Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Contest Roundup! We Have Winners! Kind Of!



OK, so! As I mentioned earlier, we don't really have a true winner, because nobody stated correctly exactly what is shown in the photos below.

The two winners, however, are impressive, because both of them, within a half-hour, guessed that the object is connected to the head of Daniel Chester French's plaster study of his Abraham Lincoln sculpture for the Lincoln Memorial, currently on display at my work in the midst of a welcome national burst of Abe worship. Please note the helpful suggestions on the lid of the box, highlighted in the detail above.

I don't know what it is about that box, but I just cracked up when I saw it. I was totally, all, like, "Fancy!" There's something so wonderfully unpretentious about this box... you could almost say it's log-cabiny in its humbleness.

Technically, Pony Pals Ian Quigley and David Forbes (who has known me since I was a teenager, but lives in Arizona) were both wrong, because the photos don't show Lincoln's head but, rather, the box it comes in. Zing! But, you know, close enough! And, wow, fast! A day later, Pony Pal Liquid also made this same guess.

Several others came very close; many thought the box held a bust of Lincoln. So near, and yet so far away!

Nobody puzzled out the clue, and I guess I'm not surprised because my coworkers told me it was impossible. OK, so here's what the clue (7 x .01 = ?) means: What do you get when you cross SE7EN (the movie) with a penny? Abraham Lincoln's head in a box! Get it? Um, look, I did admit it was a hard clue, OK? Seriously, get it?

So congrats to long-time Pony Pals Ian and David. Your tour bus photos and Win buttons will be mailed shortly! Pony Pal Liquid will also get a Win button, because let's face it, Gerald Ford's embarrassing lapel shame is a great piece of Americana, just like Lincoln's head.

Let's do this again sometime! With easier clues!

7 comments:

Fran said...

Sorry I missed all this- although I would not have come close.

That said - there is a titillating nature to the whole "Whip Inflation Now" scheme, despite it coming from the decidedly unsexy Ford.

Anonymous said...

I was gonna guess Sean Connery's head in a box, because:

7 x .01 = 0.07

But then you said the clue was harder than the actual contest topic, so I dissuaded myself from that conclusion.

Anonymous said...

PSP, I think you'd appreciate a billboard down in Palm Springs that proclaims:

Gerald Our Ford

gjdodger said...

Hey! I said Lincoln, too! (My clue was way off, but it was still interesting. During the Lincoln/Douglas debates, there was an editorial in an Illinois paper that said while Lincoln had proposed 100 debates, Douglas only agreed to seven; the editorial called him "seven hundredths of a senator.")

Diane Griffin said...

I was trying to find the connection between Helen Roper and Nicholas Meyer...

Unknown said...

I swear I was going to write "Gwyneth Paltrow's head in a box" after seeing the clue.

Then again that's what I always think is in the box.

Karen Zipdrive said...

Well, at the risk of sounding like a rooster, that game was suckadoodledoo.
My guess was Al Pacino in the next 007 movie.