This week’s contest is kind of complicated, and I will be out of town for a few days, so the contest will run for 2 weeks. The submission deadline is midnight EST Tuesday, June 18. Remember, DON’T POST TO THE LIST. Email your responses to HP4GUCon@aol.com. This contest is one of my favorite games, which is known by several different names including CATEGORIES. In this game, you have a five-letter word and five different categories and you have to find 25 words or phrases which begin with each letter of the five- letter word. The categories are People, Places, Things, Beings and Terms, and you have three words to choose from – SNAPE, MAGIC, and GHOST. To play the game first pick one of the three words – SNAPE, MAGIC or GHOST. Then find something from the Harry Potter books (including FB and QTTA) which corresponds to each category. For example, if you pick SNAPE as your word, you must find a person, place, thing, being and term which starts with each of the letters S, N, A, P and E, for a total of 25 words or phrases. The definitions of the five categories are as follows: “People” is the first OR last name of a HUMAN (includes those who are only part human) character in any of the HP books (including QTTA and FB) . Only humans, so “Harry” or “Potter” is acceptable but “Binns” and “Dobby” are not. “Places” is the name of any place mentioned, in any capacity, in the HP books, for example “Japan” (mentioned in QTTA) or “Dumbledore’s Office.” “Things” is any magical object mentioned in the HP books, including titles of books, and names of specific magical items such as potions or plants. It must be something that you can touch. “Beings” includes both names and types of any non-human beings or creatures. “Peruvian Vipertooth”, “Vipertooth”, “Norbert”, and “dragon” are all acceptable. “Terms” includes anything magical that doesn’t fit into the above 4 categories, including spells, MoM departments and jobs, Hogwarts classes, and languages. Scoring is as follows: You get 2 points for each category in which you are the ONLY one to have that word or phrase. One point is subtracted from your score for any categories you leave blank. Here is an example: Here’s an example, using the word SNAPE. Suppose there were only two entries, from Amy A. and Amy B., shown below. Amy A. left 3 categories blank and Amy B. left 5 categories blank, so they receive minus 3 and minus 5 points, respectively. Neither one gets credit for Scabbers, Nimbus, Norbert, NEWT, Azkaban, Ernie, Eeylops, or Elves because these words were on both lists. Amy A. gets 28 points for her remaining categories, minus 3 for the blanks, for a total of 25 points. Amy B. gets 24 points minus 5 points for a total of 19 points. (Note that this is NOT meant to imply some sort of alphabetical trend in the intelligence of Amys.) Entry 1 – Amy A. Person Place Things Beings Terms S Snape Shrieking Sorting Scabbers Seeker Shack Hat N Neville ? Nimbus Norbert NEWT A Albus Azkaban Armadillo ? Astronomy Bile P Peter ? Prefects Puffskein Parselmouth Who Gained Power E Ernie Eeylops Every Elves Erised Owl Flavor Emporium Beans Entry 2 – Amy B. Person Place Things Beings Terms S Slytherin Slytherin Standard Scabbers Squib Common Book of Room Spells N Newt ? Nimbus Norbert NEWT A Aberforth Azkaban ? ? Accio P Pettigrew ? Polyjuice Peeves Parseltongue Potion E Ernie Eeylops ? Elves Exploding Snap Owl Emporium A few notes: 1. Only ONE entry per person is allowed, with only ONE of the three words. If there are not a lot of entries, I may allow people to submit a second entry with a different word next week, since this contest will run for 2 weeks. 2. You only get points if you are the only one to come up with a particular word or phrase, so the more obscure the better. On the other hand, maybe no one will choose words like “Harry” or “Hagrid” because they are so obvious. Hmmmm. 3. I can assure you that there are at least 2 possible entries for each of the 75 possible combinations, and many, many more for most of them.