Elemental Questions, Part 2 · 7:04pm Feb 19th, 2018
So. As of today, Mark Rosewater has posted a complete answer key to the second part of the Great Designer Search 3, a 75-question multiple choice test. (Part 1 contains the test itself if you want to try your hand at it, along with the answers themselves. Part 2 offers an explanation for the back half of the test.) Due to the sheer quantity and quality of the response, they had to put the cutoff at a minimum of 73 correct responses.
Turns out I got 72.
You might say I'm a touch frustrated. Especially since I changed an answer from the correct one while going over my work.
Still, c'est la vie. What's done is done, and unless someone has a working time machine that can go back to late last month, there's no use getting upset over it.
For those wondering, I missed number 32 (the Play Design one) due to bad habits picked up by designing on my own rather than as part of a team, 34 (When are counterspells best in Standard) due to second-guessing myself and a cynical perspective on the state of counterspells in Standard, and 70 (Least linear mechanic) due to a misunderstanding on the nature of mechanical linearity. Probably could've gotten that one if I'd slowed down and double-checked examples of the concept.
Again, such is life. I can only hope there'll be a GDS4 sooner rather than later. Or never.
That's... mercy be, that's already infuriating when I do it on a regular exam. I can't imagine what it must feel like on something like this.
And for what it's worth, that's an admirably mature way of handling it. There's no point in crying over spilled milk, as they say.
Oof. That's... that's rough
Ouch. That is... well, dang.
I'm guessing you either picked the first or the last answer in the counterspell question.
My condolences. Off-by-one errors are ever the bane of modern man.
I'm reminded that the Taiping Rebellion, the second bloodiest war in human history with 20 million casualties, was sparked by a failed exam with a ludicrously low pass-rate. Please don't take it that hard!
Ok yeah you did way better than me on the test. I missed like 10 questions.
I didn't save my answers, but I think I missed around 7
Aw man. :(
This sounds like the sort of thing that will eventually metamorphose into the core of a fanfic about Dash getting rejected from the Wonderbolts, not because she's not good enough but because at that level the cutoffs are essentially arbitrary (e.g. whether you were recovering from a cold during the tryouts vs. the healthy but less talented person next to you). Here's to hoping you get another grab at the golden ring when the wheel turns back around; I know you can do it.
You're taking this leaps and bounds better than I ever would.
You must be really cynical because I did look at 34 and went 'Wait, that has to be B, because the worst part of playing against CS decks are when you are locked down and waiting for their combo to go off...for the next 30 minutes'.
It's why playing various flavors of Freeze/Control mage in Hearthstone can be so irritating, because they can sometimes get control fairly early and then you are just waiting forever until they can combo you down. Bleh
...Naturally I am the sort of person who loves playing said Freeze/Control deck.
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My thought process basically went "The idea is to maximize fun, so that means the control player has to win immediately... but when's the last time they printed enough really good counterspells for a dedicated counter deck?"
Reading your posts is often like walking into an alternate timeline where I know the verbs, but the nouns are a mystery to me.
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Clearly the next step is a guest blog written by those Facebook chatbots that invented their own language.
I got 71, myself. Also missed 34. Unfortunate, but we just gotta keep practicing.