Last week was the 100th Bird’s Eye View Contest, so instead of looking for a good view to post, I decided to do a tally of the winners. Some contests had multiple winners, so there are more than 100, but here’s the list of those who won more than once (31 people won one contest):
Wes.in.wa – 20
Milwhcky – 20
Mlc1us – 10
Don Joe – 5
YLB – 4
Dave Gibney – 3
Waguy – 3
2cents – 3
ibogaine – 2
Liberal Scientist – 2
Dan Robinson – 2
Brian – 2
I’m always open to suggestions for this contest. If you have a good idea for how to make this contest more fun, please feel free to post it in the comments. I’ve always wanted to make the views difficult but possible, and it’s been a challenge of my own to keep finding ones that strike that balance. Thanks for playing everyone, and enjoy some football this afternoon.
Home early from church, ready to search for this week’s puzzle, and I gotta watch football? Say it ain’t so! (Actually, I’ll switch to the Seahawks during commercials, but it’s gonna be the Storm game for me.)
Hey, I got one! I’d like some recognition! Although, I’m sure wes.in.wa was on vacation or something the week I won.
rotate four different themes per month:
first sunday, a local NW story
second sunday a US national news story
third sunday an American story (North, Central, and South Americas)
fourth sunday, an international story…
I personally preferred the old quiz – random locations, without association to recent news.
I like digging into my geographic memory/knowledge more broadly. Keeping up on curent events and news is good, but I found it distracting and frustrating to have to scroll back through the weeks news to find a starting point, rather than evaluating the aerial photos just on their own.
+1
@2. Yo, I seriously only solved puzzles when Milwhcky and Mlc1us weren’t playing.
@3. spyder, I like the idea of rotating themes — or maybe (nod to @4, Liberal Scientist) alternating between news-based and random-based images.
@4. Liberal Scientist, the random ones were more satisfying to me, too. Searching news stories and then looking up addresses on maps is a whole different kind of searching than basing the search on information in the image.
There’s a good deal of (perverse) satisfaction that comes when, after spending half my day off doing a grid search of every Bird’s Eye View city in Arizona, I finally recognize some half-constructed arid suburban tract house that Lee in his mischief challenged us to find.
Maybe it could help the process to make a weekly link to a separate blog entry that, in turn, links to known online reference resources. I expect not everybody uses a database of all the cities that have Bird’s Eye Views, or Google Earth’s overlay of those cities; it’s helpful to know we don’t need to bother with Wyoming, for example, or Central & South America. Heck, even the wikipedia article on places where folks drive on the left side of the road would be a useful tool to share.
Good job by all the winners! I won my share due to being very familiar with the available birds eye coverage. And Wes, you did win several times before I could figure it out… I just didn’t always take the time to chime in with a comment.
I prefer random interesting places, but I’m not against a themed game. The in-the-news contests were usually won before I could attempt them, and they seemed to produce different winners. Perhaps a mixture of themed and random contests could work.
And thank you Lee for all your efforts to keep the game going all this time. I’m curious, what were your favorite choices out of the first 100?
Don’t use satellite pics. Go out with a camera and take your own photos of places and things around the Sound.
And make the game harder. What’s the average amount of time it takes a reader to figure it out? Less than an hour?
@8. Troll: an option similar to that, & still involving web searches would be to move from Bing to Google now & then, & to post snips of street views for folks to find.
I never won anything but I’m with #4 since I get tired of the news and need a break. I spend most days in stuff like news. Tonight I did an ACLU thingy. I gotta be sick!
@10
Was it the Town Hall thing? I was there too.
I like wes’s variation on Spyder’s idea. I’ve been finding that once a week, the news-based one has been hard, but once a month might make it more interesting.
@7
I’m curious, what were your favorite choices out of the first 100?
That’s a tough question. I generally like the European ones better, more diversity in the architecture and more way to incorporate obscure clues. The Romanian one I thought was cool. And the bullring in Spain.
Lee, you could use THIS image. Oh. wait, I guess you can’t, now. But we run across lots of odd spots while searching for yours. User submissions to the contest might be a twist, though. Heck, we could even send you the clips as JPEGs, and you could search with the rest of us.
@13
Holy crap, who owns that monstrosity?
re Lee @ 11. Yes. My wife and I were there. It was not what I expected but it certainly was informative and Ethan Nadelman is a charge. I have always appreciated his work and this is the first time I have heard him speak and he is fun.
@14 Lee, I dunno, but it’s pretty clear that construction’s stopped on it.
or rather, it seems to me it’s not moving forward. There is a genie lift on site, but nobody and no other equipment to speak of
Nope. It’s finished. For Sale in May. Wonder if it’s sold.
LINK
@19
I think they’re missing a couple of zeros on that price tag. Either that, or the cost of living in Florida has gone WAY down.
@15
Yeah, Nadelmann is quite an animated speaker. I wish they’d left more time for questions. I had leave before the Q&A ended.
@20 $75M, “As is”, no interior walls, tile or carpet.
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/st.....id=7513650
Answering wes.in.wa’s question at #18:
Nope, still on the market. After 137 days of listing, it’s still priced at $100 million. However, that’s a “finished to buyer’s specifications” price. You can have it as-is for a mere $75 million.
You can request additional information or schedule a showing here.