Tom Michael's last post made me go rummaging
through my file cabinets to see if I could find the
original 30-20-10-5-1. (Since it predated fatherhood, it
was in the portion of my life that involved actually
getting stuff filed.) Amazingly, I found it. My round for
a July 1991 mini-event had 4 30-20-10-5-1's in it.
The first one in the packet had the lead-in,
"Introducing a new bonus format! Name the artist from works,
30-20-10-5-1." The 1-point clue was "Mrs. Thomas Eakins."
(Memory tells me, though, that the one I wrote first of
those four was "His father, Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.,
was also a prominent Harlem minister.")
On
circumstantial evidence, I'll back Mr. Barker on his origins of
the 40. I never saw one before rounds submitted by
Michiganders for TrashMasters 1997.
And while I'm at it,
I have an editing standard I use for 40's: if I
didn't laugh out loud when I read it, it wasn't worth
using. For a 1 point clue I use the slightly more
relaxed mild chuckle rule.