LMB Quote Game

[SPetty]

Just an FYI, I believe that quote has been used before. In fact, having done a search:

viewtopic.php?f=1811&t=114681&p=1838142 ... s#p1838142

I'm the one who got it... Considering how long the game has been going on, should we maybe make up a rule regarding repeat quotes? I'm not sure if it should be "no repeated quotes," or something like not receiving a Sherlock for getting the quote twice.

I wasn't on this afternoon, and it was guessed pretty quickly, or I'd have said something sooner.

[voralfred]

I'm sorry! And I was the one who asked it! I must like that one very much!

I don't know what to say. Anyway I'll leave the next quote to Caroline, I don't deserve to put a new one
But should she renounce her sherlock? What do you people say? This quote was asked in January 2008 and she only joined in October of that year. James himself only joined in February, so neither of them were members then! I'm sure they would have mentioned the fact I had asked it before otherwise.
Of course if someone realises a quote has already been asked before it is answered it should be cancelled and replaced by another one. In that case, in an a posteriori case.... Who thinks that Caroline should renounce her ? I feel rather lenient, but then I also feel guilty...
Anyway Caroline, please go ahead with the new quote! (and I will respect a 10 days exclusion on your quote and a 5 days one on the next one, as penance - and you will be dispensed of the 5 days rule on that one since I will be the one to respect it, it is only fair)


To end on a funnier note: clearly for James being beaten by Caroline is not as disastrous (involving fewer A's, H,'s, G's and !'s) than finding out that even LMB cannot answer the question that had been nagging him for years. Compare:

AHHHGGGG!!! Caroline me beat to it by TWO MINUTES!!!!!!
(...)

and:
viewtopic.php?p=1841543#p1841543

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

... Anyway Caroline, please go ahead with the new quote! (and I will respect a 10 days exclusion on your quote and a 5 days one on the next one, as penance - and you will be dispensed of the 5 days rule on that one since I will be the one to respect it, it is only fair) ...

Belay that.

I move to deduct 1 Sherlock point from Voralfred's score as a fine for his gaffe (just a penance is like catholic confession and absolution, much too easy).
And I also move to make this system a rule in the future.

Does anyone second the motion?

[voralfred]

Belay that.

I move to deduct 1 Sherlock point from Voralfred's score as a fine for his gaffe (just a penance is like catholic confession and absolution, much too easy).
And I also move to make this system a rule in the future.

Does anyone second the motion?

NO!
EPS

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

Belay that.

I move to deduct 1 Sherlock point from Voralfred's score as a fine for his gaffe (just a penance is like catholic confession and absolution, much too easy).
And I also move to make this system a rule in the future.

Does anyone second the motion?

NO!
EPS

You are the culprit!
You may not vote.

[Caroline Tredez]

Oh my, LMBQG is such serious bizness ^^ Couldn't care less about how many sherlock I have, feel free to remove any one you believe are unearned. My getting here after the first occurrence of the quote shouldn't be counted as an excuse : I have since meticulously collected all past quotes to avoid repeating the same one. I'm just here not to feel alone in my enthousiasm for all of LMB's works

Take heart, James, here's more of a challenge (I hope) :

"I'll trade you even, but don't argue with me."

Who's speaking, who's listening ?

[Caroline Tredez]

Ok, time for a tip : I didn't ask for the book, because it's self-evident from the answers I already ask for.

[voralfred]

Well, the ten days I've promised to abstain are almost up, and I still have no idea... nor does anyone else, apparently.
Could you provide some more hints?

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

Oh yes, we're all plummeting down the abyss without a parachute. Please provide a branch to stop our fall before we splatter on the bottom.

Give us some more hint(s), I beg you, Caroline chérie.

[Caroline Tredez]

I'm reluctant to give more to the quote, it would really be too revealing... how about this hint : try to find which items are offered for trade, and what makes their value "even" in this situation (they wouldn't be considered of equal value in almost any other situation).

[aaronw409]

I'll take a stab.

Speaking: Mark
Listening: Baron Rioval

[Caroline Tredez]

Good try, but wrong answer. Try again !

[aaronw409]

Is that a "good try, not even close" or "good try, getting warmer?"

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

"I'll trade you even, but don't argue with me."

Who's speaking, who's listening ?

Isn't it Miles who always tends to argue?
And isn't it Ivan who gets to be most argued at?

So my take is that, in this quote, the speaker is Ivan and the listener is Miles.

[Caroline Tredez]

@aaron409 : It was good to try, but far off.
@E Pericoloso Sporgersi : Nope.

It's nowhere in the Vorkosigan Saga (despite the numerous characters who could have said it). Further hint : it's the listener's only appeareance.

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

So you concur with my assessment of Miles the perpetual arguer.

There's another couple I can think of. Namely Richard Burton (as speaker Petruchio) and Elisabeth Taylor (as listener Katherina) in "The Taming of the Shrew". But since that story was written by another writer, almost as good as Lois McMaster Bujold, I guess this is not the correct answer either.

[voralfred]

Some reasoning: Caroline said that the book is obvious from the characters.
Now in TSK, characters keep recurring.
Same for _CoC_ and _PoP_, and "trade" there? Nope
_HH_? I just reread it, no "trade" there.
Vorkosiverse? Some characters appear only once (Cavilo, for instance) but I can see trade only either on Jackson's Whole, or if Mark is involved, and that means several possible books.

So by elimination, I'll try "Spirit Ring". Only Fiametta would use this language, but I have absolutely no idea of the precise scene. So the listener could be anyone. Thur?

[SPetty]

Actually, it sounds more like TSK than Spirit Ring. "I'll trade you even" is not grammatically correct in English, so it sounds more like one of the Sharing Knife books. Could be one of the people they trade with along the river in Passage, along the road in Horizon, one of the other people in the Lakewalker camp, or somewhere in Beguilement, as far as that goes. It's been a while since I've read any of TSK series, so I can't make a more educated guess than that (without looking).

There's another couple I can think of. Namely Richard Burton (as speaker Petruchio) and Elisabeth Taylor (as listener Katherina) in "The Taming of the Shrew". But since that story was written by another writer, almost as good as Lois McMaster Bujold, I guess this is not the correct answer either.

Love this! I'd tend to agree, too, if we had any evidence that Shakespeare wrote novels. It's an entirely different thing to write a novel than it is to write a sonnet, or a play. I'm not saying it's easier, or harder to write, but it's hard to compare a playwright to a novelist.

[voralfred]

(....) Could be one of the people they trade with along the river in Passage, along the road in Horizon, one of the other people in the Lakewalker camp, or somewhere in Beguilement, as far as that goes. It's been a while since I've read any of TSK series, so I can't make a more educated guess than that (without looking).

Well, yes it could. But one of the speakers must be a recurrent character (Dag, Fawn or even her brother) who appears in several books. And the other person, well even if (s)he appears in just one book woudl be a minor one, and just her/his name would not immediately determine which book it is. Caroline's argument that the book is "self-evident", in my analysis, points to either _Spirit Ring_ or _HH_ but I am almost sure it is not the latter. I could be wrong on that, of course (though I just reread it, I began before Caroline posted and I could have missed it if it is early enough) but I am pretty confident about TSK, Vorkosiverse and {_CoC_ and _PoS_}: nothing could be self-evident enough (remember, even Pel and Benin appear in two Vorkosiverse books: Cavilo and Ryan appear only once, but I don't see "trade" about them, and most other "one book only" characters are too minor) Also maybe the speaker is not Fiametta, but she is the only one I can imagine saying that. To whom, I have no idea (she has enough nerve to talk like that to anyone except her father or Bishop Monreale, or the Duke, of course, but she never meets him anyway)
Anyway, Caroline will hopefully tell us soon.

[Caroline Tredez]

Well, half a point to voralfred, who gave half the answer, I'm still waiting for the other half...

[voralfred]

The problem is, I misplaced my copy of Spirit Ring. So Fiametta, but not to Thur. Anyone who has a copy and can find the right passage is welcome to complete the answer. I think there was a character called Catti (not short for Cattilara as in _PoS_, just Catti) Was it her?

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

I wondered if by "the listener's only appeareance" Caroline meant an appearance in only one book or in a single scene of that particular book.

Eureka!
Voralfred is half right, erm ..., I mean half correct.
The speaker is Fiametta. She's enticing a fisherman who is not named, to let her and her father use his boat. Fiametta addresses him as "Master Boatman". He appears in only one scene in chapter four.

@ SPetty.

... it's hard to compare a playwright to a novelist.

No argument from me. I disguised as a quip, instead of confessing flat out, the fact that I don't understand Shakespeare's brand of English. Well, not right away. For me to understand Shakespeare's dialogues required so much laborious help from a dictionary, idiomatic explanations and deep thought, that I soon gave up on him.

But not immediately understanding Lois occurred maybe once per book, at most, though she has never failed to often elicit a different kind of very deep thinking.

[SPetty]

I think your trouble with Shakespeare has something to do with the time difference (and its effect on language). Most people with English as their first language have trouble with Shakespeare at first because the language has changed a lot over the last 400 years. Some of the more interesting classes I had as an English major were explorations into meter and how authors used meter to communicate things (the linguistics class was really interesting, too, in similar ways, but it was in my final term at college, and it seemed too late to switch focus at that point). I actually did a paper for linguistics on a paragraph by Terry Pratchett (having not been introduced to Lois McMaster Bujold's work at that point), and I was surprised how well-constructed it was when I analyzed it. For what seemed to be pretty fluffy satire (I think it was The Light Fantastic, a paragraph about the Library), it was really well written.

To wrench the post back on-topic, I would think Arkady spoke enough in Horizon that a similar quote could be found there, but but since the quote's been found, it's a moot point.

So who gets to post the next quote?

[voralfred]

(...)
So who gets to post the next quote?

Normally the quote goes to the player who completes the quote, namely EPS.
But really it is up to Caroline to decide, it depends on how much she values the guessing of the correct book versus acually finding the correct page to name the other protagonist.

[voralfred]

Well, I'll be off for two days.
So Caroline if (after all, since I haven't found my copy of "Spirit Ring", I don't know for sure that EPS is right, as a dentist he is a professional liar, after all - "It won't hurt at all" "AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH") and when you confirm he is indeed right, definitely give him the next quote, I don't want to delay the game.



I hope you are not taking it personally, EPS. I am just expressing such a generally accepted opinion that it has become a "catch phrase" in French:
"Menteur comme un arracheur de dents"= liar as a tooth-puller

Do you have its equivalent in Flemish? Liar as a mathematical physicist? or something like that?