This contest, which began in May 2010, ended Jan. 7, 2012. The following is an archive of questions and answers. If you're interested in reading the novel, it would be best not to read this section first, as it contains spoilers.

Thanks to all who participated.

 

What is the allusion in Ozzie’s name, and to what does it specifically refer?

The inaugural winner in this contest is 10011, for his or her answer posted at 10:31 p.m. July 16 (about 1 ½ hours before the midnight Eastern time contest deadline). I judged his answer to Question 1, “What is the allusion in Ozzie’s name, and to what does it specifically refer?” to be the best of the four submissions that were received. Congratulations to 10011, inaugural winner in the Universes novel contest. His answer edged out MsClues, who in my opinion had posted the best answer to Question 1 until 10011’s answer appeared late last (Friday) night. (If you haven’t read the novel yet, please don’t read on: Major spoilers follow.) The winning answer, from 10011, is:

 “ ‘What is the allusion in Ozzie’s name, and to what does it specifically refer?’

“I believe that the name Ozzie Mandias alludes to the Percy Shelley poem ‘Ozymandias.’ The fallen statue described in the poem represents a monument to hubris that has been felled by the ravages of time. In Universes, Ozzie is stripped of his life's achievements: his PhD, his research, his position, his wife. In a similar manner to the statue, he is stripped of his own pride and relegated to the existence of much less than what he once was.

“And in a more literal sense, he ultimately becomes just a head with a fragmented body, just like the shattered statue.”

Assuming that 10011 and I are able to connect by email this weekend, his or her $50 U.S. money order will be mailed on Monday as a registered (or certified, or whatever they call it) letter, which will require a return receipt so I can retain proof, along with my copy of the money order, that the award was sent; just in case some Looney Tunes sues me over the contest down the road, or I need to be able to prove the contest was legit for some other compelling reason. Unless such a highly remote contingency occurs, the real name and address will always remain confidential, and my records of them will be destroyed within a reasonable period after the contest closes.

The answers by both 10011 and MsClues took essentially the same point of view – that the name alluded to the poem in order to point to the eventual inevitable failure of all human enterprise. MsClues relied in part on the book’s epilogue, which was perhaps a bit of a handicap for MsClues in that the planned revision, which I announced on July 5 in the post “Novel will be revised” on the Comments section of this website, mentions that the epilogue will not be part of the revised novel. However, this was swept away as a consideration by the cogent, plausible and well-stated argument in 10011’s submission, which surpassed all other entries.

10011, MsClues, phikap90, and tatsudairo all picked up on the allusion in Ozzie’s name. While writing the novel, I deliberately kept out any use of “Ozzie Mandias,” first and last names together, with a single reference to “Oswald Patrick Mandias” in Chapter 6. My intention was to challenge the reader to put together the name as Ozzie Mandias, which sounds just like the Ozymandias of Shelley’s poem. All four entrants did this.

None of the four submissions contained the answer I was looking for, but 10011’s and MsClues’ answers both presented arguments that were plausible and made sense. On a scale of accuracy, I would give both answers a marginal 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. 10011 wins because his or her entry gives an elegant and very plausible rationale for its conclusion, even though its conclusion is wrong, as I see it.

The Shelley poem allusion does not have any connection to the novel (I assume it’s a novel?) Watchmen, whoever wrote it and whatever happens in it. I’ve never read it, or even heard of it, and can only speculate whether it would have any plausibly logical connection with Universes. Thanks for answering, though, your reasoning may have been very sound, and please keep contributing your answers.

MsClues got one or two not terribly important demerits for misspelling Shelley’s surname (as “Shelly.”) And I was surprised at the omission of the middle name, Bysshe, from both 10011’s and MsClues’ answers. I was strongly under the impression that his name always appeared as Percy Bysshe Shelley. I assume this was the name that accompanied all his published work. This is hardly an important point either, though.

(Some Shelley trivia for interested readers: Shelley’s second wife [his first wife killed herself] was Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, author of the classic horror tale Frankenstein. Mary’s mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), probably the first major milestone in feminist writing. Mary Wollstonecraft died from birth complications a few days after the birth of her daughter Mary in 1797. I have read that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein at age 19, and it reads like the effort of a 19-year-old in my opinion, with its tiresomely repetitious evocations of the anguish experienced by the protagonist. My recommendation: Stick with the Boris Karloff version, it’s a lot more fun.)

If I had had the privilege of writing the ideal submission as if I had been a contestant, it would read something like this:

 My answer: Ozzie’s full name is Ozzie Mandias, which is an allusion to the poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (British, 1792-1822). Specifically, it refers to the last three lines of the poem, which are quoted at the top of Universes:

 Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The desolation of this passage evokes the barrenness of the physical landscape where Ozzie finds himself after he dies in the particle accelerator lab in Kansas. It probably also refers to Ozzie’s own psychic desolation. And, as a bit of a shot in the dark, it could also be a metaphor for the psychic desert inhabited by the author of Universes.

 +  +  +

 Somewhere in the Reviews section, I mentioned that I had not decided, amid the confusion over the novel revision, whether to award the prize money to a winner of Question 1, or move it forward to another question or questions. I have decided to do both. Question 2, previously announced as having a prize value of $50, will be worth $100. It will appear on this page Sunday.

What is Lucy’s planned occupation? (You will have to do some digging to get the right occupation description, because this does not appear in the book.)

The winner on Question 2 is entropi.

The question was:

“What is Lucy’s planned occupation? (You will have to do some digging to get the right occupation description, because this does not appear in the book.)”

 Entropi’s answer:

 “Her intended career would have been in psychopharmacology. After witnessing her mother's struggle with manic depression and seeing the effects of lithium, she was inspired to pursue a degree in neurological pharmacology and research other ‘brain drugs’ to alleviate the suffering of others.”

 This answer is exactly correct.

My parenthetical comment in the question that “this does not appear in the book” was actually incorrect. Psychopharmacology is referred to by name in a conversation between Lucy and Gail. Here is the relevant portion:

“What about your mom?” [Gail said].

“She snapped.”  Lucy glanced at a stand of sickly trees tracing their spindly twigs up to the sky.  “I’m not so close to her.  She has manic depression.  We had some horror shows.  They took her away when I was five and she was back and forth until they got her on lithium, that really helped.  That’s how I got interested in my field.”

“Research — what is it?”

“Psychopharmacology.  Brain drugs.  There’s a lot of suffering out there.  Let me tell ya.”

I doubt very much that my incorrect info threw anyone off, but if it did, I’m sorry. Hey, the contest is just getting started.

Congratulations to entropi on 10 out of 10.

 

What enables the whale to fly?

Congratulations to Diced on the best answer to Question 3 about what enables the whale to fly. The answer read:

"The hot air from the volcano is less dense than the rest of the atmosphere so the whale becomes lighter than air after it breathes in the hot air and can float like a balloon. With its fins, it can direct its flight. It can release the hot air through its blowhole to descend again."

As described in the novel, what is it about string theory that attracts the interest of physicists, and what is the outstanding problem with it?

There are no winners for Question 4 – “As described in the novel, what is it about string theory that attracts the interest of physicists, and what is the outstanding problem with it?”

The only submission gives no indication that it is “as based on the novel,” or that the entrant has read the book. The proposed answer looks suspiciously like a rewrite from Wikipedia. There’s no mention in the novel of several elements cited in the submission, so clearly the source was other than the novel, contrary to the specifications given in the question. I feel it is quite correct for me to be hard-nosed about this: This answer disqualifies itself.

Previously, I had intended to move prize money forward if there was no winner on a given contest question. I’m not going to do so in this case. It appears people are waiting for the higher-value questions. Accordingly, prize money will not be moved forward as long as people are not seriously participating in the early stages of the contest. Holding off early is an interesting strategy, but people may find the competition quite stiff when the time comes. Remember that the questions become progressively harder.

I am compelled to eat crow over my initial reaction to 911’s answer for Question 4. (“Eat crow: informal, to be forced to accept or perform something that is embarrassing to one, as to retract an emphatic statement; suffer humiliation: his prediction was completely wrong, and he had to eat crow” – Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language. I don't know the derivation.) I feel I owe 911 a public apology, and here it is: I am sorry.

His reaction (see comments under “No winner for Question 4”) is lucid, compelling and convincing. Perhaps my doubtfulness can be understood in view of his use of information not given in the novel, as well as the absence of references to material in it (included in his rebuttal). But there was an edge of annoyance to my post, which had to do with my frustration at the inactivity into which this site has fallen. I’m not active promoting the site around the Internet at present, because I want to complete the first part of a two-phase revision of the novel, and put it in place of the version that appears now, and I am busy on the revision (although admittedly I didn’t start the revision process until this week, having been distracted by severe insomnia and other life interrupters).

There was a time, perhaps, when people sought to cultivate their humility, and even admired it when they saw it in others. It certainly is no fun, and eating crow these days probably evokes more disdain than approval, but perhaps it’s good for you anyway. I’ve been playing a lot of computer chess lately, which entails being humbled pretty regularly, though there are also flashes of triumph. In spite of the self-doubt and self-hate that have cursed me through much of my life, there is a side of me – all related to writing – that is not humble at all, witness the entry “Glenn Gould and artistic obduracy” in the “Your Reviews” section. Incidentally (or not), I’m not backing off from anything I wrote in that post.

However, the point is that the problem has been rectified, I have emailed 911 to arrange payment of his $100 prize, and, the apology accomplished, it is on to other things.

What is inside the bubble on which Ozzie rides down to the volcanic planet after his first visit to earth?

After giving the matter some thought, I felt that surfsup and true blue had posted equally good answers to Question 5. acyochosz had a good enough answer to win had there been no competitors, but the other two answers both provided fuller information. Try again, acyochosz and true blue.

Arbitrarily, I assigned heads to true blue and  tails to surfsup. I used a 1994 "loonie," which is the popular name for Canada's attractive one-dollar coin, with the Queen on one side and a loon on the other. I flipped the coin, which hit the ceiling and came to rest on the living room carpet. The loon side was up. There were no witnesses, so you'll have to take my word for it.

Congratulations to surfsup. I'll be  in touch with him about his (or her) $150 prize.

It looks as if all three entrants read the book, which is gratifying to me. But I would like to know what they and others thought of it. Somebody could make my day (or possibly wreck it, I suppose) by posting a candid review in the Reviews section.

I've been unable to establish contact with surfsup about sending him his money order for winning the last contest item. Surfsup has until Oct. 16 to get in touch with me, after which the prize goes to true blue.

I've received some junk in the email program I use for this website, suggesting to me that surfsup and possibly others might be trying to reach me, and after writing and posting this I'll try sending myself a test email through "Contact me." If there's a bug in the email program, it could account for the silence from surfsup and I'd want to clear it up, so anyone on this site who wants to send me a test email will be doing me a favor.

Explain the significance of the fact, related to Ozzie by the old man in the pit, that all the people he has met on the volcanic planet come from Kansas?

What causes Lucy’s hallucinations?

I've emailed true blue twice since he was named as winner on Question 7, but haven't heard back. The contest rules provide that winners must contact me with a name and address within 30 days, and the clock is running, true blue.

What is Heyser’s game? (Informed speculation is fine.)

First, I would like to apologize for being so tardy in making an announcement on Question 8. I have not been feeling well, and frankly had forgotten that one of the deadlines came up last weekend.

Secondly, I will simply state that this was a beastly question, almost but not absolutely requiring some mind-reading to get it right. The clues for the correct answer, which I may post at a later time, are all in the novel's text. Some of the submissions were very good, with plausible but incorrect explanations based on material in the text. But it would seem wrong to me to award a prize when none of the answers was really right. I do feel that a more plausible answer, one that would have been correct and consistent with the clues that were in the novel, as well as with plausible human behavior, could have been divined by an astute reader. Again, this doesn't mean the submissions were all totally wide of the mark, they weren't; but I feel a better answer, the correct one, could and should have been found.

To make up for this, and also for the $150 prize not awarded for Question 6, I am moving the prize money forward to later questions (which are also beastly). Question 9, initially announced as being worth $225, will be worth $375. Question 10, initially announced as being worth $300, will be worth $500.

What commonality does Toussaint have with Ozzie that explains why they fell down from the earth?

There is no winner on Question 9.

I've decided to keep this question open. The first person to provide a correct and complete answer will win the $375. However, all eligibility on this question will expire at midnight eastern time on March 31, 2011.

For this question, the rule about winning more than one prize is waived. In other words, if you've already won for a previous question, you are eligible to enter and win this one; and if you win this one, you will remain eligible to enter and win future parts of the contest.

Question 9 is the fourth from the last of the 12 questions, and these questions are meant to be difficult. You need not only to read the novel, but think about it, analyze it, understand it . . . and maybe even take a shot in the dark. These questions are not intended as trick questions, just difficult ones. (I wouldn't be surprised if some of you, seeing the correct answer, will say to yourselves, "Shucks, that was so obvious I didn't bother to mention it.")

I'm sorry this is working out as it has been lately, with no winners for three of the last four questions. I'd much rather be announcing a winner than doing what I've been doing, but I simply won't hand out a prize for a wrong answer.

 

 

What is Ozzie looking at when, while ascending to the level of the earth, he sees a white blob with a black Y superimposed on it?

I would like to apologize for being late in responding on Question 10. I haven't been feeling well -- specifically, I'm depressed.

sun_run wins on Question 10, worth $500. His answer is excellent, but not perfect, but I'm getting sick of my own persnicketyness (is that a word?).

The Y is actually formed by the intersection of the Kansas River and the Missouri River.

sun_run's answer explained the cause of the white background, which I feel was essential to the answer to this question.

What is the name of the area of study of interest to some neuroscientists and philosophers that Lucy and Shouldice debate in his operating room? ("Mind-body problem" is not the correct answer.)

There are some excellent answers to Question 11, but none uses the term that I believe is most precise. Xeros's answer covers the gist of it, but the term is missing. I am holding this question over to midnight Eastern time on March 31, 2011. The first to provide the correct term will win.

What is the “author’s message”?