Here are the limericks on Dún Laoghaire:

Limerick A:

Though you can cross directly in theory
It's better to sail to Dún Laoghaire.
The crossing to Dublin
Is long and quite troublin'
The "short sea" will make you less weary.

Limerick B:

There once was a pub in Dunleary.
Whose clientèle's eyes were quite bleary.
The landlord was blunt,
Shouting "Time!" with a grunt.
And exeunt customers beery.

Limerick C:

There was once a sweet lad from Dún Laoghaire
Who did swear that he ne'er was a faoghaire
Tho, if e'er asked his druthers,
He would always say, 'Brothers--
'Do put it just there, in my raoghaire'

Limerick D:

A naughty old man from Dún Laoghaire
Said, “Give us a kiss won’t you, dearie!”
So I gave him a peck
On the back of his neck
'Cos the fumes from the front were too beery.

Limerick E:

The last time I went to Dun Laoghaire
I started the night very cheery.
But through faulty assumption
Of Guinness consumption,
My head the next day was most bleary.

Limerick F:

A drunkard who lives in Dun Laoghaire
Has been known to down drams till he’s weary.
He’ll drink whiskey (a pint)
And then feel like a gi’nt
But he sleeps like a babe when he’s beery.

Limerick G:

The restaurants in downtown Dun Laoghaire
Aren't Irish - they're mainly Kashmiri.
The Irish don't worry
How hot is their curry --
Or at least that's the restaurateurs' theory.

Limerick H:

I once knew a lad from Dún Laoghaire,
About whom I had a fun theory:
His Irish tradition
And drunken condition
Were reasons he was a ton cheery!

Limerick I:

The whores on the docks in Dun Laoghaire
Are generally not very cheery.
Though there are men about
They've drunk so much stout
That their tackle is simply too weary.

Question:
Please vote for the one you prefer.

Choices:
Limerick A
Limerick B
Limerick C
Limerick D
Limerick E
Limerick F
Limerick G
Limerick H
Limerick I

 

This message has been edited. Last edited by: arnie,

Er... aren't G and H the same?

quote:

Er... aren't G and H the same?

They certainly look like it to me!

Now I remember what the problem was with this poll idea (bearing in mind how few voters we have). If we vote for our own limericks that's a bit incestuous; if we vote for someone else's limerick even if we don't like it as much as our own, that's distorting the results; if we abstain if we've submitted a limerick then there'll be hardly any votes.

What is the preferred of the options: vote for one's own, vote for someone else's (even if you don't think much of it) or abstain?

Ugh.

Sorry about that! Now corrected.

Vote.
But feel honour bound not to vote for yourself.

You are taking this far too seriously, Richard.

This is the limerick game. We're not the OEDILF.

I don't think I'm taking it too seriously - but the rules need to be clear.

The three possible voting situations will affect the result significantly and, bearing in mind that this was supposed to make the choosing of a winner easier, this lack of clarity cannot be a good thing.

Arnie has told us that one competitor has submitted four limericks; if he or she doesn't vote for any one of them, then abstention seems the only fair action - with the likely results I has opined.

"Game? This wasn't meant to be a game!"
A brief round of applause for he first person to identify the quote.

The movie Rollerball I think.

That was quick. You may award yourself a round of applause.

Do as you wish, Richard. To my mind the simpler the rules, the better.

Just as no-one will know if you look up a bluffing game word in a dictionary, no-one will know if you vote for your own limerick. I would suggest that you only do so if you are in your honest opinion truly certain that yours is definitely the best entry, though, and that it would be unfair to risk denying it its moment of glory by insufficient other Wordcrafters agreeing with you.

In many ways it's more fun to guess the authors (and I reckon I have).

Great limericks! Put to the test I don't know if I can tell who's who after all!!

[QUOTE]Originally posted by arnie:
I would suggest that you only do so if you are in your honest opinion truly certain that yours is definitely the best entry, though,

Hm, can I change my vote

kidding

"It's only a game"
..................... Moms all over the world

quote:

What is the preferred of the options: vote for one's own, vote for someone else's (even if you don't think much of it) or abstain?

Personally I'd not ever vote for my own. But I can certainly understand it if others didn't feel that way. I like several of them for very different reasons. Some had very nice rhythms (others I had to makeshift for them to work), and that's important to me. I have a thing about rhyming and had some thoughts about some of the rhymes here. Of course content (and particularly humor) is most important, but, to me, the three together make an exceptional limerick. So there you have it.

I've voted.

I agree with you, Kalleh – I wouldn’t vote for myself. I think that most likely if you’ve written something marvellous then other people will notice it too and if they don’t, well .... so be it. We all already know our own are brilliant, don’t we ???

Re the rhymes - we met up with this in the Eerie game – the regional diffs between air and ear. In NZ where we flatten the vowels there’s a difference but it’s close and, I confess, I did actually miss a near rhyme when I picked my winner this time. Must’ve been truly marvellous in other ways!!!

Once the voting is over, I will comment on the rhymes. I do agree that regional differences can present a challenge, but I felt there was something more elemental going on with this group of limericks.

Final call for votes! Eight votes have been cast so far. I'll post the winner's name over the weekend, so vote now if you haven't already!

With only a single vote and with only 8 voters, inevitably some limericks will receive no votes. And it could be that those that have received no votes at all, might have been well-liked by some voters but not quite so well-liked as their favourite.

If we decide to continue with this kind of voting, would there be any merit in allowing people to have three votes, so they could vote for 1st, 2nd and 3rd places? Will the software allow for this kind of poll?

So we have 9 limericks and one person wrote 4 of them and we have 8 voters .... interesting. Is anyone else trying to guess the authors?

I like the idea of 1st, 2nd, 3rds too, Richard.

I suppose we could have a poll with three questions along the lines of:
Which limerick do you like best?
Which limerick do you like as second-best?
Which limerick do you like as third-best?

However, it does seem to me to be adding an unnecessary layer of complexity. As I said earlier, to my mind the simpler the rules, the better.

Another layer of complexity, yes. But is it unnecessary?

Under the current system, if two people vote limerick 1 into top position and the remaining limericks only get one vote each, then limerick 1 will win, even though the other limericks might have gained far more votes overall.

But if limerick 1 received 2 votes for top position and no more, whereas limerick 2 received 1 vote for first and 7 votes for second it would be reasonable to infer that, overall, limerick 2 had attracted more approbation. A proportional system would more accurately reflect that.

To repeat myself:

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:
You are taking this far too seriously, Richard.

This is the limerick game. We're not the OEDILF.

Why not award the votes to the individuals honored, so they can be sold, traded, or used in subsequent contests. This free market system of poetry might help to stimulate the current economies by some kind of homeopathic magic. Or, perhaps, we need an electoral college. These electors can be nominated (and approved or blackballed) to the position by the current champion. Then they could form factions within the college for intramural and internecine criticism. We could probably do with an academy, too, to approve of pronunciation, rhyme, meter, and other nitpicky parts of prosody. Oh, wait, it's just a game. I'm with arnie on this one: KISS.

OK. How about this. No voting, no scoring, no winning no losing. The current organiser chooses a new organiser at random or by whatever criteria he or she considers appropriate (hair colour, shoe size, IQ, most posts in a month, most months between posts...whatever).

The new organiser does nothing but pick a place, collect the limericks, display them and then pick the next organiser.

quote:

The new organiser does nothing but pick a place, collect the limericks, display them and then pick the next organiser

Exactly what we have now. Now that's change we can count on.

Ah yes, but now I've introduced a random elephant... er... element.

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:
To repeat myself:

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:
You are taking this far too seriously, Richard.

This is the limerick game. We're not the OEDILF.

I would remind you that it was not I who complained about the judging system. I would be quite happy for it to remain as it was. But once changes were mooted I felt bound to point out their possible pitfalls.

Maybe the changes, if changes there need to be, could be discussed and agreed by those who have expressed their dissatisfaction with the original scheme.

Oh, let's just continue with this. At first I was annoyed that mine didn't get one, single vote, but then I got over it. I like mine, particularly since I was the only person to rhyme the entire name of the venue, which I had thought was elemental in this game; obviously, given the votes, I am wrong. So if no one else liked it, so what?

Since I got over it, and I am one of the thinnest skinned people here (not that I am proud of that!), I think we can make it this way. It'll get way too complicated, otherwise, and the game will die out. Can we try it this way for a few times at least? I promise not to complain (at least on Wordcraft!).

And the winner is ...

Limerick D with five votes out of eight cast.

And the winning author is ... STELLA!

Surely it's limerick C that's the winner? Limerick D has only 1 vote.

Take another look, Richard.

Do you know, all the time I've been assuming that the limerick numbers preceded the scores! No wonder I was confused and in significant disagreement with the other voters!

Now we need to know who wrote what (although I reckon I've worked most of them out)

Yikes, I'm surprised (and honoured of course). Like Richard I misread the poll results and thought that Limerick C had garnered most votes. I think it's because the limericks were set out with the heading first but the results were set out with the score first followed by the heading. Shows you how easy it is to misread instructions.

Congratulations, stella. Well done.

Nicely done, Stella. Either way, I guess you will be the winner, and of course that makes sense. It just goes to show that those choosing the winners are reliable in their decisions.

I have to admit, I've always "altered" my choosing a bit. Even in this game, I deliberately didn't choose D because I saw it already had 5 votes. When I've been the person choosing the winning limerick in the past, I've never chosen anyone who had just won, and, when appropriate (I have to like the limerick!), I've purposely chosen someone who hadn't won that much before. It isn't scientific, but I it fits the purpose of this game...have fun writing limericks. So we all have our individual criteria.

By the way, my limerick was H. I thought the "Dun" had to rhyme, too. That of course wouldn't be the case on OEDILF, but since we are rhyming the places, I thought it had to be the whole place. Live and learn!

That might present a rather a challenge were the place to be llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

quote:

llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

I didn't rhyme all the syllables but I took a stab at the place back in Dec 07.

I'd forgotten that! I even had a go myself at its English translation.

I'm addled by this new voting system. Not saying I can't get used to it, but just a couple questions:

are we ever going to be shown who wrote which limerick?

won't there be any discussion of the limericks at all? For example, Kalleh weren't you going to say something about rhymes? One of my enjoyments of the game in past has been our post-mortem.

quote:

post-mortem

There's nothing finer than a dead limerick.

I wasn't going to post the names of every author, but since it's been requested:

Limerick A - Richard
Limerick B - zmježd
Limerick C - bethree5
Limerick D - Stella
Limerick E - Richard
Limerick F - Proofreader
Limerick G - Richard
Limerick H - Kalleh
Limerick I - Richard.

quote:

For example, Kalleh weren't you going to say something about rhymes?

I agree about the post-morten, bethree. I loved hearing what the judge had to say.

As one who could be less vocal than I am , I did mention my difficulty with the rhymes. Since this game is all about rhyming the place, I thought the whole Dun Laoghaire should have been rhymed, and not just the "Laoghaire."

It was nice to see so many entrants!

quote:

I agree about the post-morten, bethree. I loved hearing what the judge had to say.

This is at one and the same time the most interesting and the most difficult part of the game.

Not everyone enjoys analysing and criticising others and not everyone feels competent to do it. However, as I have myself found in other areas of my life, the ability to assess and evaluate others' work is a useful one, and, if it is done properly, can be very beneficial to the recipient of the critique.

So, Stella, I guess you're up again. If nothing else, we're all going to be stars in NZ geography!

Funy, I thought we weren't doing it that way anymore ........

It's a bit weird for me to say it since I won, but I quite liked voting without knowing who the authors were and I was surprised how hard I found it to guess who was who. It was nice that you joined in too, z - I don't think I've ever seen the word exeunt in a limerick before!

Well, only because I have thought of a new name, I'll start the next one, but I really don't want to judge it.

Possibly the way forward is for the winning author to choose a destination and decide whether to judge and comment him or herself, or whether to throw it open as did Arnie.

I was wondering if arnie would agree to be our "moderator" since he doesn't send in limericks. It's just a thought, but the winner could post the name of the place, and then the players would send their limericks to arnie. When there are enough (5 or so), arnie could post the poll. Or would that be too much work, arnie?

... but arnie can write limericks too!! What say everyone writes them and I put them up anonymously for voting.

Of course he can, but he usually doesn't. It was just a suggestion. Whatever you wish to do is fine with me.