DISCUSSION -- November 2018 -- 85 Word Challenge

Congratulations to Tywin , excellent work.
Thank You Farntfar for your vote , it was a great surprise.
Thanks to Dusty, Elvet and Johnny jet for listings, much appreciated, I did much better than I thought possible with my story. This is what keeps me coming back even when my brain refuses to work, or am I just too lazy ? 82 ND birthday coming up soon, I take lots of naps.
Bob
 
Congrats Tywin .... a truly worthy winner and an epic margin for the win.

Thanks to all of you who short listed and honorable mentioned my story. It was very much appreciated. Thank you all!

@Bob Senior .... My birthday is soon too. Do we share a birthday?
 
Congratulations and welcome back, @Tywin! It has been a bit since you posted a story, and yours was an excellent one.
 
I have no idea who amongst the readers knew what was going on in my story (or what relevance it might have had to the topic), so I'd better explain now.

Other than counting his blessing at the correct time in the ritual, the main link to the topic (an "unspoken"** link) was in the way the word play used to portray the ritual. Or, to put it more simply, the way the story was written was based on Numbers being one of the books of the Old Testament, specifically one of the first five books.

So, basically, other than "Numbers" itself, the telling included the names of those five books and the collective name given to them, i.e.

Genesis begat genie, sis
Exodus begat XO does
Leviticus begat Levee? Tea? Cuss...?!
Numbers was implied by a combination of "count" and it being the fourth requirement of the ritual. (You didn't expect me to make things too easy, did you?)
Deuteronomy begat due to Ron an' me
Pentateuch begat pentaduke (the "ruler of the five duchies" in the title).

The story itself was of someone trying to follow a ritual to achieve a (naturally unspoken) magical end.


** - I recall, in an art class at school, the teacher telling us to draw a motorcycle (one that, unfortunately, had wire spokes)... or, rather, not to draw the motorcycle itself, but to draw the shapes created where there was no motorcycle (hence why the wire spokes were unfortunate). Needless to say, most efforts -- including mine -- bore less resemblance to a drawing of a motocycle than anyone would have wanted.
 
Well done, Tywin. Congrats.
@Ursa major Thank you for the explanation. I knew there had to be something more, given the reviews.
My story had a bit of wordplay too. The name of the machine to erase memories was called a number, numb being a way of removing pain. After I posted it, I thought NUMBer 2.0 would have been a better title.
 
elvet said:
The name of the machine to erase memories was called a number, numb being a way of removing pain.
Click to expand...
Haha I also went for the same play - Numbers being pronounced nummers etc. I thought it a legitimate, if more or less invisible (mis)interpretation of the theme title.:):(:rolleyes:
 
Congratulations, Tywin, on the resounding victory!! Your story was terrific. Looking forward to your choices for the December Challenge, CC
 
Just a bit of a heads-up and a mea culpa for this month --

Coming down to the wire with not even the faintest idea of a story, as is my usual modus operandi (or is that an operandum? Certainly not an operetta or an opus...), I suddenly realized that I had recently written a numbers horror story for the NYC contest, and I wondered if it could be adapted from 1000 words to 85. I tried, and it could, roughly. And so I did.

This is where the tricky part comes in. A few people had beta'd the NYC story for me, but mostly over on the NYC forums and Facebook peeps. But since it hadn't been posted around here, and I could trust that the people who had read the long version would know that and not vote for me because of the prior knowledge, I posted that story. With nearly half an hour to spare, of course. However, some time after that (and after I already had a vote), I realized the reader list was a bit longer than I'd remembered, and there were a good handful of Chrons who had/might have seen it in long form. So I asked those good folks to please ignore my story for voting purposes, just in case. (Feels a bit presumptuous, saying "Please don't vote for my story" like they were naturally going to otherwise.) And I reported the situation in the staff room, where it was confirmed that votes from my previous readers would not be/have been counted. For the record, there were none. I'm thankful I didn't waste anyone's vote there.

But I do feel like an idiot, so I present myself for due flogging.

We will, because of this and some other recent questions, be looking at the rules regarding story content and outside information and such, and will, of course, keep you posted as to any additions.
 
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