Exploration (0661)

Scott Hardie | September 18, 2005
As we've discussed, lately I've been making a lot of little mistakes with the goo game, such as presenting incorrect information in the clue or explanation. I admit that it's a problem and I'm working on solutions.

But I'd like to mention, for purposes of self-vindication, that this one is so not my fault. When today's Exploration goo was published at midnight, it featured this clue: "Why should you solve this goo? Because it's there." This alludes to the famous quote from this field, but the problem is that someone else said it. Why did I associate it with this celebrity? Less than 24 hours earlier, I watched "The English Patient," and on the bonus disc there was an extensive biographical documentary about the real Count Almásy and what drove him to explore the most remote regions of the Sahara. One of the garrulous historians summed up Almásy's attitude with the quote "because it's there" and attibuted it to the Exploration celebrity I was planning. Even though I couldn't find this quote in any of my research of the celebrity when creating the goo, I trusted this historian, because who wouldn't get their facts straight before holding forth on a mass-market DVD? But, thanks to someone guessing the real speaker of that famous quote, I was able to catch the error quickly and write a new clue.

I suppose now you could go out and rent the bonus disc of "The English Patient" to find out the answer to the goo, but you shouldn't need to do so; it's meant to be highly recognizeable (unlike, say, Matthew's super-tough Imelda-worthy request). It's a pretty good movie, anyway, as Miramax Oscar-bait goes. One of these days I'm going to plow through my expanding backlog of unwritten movie reviews and the subscribers to the TMR Reviews-by-Mail list are going to resent the flurry of them all at once.

Amy Austin | September 28, 2005
...lately I've been making a lot of little mistakes with the goo game, such as presenting incorrect information in the clue or explanation...

Sorry to pick, Scott, but I just can't keep it in... Redd Foxx played Fred Sanford in "Sanford & Son", not Redd Foxx (though, I suppose it could technically be both... ;-D)

Scott Hardie | September 28, 2005
Thanks. I wouldn't have caught it.

Scott Hardie | September 29, 2005
I do get upset when an error is pointed out to me, but it's 100% anger at myself for having made another careless mistake like that from typing too fast and not proofreading, not anger at the messenger. I appreciate errors being pointed out; better than them staying there.