Mary from the Contest Canada mailing list was the first person to point this out to me,... If a contest only runs a short period of time then the better the odds of winning the contest are,... only people who enter the contest will win.

And Something that I've noticed myself:

The more obscure the contest skill testing question the bigger the reason to "get it right."

You are in what is considered Canada's only true desert. Where are you?

I would be in Osoyoos, British Columbia.

The above was the question and how I phrased the answer in a travel contest ran by the Globe and Mail. Jessica, the woman managing the contest did telephone and confirm I had the correct answer!

About finding answers to skill testing questons

On a Windows machine WebFerret has proved useful to me in past.

When I'm using the Palm - the search engines Yahoo and Google tend to work for me. Periodically I try Scrub The Web

About the odds of short running games:

There are, at the time of this writing there are about 300 members on the Contest Canada mailing list.

During the first 12 days of a daily draw contest 4 of the winners were members of the list. (The prize was a travel certificate valued in the thousands of dollars.)

Only entries with correct answers were eligible to win. Assuming that each member of the list entered this contest and answered correctly,... Let x be the total number of people who entered each day with the correct answer. 4 is to 12 as 300 is to x using a rule of proportionality.

Consequently it appears that only 900 people entered (on a typical day) with the correct answer.

Just on a side note: The above would "hold water" in an 8^th grade math class. It is subject to some fair criticism in a specialized statistics class. For the purposes of this web page's conversation it reasonably demonstrates my point.

I think that the above speaks for itself. It is often worthwhile going to a little bit of extra effort making sure the skill testing question is correct. The chances in this contest, about 1 in 1000, offer a better chance of significant return than most lottery tickets purchased. Entering a contest for a big prize,...

Happy Contesting.