It is the last day of February and, as foretold, today the Gods of Fate, with the help of my olde percentile dice, shall pick the first winner of a signed, lined and dated proof of Best Served Cold. Can you taste the tension?
To date there have been 218 hopeful entrants from across the globe, some of them funny, some of them sad, and many of them, frankly, lame. But, at least at this early stage of the contest – as with so many things in life – success isn’t about quality, it’s about luck. Therefore I will employ one of my many d6s to make a d3 for the hundreds column. Man, it’s just like being 13 again. Well, thinking about it, it’s not quite like that. My skin is better, my language is worse. I weigh about four stone more. I have children of my own. I live in London, not Lancaster. I write fantasy books rather than read them. I don’t play loads of computer games any more.
Alright, you got me, I was kidding about that last one.
In any case. The dice say the winner of the first proof of Best Served Cold is…
The 0 hundredth…
And…
40th entry. Which is from…
Drum roll please…
More drum roll…
Elke.
That’s all it says. Elke. Who apparently MUST read Best Served Cold before everyone else because…
“…it’ll deport my sorry ass out of the January depression, it’ll make the man I’ve fallen in love with notice that there are other men that mind boggle me (notably you) and finally you’ll sell a couple books more, because I already infected four of my friends with the genius output of your mind and I intend to infect more.”
Yes, Elke, yes, infect all your friends. You should be in receipt of an email from me requesting your address and desired message. The proof itself will soon follow. But don’t forget those 217 of you who were disappointed, there will be more winners, and they MAY ALREADY BE AMONG YOU. The dice will pick another in but a couple of weeks, then finally, on April Fool’s day, talent will win a rare victory over blind chance when I select the completion(s) of the sentence “I MUST read Best Served Cold before everyone else because…” that please me the most. Anyone who has been foolish enough not to enter, may find the details of how to do so here.
7 comments so far
Ooh, the Gods of Fate, no less!
Congratulations, Elke.
The temptation to gain one of these glamorous ARCs grows with each passing day…
Roll on with those dice, Joe. All the best.
If only the Gods would allow me to share my genuis and wit. Unfortunately, laziness, work, car accidents, a 6 year old and a tendancy to blame others, I have not entered yet.
But just you wait……
Hey Joe,
Just watched the ‘videos’on youtube.
The significant questions are; did you aply make up and not the usual saturday night stuff.
Did your wife coordinate your shirt/tshirt.
Or was there a group of make up artist etc in the wings and we saw the product of 40 takes?
If you roll a die to decide the hundreds column and then roll again to figure out the other two digits, you significantly favor the 19 people with a 2 in the hundreds column. They each have a 1/3 chance of being among 19 contenders for the prize, whereas the people with a 1 or 0 in the hundreds column have a 1/3 chance of being among 100 contenders. So the 2’s people each have a 1/57 chance of winning, as compared to the 1/300 chance of winning everyone else has.
I am not upset about this (I don’t even have a stake in it, I haven’t yet entered), and it could be that I misunderstood what you wrote and your method of selection is perfectly fair and random. If so, I’m sorry to have troubled you. I thought it was interesting enough that I decided to let you know, on the off chance that I understood correctly.
Thank you Captain Joe.
I can hardly await the arrival of Best Served Cold. Everyone else who has entered the competition ‘good luck’ and everyone else who claims to be too lazy to enter … ‘ah, common!’ As long as the dices rule, it’s an easy one. As soon as Joe chooses the one he likes best… that’s the tricky one.
Oooo, a winner. Well done, Elke!
James,
Fear not. The d3 merely decides the hundreds column, with 3 or 6 a 0, 1 or 4 a 1, 2 or 5 a 2, but any roll over 218 is discarded and re-rolled. So everyone has the same miserably tiny chance.