please empty your brain below
General comments here.
Questions will not be answered.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 23.09.23 - 7:00 a.m. | #

No offence - but a chance to meet The Squeezy Pig.

Still Anon | 23.09.23 - 7:24 a.m. | #

Damn, I'll be doing park run and then playing hockey, so I'll miss all the fun!

H SE18 | 23.09.23 - 7:38 a.m. | #

Awesome Idea. Sadly at work today otherwise i'd be hunting you down!

Jack31439 | 23.09.23 - 7:52 a.m. | #

Annoyingly I won't be able to take part but maybe I can help to optimise the questions. For example, if the first and second ask whether he is north and west of Nelson's Column, the third and fourth could ask the same but centred on specific places in Harrow, Ilford, Kingston or Lewisham dependent on the first pair of answers. Binary chops might get boring later on, but using them initially could be very effective. For the fifth initial question, asking whether he is within one mile of a TfL Underground station might help to rule in or out large areas. Something like that feels a productive first set of five. Good luck everyone.

DavidC | 23.09.23 - 8:05 a.m. | #

Realistically, though, that relies on agreement in advance, everyone else holding back plus interaction during the slot. It will probably take until 1015 to narrow down the sixteenth.

DavidC | 23.09.23 - 8:38 a.m. | #

I don't understand the rules.
Specifically the ignoring. Is the first question which DG will answer (a) the first one in the box, which is there already and he has been ignoring up to that moment, or (b) the first one posted after 10 a.m., having permanently ignored earlier ones?

dg writes: I’m ignoring all questions asked before 10am. Which, it turns out, is a lot of questions.
(I’ve added one word to the instructions)

Malcolm of Kent | 23.09.23 - 8:49 a.m. | #

I had a similar but more boring idea like DavidC. We can find a number in around a million with 20 questions so could list one million places each with a number between one and a million and do a binary search to find the place. (Store the list in Google docs for example) It would work with London postcodes too maybe identifying the postcode with 15 yes/no answers

Half a physicist | 23.09.23 - 8:59 a.m. | #

Not going to miss a chance to ask DG a question in the comms he might actually answer !

Kevin | 23.09.23 - 9:09 a.m. | #

My final suggestion is to use the quartering approach in each slot based on answers in the previous slot to get geographically close. Also, in the first slot, ask whether the borough is officially in Inner or Outer London. In fact, ask if it is in Outer London to avoid City of London ambiguity. Save the within-a-mile-of-an-Underground-station for slot 2 and only use it if in Outer London. Good luck.

DavidC | 23.09.23 - 9:24 a.m. | #

But how do we know if we find you - what do you look like :o

Dub | 23.09.23 - 9:28 a.m. | #

Fun game! I'm too busy to take part today, but look forward to reading all about it later!
Good luck everyone!

Cornish Cockney | 23.09.23 - 9:37 a.m. | #

This will be fun.
However, can we please coordinate which 5 questions to ask first instead of just jumping in blind. Otherwise, we'll have 5 nearly identical questions within the first minute. I propose the first questions should try and figure out which borough he's in. For example:
Are you in Inner London (according to the Strategic definition)?
or
Does the borough you're in have a crest in its logo?

TW | 23.09.23 - 9:58 a.m. | #

Ignore the above.
After 4 questions, DG is either in the boroughs of Lewisham, Greenwich, Bexley, Croydon, and Bromley.

TW | 23.09.23 - 10:12 a.m. | #

I do like the idea of Diamond Geezer as a latter-day Lobby Ludd! The Squeezy Pig is utterly adorabe though...

cau1khead | 23.09.23 - 10:21 a.m. | #

I don't have a clue what your time is but is where you are going somewhere your mother would approve of?

Andrew | Homepage | 23.09.23 - 10:27 a.m. | #

After 7 questions, DG is in either Bromley or Bexley (and possibly Croydon depending on the definition of Labour-controlled).

TW | 23.09.23 - 10:28 a.m. | #

C’mon folks - there can’t be that many open spaces in London that DG hasn’t visited before ;)

Michael | 23.09.23 - 10:39 a.m. | #

Interesting about the Osage Orange. There is a good entry in Wikipedia on it - I like the idea that it is a 'green' form of barbed wire.

Lucy Garden | 23.09.23 - 11:18 a.m. | #

I’m hiding again at 2pm, somewhere else.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 23.09.23 - 11:23 a.m. | #

Can’t believe I was sitting two minutes walk from you for a chunk of the morning! So close to a brush with greatness

Mudcrutch | 23.09.23 - 11:38 a.m. | #

Let's try and strategise better for round 2. I think good starting questions are North/South of the Thames and whether the location Is inside the North/South Circulars. From there we can find the borough by dividing the space using roads or just asking borough names. Then, ask whether the location is within 1 mile of certain landmarks (1 mile is short enough to give a good range, anything else is too general).
I hope we find DG this time :D

TW | 23.09.23 - 12:30 p.m. | #

One way can be to use the golden ratio to break London into smaller and smaller squares.
Q1 - East of Tower Bridge (TB being roughly central for Greater London)
Q2 North of Tower Bridge
This will give us the quadrant without using 3Qs based on postcodes first letter
Then 2 questions based on that quadrants most central location and so on

This would take 10 questions to get location <1sqm or if a reduced list of public spaces turned up then just guess one

John | 23.09.23 - 1:43 p.m. | #

I think it's unlikely that dg will be anywhere in Inner London, where he has spent so much time exploring - unless he is somewhere he has always deliberately avoided for personal reasons.

Ian | 23.09.23 - 1:53 p.m. | #

How to avoid no one asking or lots of similar questions using up the 5 question quota?

Half a physicist | 23.09.23 - 1:55 p.m. | #

A great point Ian - then do we start with are you outside of zone 3 travel zone, then inside another zone to provide inner/outer bounds. Then east of a post?

John | 23.09.23 - 1:59 p.m. | #

Ask whether he's North or South of the Thames to start.

TW | 23.09.23 - 2:01 p.m. | #

That works, then e/w of a point, then outside of a zone and inside another zone would be a good start, I see TW is asking now

John | 23.09.23 - 2:04 p.m. | #

Updates: boroughs remaining are Hillingdon, Hounslow, Ealing, Brent, and Enfield.

Also, instead of asking "are you in Harrow" or "are you in Barnet", try to eliminate around half of the area remaining.

TW | 23.09.23 - 2:22 p.m. | #

In my defence, there's a reason for picking specific boroughs, but I accept it only works if I get multiple questions. But I think it makes sense to think about travel from this morning's location.

Quizzical Eyebrow | 23.09.23 - 2:23 p.m. | #

If there are 4 boroughs left, it would be faster to say "are you in either Hillingdon or Hounslow", and then ask either Hillingdon or another Borough depending on what is left - you'd always get the answer in 2 questions. This is compared to asking each borough individually - which can take between 1-3 questions.
Also, DG has had 3 hours to get between the locations.

TW | 23.09.23 - 2:28 p.m. | #

Borough of Richmond would also be a possibility.

Alan | 23.09.23 - 2:34 p.m. | #

(Alan is right about Richmond)
We need to get more specific. I think the best question would be North/South of the A4020 (Uxbridge Road) as it splits the available region almost equally.

TW | 23.09.23 - 2:42 p.m. | #

So - between the A40 and the Thames, and more than 3 miles from LHR.

Ian McNeil | 23.09.23 - 2:58 p.m. | #

I'm currently making a Google my map (I'm not sharing it because I'm using my personal account and don't want to dox myself). It's a small slice of Hillingdon (around Hillingdon itself), most of Ealing except for sides in the north and east, the eastern half of Hounslow, and everything in Richmond more than 500m west of the Thames. It's a very wide region.

If anyone hasn't asked a question, I'd recommend asking if DG's South of the A4.

TW | 23.09.23 - 3:04 p.m. | #

I wish I’d read this thread first.

I wonder if “If you were to tweet the nearest postcode to the mystery location, along with the hashtag #ThisIsTheAnswer, on the DG twitter account, would it receive more than 10 likes in the first five minutes?” would work?

Will Swearve | 23.09.23 - 3:29 p.m. | #

What this epic fail demonstrates is that there are a very large number of public open spaces in London.

Malcolm of Kent | 23.09.23 - 3:34 p.m. | #

It also demonstrates that it's highly unlikely to have 20 coordinated commenters within 1 hour. For example, 0.1 degrees longitude is barely west of the A10 which is barely west of the River Lea.

TW | 23.09.23 - 3:39 p.m. | #

Oh I just realised something quite important that I overlooked. The location is closer to a national rail station than a tube station. Comparing that to the 'hinterland' station map someone gave DG last year, it rules out a large chunk of Hillingdon and some areas around Hounslow and Osterley.

TW | 23.09.23 - 3:49 p.m. | #

My guess would be Southall/Hayes, near an Elizabeth Line station.

Ian | 23.09.23 - 4:23 p.m. | #

I've overlayed the Voronoi Station map over my current one, and the current possible areas are a large chunk including North Hayes, Southall, Hanwell, West Ealing and South Greenford, and also a tiny strip just above the A4 near Brentford.

TW | 23.09.23 - 4:50 p.m. | #

Issues:
• not enough questions asked
• wasted questions
• overlapping questions
• uncoordinated responses
• not reading the rubric
• suggesting specific answers rather than narrowing it down
• London is very big
• it was hard for me to keep everything updated using a smartphone browser

diamond geezer | Homepage | 23.09.23 - 6:14 p.m. | #

Page refresh definitely contributed to a few wasted comments that overlapped, but still a great challenge - thanks!

John | 23.09.23 - 6:25 p.m. | #

It was a fun adventure. I think this is a great quiz format - it just needs a bit of refinement. It's a bit sad that Squeezy Pig didn't get to meet anyone today.

TW | 23.09.23 - 6:59 p.m. | #

Wow, I'm amazed with readers dotted all over the capital, none were able to locate you!
For what it's worth, had I played I wouldn't have guessed correctly either!

Cornish Cockney | 23.09.23 - 7:28 p.m. | #

If you do this again, and I hope you do, maybe allow longer for guesses? Good fun though

Jon combe | 23.09.23 - 7:33 p.m. | #

I allowed 4 hours for the second one and we still only reached 19 questions.

Also, hanging around in one spot for an hour is quite long enough, honest.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 23.09.23 - 7:38 p.m. | #

The strategy of breaking London into quarters in the first round of questions, then breaking that area down further is the right strategy, but its reliant on knowing London well - so choosing if it's best to ask which side of a rail/river/road he is.

But even if you do guess the right area and lived nearby, finding that person within the remaining time limit would be hard, I think DG would avoid populated areas, an adult male with a pink pig tends to attract attention.

Still Anon | 23.09.23 - 7:48 p.m. | #

I think this turned into rather a nice demonstration of Belbin's Team Roles rather than Hunt DG and Pig.

Most interesting.

Blue Witch | 23.09.23 - 8:13 p.m. | #

Busy in ilford gants hill barking and goodmayes I missed today's action blog quizzing

Noel | 23.09.23 - 10:11 p.m. | #

Late joiner. Busy day. Content to settle for today's Diamond Geezerism; beechmastry.

Rod | 23.09.23 - 10:21 p.m. | #

I had flashbacks to year 9 English Literature and Brighton Rock.

Kathryn | 24.09.23 - 7:46 a.m. | #

Great to see Squeezy Pig again!

Suse | 24.09.23 - 9:27 a.m. | #

Squeezy Pig giving Lobby Lud a run for his money. Would be more efficient if questioning were paused for a few minutes after each answer. Even better, but complicated, would be an interim pause to vote on the next question. Then again, perhaps it’s as well to have avoided the temptation to reduce the exercise to a two-dimensional binary search. One can have too much co-ordination.

Rich G | Homepage | 24.09.23 - 12:30 p.m. | #

Please do this again. We will try harder we promise!

Taffy | 24.09.23 - 2:30 p.m. | #

Maybe next time you can tell us a few days before that you are going to hide and seek. Some days I only check the weekend posts on Monday and luckily this week I checked Saturday morning, otherwise I would have missed this. Hopefully that would increase the number of participating readers and therefore the number of questions.

TW | 24.09.23 - 4:15 p.m. | #

Great fun!

I second what Taffy & TW have said.

strawbrick | 24.09.23 - 8:14 p.m. | #











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