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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CleverNickName" data-source="post: 5209382" data-attributes="member: 50987">Time is always your enemy in this competition.  Because of the 24-hour limit, there are several different ways that a judge can make a match challenging.One way is to build a list of obscure, highly-specific ingredients that challenges your vocabulary.  With a list like this, you will spend (waste?) a great deal of time looking up words in a dictionary, researching topics in an encyclopedia, and otherwise trying to figure out what each ingredient is and how to use it.  ("What the heck is an Overcaptious Patih, and what does it have to do with a Barmy Pulque?  In Downtown Nandavaram--wherever the hell that is!")   Another way to make a difficult list is sort of the opposite: use extremely versatile, flavorful ingredients that everyone has seen many, many times.  These things inspire tons of ideas all at once, and can drag your story all over the place if you aren't careful.  With a list like this, you will spend (waste?) most of your time writing yourself in circles, and most of what you write will end up getting deleted or going nowhere.  ("Alright.  I've got six pages on the Rogue Griffon and its Psychotic Paladin rider, but I don't know how to link them to the five pages I've already written on the Ancient Shipwreck Lair and the Conch Shell...and I've only got thirty minutes!!!")Yet another way is to use words that have double (or triple) meanings.  Wind, for example, can be something that blows or something that you do to a watch.  Bow can be a weapon, a part of a ship, or a Japanese greeting.  Read can be something you have already done, or something you need to do.  And so on.  Each one of these can potentially give you bonus points if you incorporate multiple derivatives of the words into your story...but aren't six ingredients hard enough?  ("For my Clown School ingredient, I will use both a school of clownfish AND the Clown Conservatory!  Brilliant!  Now, for the Sex Pistols...")There are other ways, of course.  But of the three that I have listed here, which one is your favorite? least favorite?</blockquote>

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