

I remain open to persuasion if you think there's merit in letting the game go in that direction that I'm not considering. But right now I don't see any good coming out of it, except I suppose for some evil fun making impossible goos.

Steve West | March 9, 2021
This truly wasn't intended to be unsolvable. I ran it past Brenda and she got it. If there's any question regarding an attempt to get ahead in scoring, then please remove any points I gained and subtract a few more, too. I need to be purged.

Samir Mehta | March 9, 2021
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Steve West | March 9, 2021
Thanks, Samir. Good summary of the situation. But I still feel a little bad for an unintentionally difficult goo.

Scott Hardie | March 9, 2021
Steve, I don't think think you had nefarious intent either. I think the Bombeck goo just happened to turn out that way. But I'd be wary of inviting a lot more similar goos into the game, or giving players a free pass to base goos on unverifiable details deliberately.

Samir, I think when I'm aware of a goo being problematic, I push back. But as I said, I don't verify every goo submitted by players, or even many of them. If you hadn't started this discussion, I would not even have realized that the Bombeck maid detail wasn't online.

I'd rather we not get to a point where I have to start requiring a bibliography of links with each goo, but what's more important to me is that people feel comfortable bringing problems with the game to my attention. If you see this sort of thing happening, whether you suspect nefarious intent or not, and it bothers you at all, let's talk about it. If I have to change the rules and/or procedures for the game, so be it.

Samir Mehta | March 9, 2021
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Steve West | March 9, 2021
I finally found the quote online although I paraphrased it a little in the clue. She actually said, "If I didn't do my own housework, then I have no business writing about it." It appeared in an article in the Baltimore Sun. I made the goo some time ago and couldn't remember exactly what had inspired me and convinced myself it was a TV interview.

Russ Wilhelm | March 10, 2021
Knowing the answer, I can say that it wasn't unsolvable. "We" just didn't solve it. Going back and checking how I went about looking for it, I had at least one path to the answer that, given time, would have led to the answer.

But time is a beast. It makes you veer off of certain courses. I can't say that if I pursued any single course that I would have found it in a week, but eventually,,,,.

Samir Mehta | March 10, 2021
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Erik Bates | March 10, 2021
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LaVonne Lemler | March 12, 2021
This was one tough goo! Looking back in trying to solve it, if I had broadened my "literature" search beyond authors, novelists, short story writers, poets, etc. and included Journalists and news columnists, I may have stumbled on the correct answer....slim chance, though!

I was excited to see "Erma Bombeck" revealed as the answer! In my younger days, a LONG time ago (probably in the late 60s), I read her columns in the St. Louis Post Dispatch --- found her to be an amazing writer with colorful stores and lots of humor ---- she kept me coming back for more!