Two players are playing singles. In the middle of the second mène (end, round), the score is 1-0. This happens.
A) Is the jack dead or alive?
B) Assuming the jack is dead, which player plays the next boule? Why?
C) Assuming the jack is alive, which player plays the next boule? Why?
This one is just for fun. There are 5 questions; two points per question. Ten points wins you bragging rights. Entries will be judged on correctness, completeness, and clarity. Submit your answers in a comment. This post will be edited to provide the correct answers and name the winners.
Quiz closes midnight, Wednesday April 28, 2021. The quiz is now closed. But if you would like to challenge yourself, you’re still free to take it. The answers are available HERE.
The Rules of Petanque 
A) live [2 points]
B)
i. Whoever threw at the beginning of the 2nd mene. [Only if the mene was scoreless. 1 point]
ii. it’s a nul end/do over No.
C)
i. Whoever did not throw the last boule No.
ii. The last boule takes precedence if equidistant. No.
TOTAL: 3 points
A) Alive [2 points]
B)
1. If only one player has boules left to play then he is the player who plays the next boule to start the next mene, otherwise the player who got the point in the first end plays the next boule to start the next mene. [2 points]
2. According to Article 14 (Rules to apply if the jack is dead) of Petanque Rule [1 point]
C) This situation is in the middle of the second end, therefore;
1. If only one player has boules left to play then he is the player who plays the next boule, otherwise the player who played the last boule plays next boule. [2 points]
2. According to Article 29 (Boules equidistant from the jack) of Petanque Rule [1 point]
TOTAL: 8 points
A. the coche is valid assuming it is not out of bounds and didn’t leave the playing area and came back. [2 points]
B. if people assume or have the opinion the coche is not live, that is not right because it is still in the playing area. Hypothetically, assuming it will be dead or an umpire declares it dead, there will be no valid coche so no more boules will be played in this end. So, start a new end. The player who won the previous end will throw the coche and the next boule. [2 points. Basically half of the whole correct answer. What if neither player won the end?]
C. the player who caused the situation has to play again because he/she didn’t win the point. [2 points. Right answer; wrong reason.] If he/she has no boules left his/her opponent has the choice to play his/her remaining boule(s).
TOTAL: 6 points.
Thank you but i don’t completely agree why you gave me the points you did.
The conclusions are the same only your explanation gave the ‘big tour’. 😉
B. is not correct to state to begin with so any solution will be wrong. We then can explain ‘what if’ and assume a lot but in the end it is not the right solution for this problem.
Especially the point where you say “What if neither player won the end?”
In the question you mentioned it’s the second end, the score is 1-0. So in this case someone won the first end and therefore has to throw the coche and the first boule in the third end.
In C. it’s not the wrong reason but i explained not as clear as could be. He/she didn’t win the point because he/she created an equidistant situation, i gave the short version. sorry about that 🙂 I like short versions of explaining rules, lol.
Hi Ben, it’s nice to meet you. 🙂
It’s certainly true that the reason that the jack is dead is NOT because it is sitting on a bunch of boules. So when question B asks, “What if the jack is dead” we have to take it as a given that it IS dead and assume that there is some reason why it is dead. Perhaps there was a freak incident in which the jack was hit out-of-bounds, hit the sideboard, bounced back in-bounds. and landed on the top of a pile of boules.
In any event, starting with the assumption that the jack just died, the question boils down to an ordinary question of “what do we do when the jack goes dead?”. In that situation the answer depends on whether (a) one of the players (or teams) wins the mene and scores points, or (b) the mene is scoreless. Your answer (“The player who won the previous end will throw the coche and the next boule.”) assumes that some player won the previous end (situation a). But it overlooks the possibility that NEITHER player won (perhaps because they both had unplayed boules— situation b).
So my thinking about question B was: half the answer gets half the points. 2 points.
Your answer to C was: “the player who caused the situation has to play again because he/she didn’t win the point.” First of all, this seemed to me an odd answer. I would have expected either (a) “the player who played the last boule has to play again because he/she didn’t win the point”, followed by the usual “so he/she has to continue throwing until he/she gains the point”, or (b) “the player who caused the situation has to play again because he just created a null point and he is the one to start alternate play.” Answer (a) would clearly have been wrong, while answer (b) would clearly have been right.
So my thinking about question C was: half the answer is right (“the player who caused the situation has to play again”), so score 2 points. But half the answer is wrong (“because he/she didn’t win the point”), so score zero points for the “why”. That’s why I noted Right answer; wrong reason.
I agree with you; I like short answers too. There’s a blurry line between the wrong answer and the right answer explained not quite as clearly as one might have wished. Sometimes it’s the same line that runs between what we think and how well we put it into words. I’d say that your answers to B and C didn’t quite make it across that line. But I’m perfectly willing to believe that they ALMOST made it. For one thing, that would explain the odd wording in your answer to question C.
In any event, as I said earlier: that’s OK. What’s important is that if one of these questions comes up in the middle of a game you can give the correct answer. That may involve a bit of back-and-forth conversation with the other players in the game, which will give you the opportunity to explain, in your own words, why your answer is the correct answer.
Hi Jules Lenoir,
According to the first paragraph of your reply to Ben, I am in doubt that perhaps the first question of the quiz can have two correct answers; alive and dead, it depends on the situation as you already mentioned above.
Please give more explanation.
Thank you
Well, the question was “dead or alive”, which pretty clearly makes it a multiple choice question.
However, a person COULD give a third answer— there is no way to know whether the jack is dead or alive, because we don’t know what happened just before the picture was taken. Rvben actually factored that possibility into his answer. He said— the coche is valid assuming it is not out of bounds and didn’t leave the playing area and came back. He even considered the possibility that the pile-up was outside the dead-ball line when the picture was taken!
So… it COULD have been a trick question. But it wasn’t. 🙂
No more question, then 😃
Thank you
A. The jack is not on valid terrain.
B. Mene ends with zero points. Player previous mene starts again.
c. ???
TOTAL: 0 points
The answers to the quiz are now available. In the original post, I’ve added a link to the answers and also (for your convenience) I have added the answers to the end of the original post on this page. After a few days I will remove the answers from this page, leaving only the link. That way someone in the future can challenge himself/herself by taking the quiz without being forced to see the answers.
Everybody got some things right but missed others; it was a real mixed bag. Nobody was a clear winner. “Why” questions are essentially essay questions, and scoring answers to essay questions is a notoriously subjective business.
So I’ve decided not to try to score each person’s answers. Score your own answers.I have edited each entry, to score it. If you have questions, I’ll be happy to try to answer them. Just leave a comment.If your answers were less detailed than mine, that’s OK. What’s important is that if one of these questions comes up in the middle of a game you can give the correct answer. That may involve a bit of back-and-forth conversation with the other players in the game, which will give you the opportunity to explain, in your own words, why your answer is the correct answer. Bonne chance!
Thanks to everyone who participated. Congratulations à tous; you’re all winners in my book! I hope that you enjoyed this little quiz, and maybe learned a little something along the way. 🙂
Thank you for an excellent explanation for every question.
Please let me know how many point that I get from the quiz, just want to know if I pass half of full point.
Thank you,
Hi PaKorn,
You clearly know the rules and how to interpret them in order to reach a correct decision. All of your answers were correct. That’s really excellent; congratulations! But if I was marking the quiz, I would give your two “why” answers only one point each, for a total score of 8 points out of 10.
In marking answers to B and C, I would look for three things: a correct decision (2 points), an explanation or citation of the relevant rule (1 point), and a bridge between the rule and the decision (1 point). By a “bridge” I mean an explanation of how the details of a particular situation fall under a specific rule, so that together they (the rule and the details of the situation) produce a particular decision. If an answer was a syllogism, the rule would be the major premise, the bridge would be the minor premise, and the decision would be the conclusion.
In your answers to the “why” parts of B and C I saw a citation of the relevant rule (the major premise), but I didn’t see the bridge (the minor premise). It’s clear that you know how to get from the rule to the decision because you’ve done it, but I don’t think that you really explained how you did it. So 8 out of 10. That’s quite good actually. Well done!
Hi Jules Lenoir,
I am glad that I’ve got (8 points) more than half of the full point, so I suppose that I passed the quiz 😃
Thank you very much for your answers and comments on how to do the quiz better, I really appreciated that.
I hope I can do better next time 😃
One more time, thank you
Since PaKorn asked me to score his submission, I went ahead and did it for the others, too. This is a somewhat subjective process, of course. In any case, don’t worry. Your score on this quiz will not affect your chances of graduating! 🙂