Introducing the HP4GU Contest

[joym999 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 18055

Welcome to The HP4GU Sort-of-Weekly Contest, known also by its full 
name:  The Invitational, Magical, Exciting, Weekly, All-Smarty's 
Tournament Extraordinaire!  In order to make HP4GU a more fun and 
exciting home, especially for those of us who have absolutely no 
lives outside of it, I have (with the Moderators' permission) decided 
to inflict upon you a weekly, non-competitive yet hopefully amusing, 
contest.

This contest will consist of a variety of different activities which 
I think you will all enjoy.  Some of the contests will be written or 
designed by yours truly, but I am hoping that the rest of you will 
contribute puzzles or contest ideas as well.  All contest ideas 
should be sent to the contest email address, which is 
HP4GUCon at aol.com.  Remember, the contest is non-competitive, so there 
are no winners or losers (well, no winners anyway).

There will be a new contest every week, I hope, or almost every week, 
anyway.  There will be 3 types of contests: puzzles, creative 
contests, and speculative contests.  Puzzles consist of crosswords 
and other word puzzles, anagrams, trivia questions, etc., so if 
you've written one of these please send it to me!  Creative contests 
will consist of things like poetry-writing (more fun than you think, 
really!).  Speculative contests will consist of asking people to 
theorize about an unknown aspect of the Harry Potter universe, such 
as the recent thread on "What happens to the Hogwarts Express the 
rest of the year?"

This contest is for fun only.  There are no winners, no prizes, no 
trophies, no glory, but also no losers, no shame, and no hurt 
feelings.  Friends don't need to compete with one another, right?  
Right!  And don't forget to send those lists of trivia questions, 
word search puzzles, or other brilliant ideas to me at 
HP4GUCon at aol.com

The Rules are posted below, and will be repeated each week when a new 
contest is posted.  I will also file the rules in our files section, 
along with a contest archives (space permitting).  The first contest 
will be posted this Friday.

The Rules
1.  Contest responses should be sent by email to the contest email 
address, which is HP4GUCon at aol.com.  RESPONSES SHOULD NOT BE POSTED 
TO THE LIST.  Anyone posting responses, especially puzzle answers, to 
the list will be disqualified from participation in that contest, 
sent a howler, turned into a toad, sent to Azkaban, AND forced to eat 
bubotuber pus. SO DON'T POST RESPONSES TO THE LIST.

2.  Contests will be posted on Fridays.  Responses should be sent by 
email to HP4GUCon at aol.com by midnight Tuesday night.  For puzzle 
contests, both the correct answers and a list of everyone who 
submitted a correct solution by the deadline will be posted on 
Wednesday (or Thursday at the latest).  For creative and speculative 
contests, all responses will be posted, although I might just post a 
random sampling if there are a real lot of responses to a particular 
contest.

3. ANSWERS SHOULD NOT BE POSTED TO THE LIST.  I know this is also 
rule # 1, but I can not stress it enough.

– Joywitch M. Curmudgeon

P.S.  There is a little tiny contest imbedded in this post.  Did you 
find it?  If so, let me know by sending email to HP4GUCon at aol.com and 
NOT BY POSTING IT TO THE LIST.