Architecture: 615 museum entries
We placed 615 of the 623 entries to a museum competition in Helsinki by how typical their boards looked and how typical their ideas were. About half of the entries whose boards looked most unusual landed in the jury’s bottom two tiers, against about one in six of the most typical-looking. Unusual ideas fared better than unusual presentations, and the five prize winners were more distinctive than the field.
Entries the jury placed in its bottom two tiers
Some of the bottom tier may be weak or unfinished boards rather than an unusual look as such.
Cartoon captions: 2.29 million entries
In 384 New Yorker caption contests, captions close to many others, a joke many entrants also found, were recognised 13.4% of the time; the least typical tenth, 6.4%. That holds after controlling for length. Very long captions do worse on their own account.
Captions recognised by the New Yorker
Short stories: 119,638 entries
In 365 Reedsy writing contests, the most atypical tenth of stories was recognised 2.1% of the time against 0.9% for the most typical, about 2.3 times as often. That has not been checked for length.
Stories recognised in Reedsy contests
Is there a signature move?
We asked whether winners have one move a juror would remember. A judge preferred podium entries over honourable mentions of matched weirdness only 57% of the time, which is not distinguishable from chance. In a simulation of makers competing for an audience, makers overshoot their audience’s preferred weirdness only when credit goes to the one who is remembered, and the rule was assumed, not discovered.
What it means
Unusual alone loses. An idea has to be far and also worked out until it holds, and presented so the work, not the board, carries the surprise. That is why our workflow develops and critiques the idea a person picks rather than handing over a list.
Sources
- Feathers & Wax, competition analyses, code in
research/cllm-competitions; attributability and simulation inresearch/cllm-taste-mark. - Helsinki Architecture and Design Museum competition entries; New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest data; Reedsy short-story contests.