As in previous years, the Creative Thinking event consisted of four rounds
in each of which the contestants were given half an hour to come up with
ideas on a weird topic. Each year, however, the topics seem to get
weirder - mainly through a desire to plunge the contestants into original situations and see what they come up with.
After each round, the best set of answers (judged more for quality than
quantity, but with some consideration also given to style of presentation)
was awarded 25 points and the other entries given points according to how
they compared with the best and with each other. Before giving some examples
of contestants' ideas, let's have the
medallists:
| Creative Thinking Championships |
|
Gold
|
Maguy Higgs
|
91 |
|
Silver
|
Bruce Birchall
|
90
|
|
Bronze
|
Philip Bateman
|
89
|
Maguy Higgs, who finished joint third in last year's competition, narrowly
edged out two past winners, Bruce Burchall, the champion in 1998, and Philip
Bateman, who won the inaugural Creative Thinking event in 1997.
Other scores:
| 4. |
Max Alavy |
87 |
| 5. |
Ben Pridmore |
83 |
| 6. |
Lucy Broomfield |
82 |
| 7= |
Penny Faldon |
74 |
| 7= |
Kenneth Wilshire |
74 |
| 9. |
Daniel Holloway |
73 |
| 10= |
Paul Holland |
71 |
| 10= |
David Faldon |
71 |
| 10= |
Malcolm Brown |
71 |
| 13= |
Phil Swanton |
69 |
| 13= |
Joan Scott |
69 |
| 15= |
George Lane |
66 |
| 15= |
Eric Wong |
66 |
| 17. |
M Bowhay |
63 |
| 18. |
Josiah Lutton |
56 |
Round-by-round report:
Round One: Contestants were asked what they might do with the following
seven shapes:
M S O 2 0 0 0
The most popular ideas involved alphabet soup or building bicycles or
necklaces, though other artistic creations included a picture allegedly of
David Beckham scoring a goal and another of a snowman being knocked down by
a snowball. Maguy Higgs gained the 25-point top score with a bizarre
selection including a method of learning the zither, a way of recording
sounds made by snails, and a Buddhist mantra (including instructions).
Round Two: Contestants were give a couple of lines of musical notation and asked what archaeologists would make of it when they discovered it long in
the future when all evidence of human music-making has been lost.
Nobody recognised the few bars are coming from a Haydn piano sonata, so
no-one realised that they were in fact playing Haydn seek. One entrant,
however, produced an even worse pun, suggesting that they might simply
deduce it was a device to get people to rack their brains. "I've certainly
Rachmaninov," he added.
Maguy Higgs came close to the top score again with a detailed explanation of
how all those symbols were a map for pre-migration assembly of starlings.
The various numbers on the piece indicated bird size; bar-lines divided
different flocks; # is s warning not to fly out of chevron; and the < and > signs tell the bird which wing to flap first. Even more detailed, however,
and fully deserving the 25 points was Lucy Broomfield's explanation of the
symbols as a way of recording dance steps, with frequency of stamp, height
of foot, speed, partner-swapping and food-breaks all iondicated in the
notation. Another idea by the same contestant saw the symbols as a plan of a
stretch of road during a London Marathon, run in four lanes, with obstacles,
some people carrying others, points awarded and places where contestants
could have a drink, all recorded in the various symbols.
Round Three: Moving away from the symbolic into something more realistic, we asked contestants to imagine that a GM-crop disaster led to all humans on earth losing their toenails permanently. What would be the advantages and
disadvantages of this happening?
There were a large number of references to toe-sucking, though contestants
seems roughly equally divided on whether they thought naillessness would be
an advantage or disadvantage in that respect. I suspect it depends on
whether they took the side of the sucker or suckee - but more research is
clearly needed. The protein intake of nail-biters also attracted a good deal
of attention.
Bruce Birchall gained the 25 points for a wide-ranging list of suggestions
including the retraining of chiropodists as nose-hair trimmers.
Round Four:
The final task was the biggest of all: to redesign Europe. Having run up to
speed with letters, musical notes and toe nails, contestants were invited to
submit plans for a redesign of the continent that would put an end to
disease, ethnic conflict, nationalistic fervour, climatic problems and
everything else wrong with Europe. Budgets and time-scale were also
required.
The budgets ranged from 5 trillion pounds to nothing at all (one contestant
funded it all with a compulsory lottery with small prizes). Philip Bateman
submitted the most convincing proposal, marked "Top Secret" and stapled
between red covers. I'm afraid we cannot divulge its contents without
permission from the UN, EU, Boundaries Commission and Hedgehog Preservation
Trust.
