Re: A history question for everyone

I must strongly disagree with my good friend
Tom's analysis of the "Mad King" situation. In my book,
if the answer you gave is a correct alternate
answer, you get points, unless that alternate answer has
_already_ been given in the question. The reason for the
'unless' is that, in my mind, once you've heard "Mad
King", answering "Mad King" is tantamount to answering
"the man about whom you wrote the question." No prompt
is necessary, because that's a de facto stalling
tactic that indicates you don't know the
answer.

I fail to understand why Tom would penalize someone
for giving an admittedly correct answer but failing
to read the mind of the question writer. That to me
seems to run directly counter to one of our fundamental
principles, which is to reward the person who knows the
answer first. I guess my beef with Tom is that his idea
of "knowing the answer" equates to "knowing what the
question writer wants you to say" whereas my view of
knowing the answer means "correctly identifying the
person about whom the question is written." In this
case, up until you hear the words "Mad King", saying
"Mad King Ludwig" is correct.

Furthermore, I
will go even further by adding that this particular
example has an added layer of complexity to it, because
you have the issue about whether or not to prompt on
Ludwig.

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