Having watched the show many times and enjoyed it I decided to breakdown the parts that I really liked and see if this is the same with the majority of other watchers.

1. Ingenuity (changing the original machine to something it was not designed to do) 2. Creativity (solving the challenge in a way that is not totally obvious) 3. Power & Destruction (who doesn't love it when they use powerful engines this appeals to the child in all of us) 4. Tactics (solving the challenge)

Having read the excellent nerds account of steam powered cars I saw how they were also very good tacticians plotting their moves carefully on the difficult course they were assigned.

I personally would like to see more of these tactics taking place in developing the bodged together machines. An example would be from the bridging race; have different courses. The longer course would have shorter bridging requirements, and the shorter course longer ones. This would allow the teams more flexibility in their designs based on how they feel they want to solve the challenge. This concept could be extended to the artillery, more points for shooting the target further away etc.

So how can this be combined with a new novel idea, well that is the hard part? Having read a good deal of the suggestions I think that several of them would be real worthy contenders for this concept. My humble suggestion is a landing craft that has to transport a vehicle of some description. The landing craft & land vehicle must also be able to carry multiple team members and race a course. Land rovers/heavy vehicles would get a shorter course than lighter motorcycle/scooter vehicles. The landing craft could have two different landing places as well. A landing point further away if they use an already built ramp, or closer if they use a ramp built into the craft. I am now open to well deserved criticism.

-- Conrad Maher (conradmaher@earthlink.net), January 30, 2001

Answers

Give teams the quad bikes to embark aboard the Landing Craft, Junkyard (LCJ) they would voyage to other side of the resivior disembark quadbike, get flag, rembark on LCJ and return to starting point disembark quadbike and raise flag. Lots of opportunities for Mayhem. I like this idea of yours.

-- Stephen A. Binion (Stephenbinion@hotmail.com), January 30, 2001.