Normalcy after dumb-c

Things are returning back to normal after one week of hectic activity for the dumb-c event. It was so hectic that I missed posting the crossword solutions for few days on my crossword section. The dumb-c event (Check out the invitation poster for this event here) went on well with the winner winning the final by the narrowest of possible margins of 1 second. Due to the unusually large number of teams participating, we had to have three preliminary rounds, followed by two semi-finals and then the final. I tried to have different rounds for the various levels, with some of them proving to be popular and some, a little difficult to handle.

Some of the rounds i had are:

– Mirror round: A person mimes and the second person only acts as a mirror of the first, just repeating the first person’s action. The third person (the guesser) could only see the second person(mirror). This was fun because it required coordination to avoid a lag in the miming between the first person and the mirror

– Normal dum-dum-c with a movie name. A person mimes it to a second person who in turn has to mime it to the third who guesses. All the movie names i used in this event were fictional ones, as i didn’t want the teams who watched more english movies to have an advantage. It was tough to come up with almost 50 fictional movies names considering the fact that i had to ensure at least a similar level of difficulty for the movies used in the same round.

– Sitting around a table – The three members of the team sat at different places in the room. Each of them was given a word and within the time specified, each had to get the words of the other two. No one could speak out the word. So, there had to be co-ordinated miming so that all three could share their words with each other. The scoring was a little complicated, but effective. For each word the team didn’t get, +10 was added to their score. If a team got all the six words (1 each from the other two), then whatever time was left out of the total time allocated was subtracted from their existing score.

– rapidfire – Each team got a list of 10 words and within the time stipulated, they had to get as many as possible. The scoring pattern was similar to the one in the “sitting around a table” round.

– dum-dum-dum-dum-c – This was a little complicated to explain to the teams, but they managed to understand, somehow ! The three team members X, Y and Z get a word each, say A, B and C respectively. X mimes A to y (Z is turning the other way). Then Y mimes A and B to Z. Now Z knows all the three words A, B and C. Now, Z goes to X and mimes B and C. So, now X knows all three words. Then X again goes to Y and mimes C. So, at the end , all three should know all three words!

– Blindfold round – I was skeptical about this round, but it went on very well. The mimer was blindfolded and the guessers couldn’t speak. But, the guessers were allowed to give feedback by tapping on the table/floor eg: One tap for “yes” and two taps for “no” etc. The teams were given one word to mime and all the teams managed to crack this round.

– Miming to both – The mimer was given a movie and he had to mime it simultaneously to both this team members. Both the guessers couldn’t speak out and they couldn’t see each other too. So, this meant that both the guessers should be good in understanding the miming.

The scores of all rounds were normalised to 60 seconds to avoid the case wherein, a team does well in a 60 second round, whereas fails in the 180 second round and loses out because of the bigger margin. So, when you normalise the scores, all the rounds are equally important.

Finally, the finals finished yesterday and so i guess i can go back to my normal routine!

If you want to browse the entire list of movies and words i used (segregated according to the rounds), go to the dumbcharades page.