We Have A Winner And Possibly Several Disgruntled Losers

Is it merely coincidence that talk of a double dip recession intensifies in the same week we launch our Picture Round version of the weekly competition? Well yes, but by the looks of it, it cost the various firms and offices of the world a substantial amount of productivity due to the squinting, googling and asking around the office required to complete the competition.

Yes, it was a head-wrecker and yes I feel a little bit bad about including the very sneaky pictures, but then again I wanted a competition that came close to rewarding the people who put the time and effort to figure out the answers without resorting to Google or Wikipedia. I hope it worked. It think it worked at least. I tested that Google image search thing and it didn’t throw up anything like the right answers for the images so I’m presuming that cheating was kept to a minimum. We only got tiny handful of correct answers, so if people have figured out a way to cheat, they should probably cheat better.

This morning I sifted through the answers and that was emotional enough as it was. I lost count of the times I read down through a email thinking ‘Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Come on, you can do it. Correct. Correct. Correct … AWWWWWWWWW NOOOOOOOOOOO! Michael Vaughan? You were doing so well.’ I know it seems small and insignificant, but thanks to anyone who got the first one wrong as it spared rather a lot of emotional tumult. The early answers were good, but suggested that it was going to take a full house 12 out of 12 to be in the running and eventually the correct answers came through. Not many of them mind.

The answers – for those of you who can stand to know – are:

1. Marc Lievremont
Popular wrong answers included Luis Figo, Andre Villas-Boas and the Klitschko brothers.
2. Phil Mickelson
3. Arsene Wenger
(shot taken mid-moan making it rather easy)
4. Cadel Evans
5. Yelena Isinbayeva (Dual Olympic gold medal Pole Vaulter)
Jessica Ennis was both a popular and good incorrect guess
6. Amir Khan (easy)
7. Rocky Elsom
(recently deposed Australian captain – that was a toughie)
8. Kieran Fallon
9. Gustavo Kuertan
(Pat Butcher was the pick of the amusing wrong answers)
10. Ben Roethlisberger
(not Troy Kipper of the Baltimore Titw**ks as was suggested)
11. Phil Neville
12. Jonathon Trott
(I did pick that picture because it looked a lot like Michael Vaughan)

We had a few people getting the maximum 12/12, so that necessitated a hat and a name being pulled out of that hat and the name was Paul Sullivan. After the competition was pimped around the interweb via the various social networks, he wins a Free €85 Bet. Congratulations Paul – your tenacity and jamminess are an inspiration to us all.

We’ll have more competition fun soon and in the interests of the global economy, it may not be a picture round. Unless anyone wants to argue for it in the comments section.