EQ Readthrough: Issue 3, The Challenge

[elf]

LINK: Issue 3: The Challenge
Questions for this issue:

• What do you think of the Sun Villagers?
• How do you think the challenge wand came about?
• Did you think the challenges were fair, and fairly won?

Main OQR post with prompt questions
Note: These aren't mandatory questions; they're meta prompts. If you don't care for any of them, or want to tangent from them to some other topic, that's fine too.

Comments

[anke]

What stands out about the challenges to me is that the challenge of "head" was solved more on a basis of who happened to have the most practical stuff on him - not only the bit with pulling their respective nice out of crevices with their necklaces, but also Cutter happening to have trousers he could unravel for a rope. If it had been about intelligence/inventiveness rather than that kind of luck, Rayek should have won.

I also find it strange that it would be easier for Cutter to smell a kind of metal from far, far away, rather than, say, the sweat of the elves who hid New Moon. As far as I know, canids' sense of smell is not universally awesome - for example monkeys do way better when it comes to fruit smells - so it seems weird.

[elf]

The "head" challenge seemed to be about "clever use of resources," rather than any actual intelligence. Cutter had senses that made certain skills irrelevant, and it didn't matter that it takes no direct intelligence to use those senses.

And yeah, with you on the metal-sniffing.

The test seemed to reward luck much more than forethought. Although I suppose that doesn't much matter, if the point is that the winner gets to woo the lady, not "marry" her. (The more I think about the whole challenge thing, the less sense it makes.)