Why not have a five team members with no specialist for an on land bog power pull or just strait power pull, or terrain challenge, by the way do have guys in mind.

-- victoria Starkey-Hess (twolf@proaxis.com), November 25, 2000

Answers

That limits what you can use for a challenge a lot. The point of challenges is to pick things that demonstrate specific principles. The shows real reason for existing is to teach science. Thats partly why they try (by choice of experts) to wind up with the two teams producing very different solutions.

Three is a good number, but I do wish the captain got to scavenge as well.

-- Jeff - The NERDS (dp@the-nerds.org), November 25, 2000.

The Three Rusty Juveniles team was made up of three chiefs, no indians, the most frustrating part was not being able to chase parts. the shows I saw prior to entering had virtually everyone out in the Yard. When we got there we were limited to 2, and being the scrounger in our bunch it made it very trying to be captain. More than three and an expert would be difficult to manage let alone film, production concerns seem to dictate alot of what is done.

-- jay McKinney (justjay@neo.rr.com), November 27, 2000.

Well, the other problem is that some of the teams are really unfamiliar with a problem that they'll get thrown at them. We got lucky; none of our challenges were in totally strange domains to us, but other groups were not so lucky and really _need_ the expert to get them into understanding how the machines need to work.

The three-plus-one gives a good balance; I'm not sure how well five-and-zero would work out. I'd be afraid that you'd end up with a lot of teams not finishing at all. As it is, a build day is one of the longest, hardest things I've done in a long time. Add the extra work of not having a clue, and you might fail before you even get to challenge day.

-Crash

-- Bill Yerazunis (Captain of the Nerds) (wsy@merl.com), December 18, 2000.