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British Airways Athletics Club: Street Spelling Event Instructions

This can be run as a competitive event, with each participant undertaking this at an agreed time and place during daylight hours on the days of the event. Because it is competitive this is a long list of instructions! The basic idea is simple…honest!

HINT: Although this is to be done competitively some people will have natural advantages or disadvantages due to the the streets around their starting locations. For some this event may be a sprint, for others a marathon, and for some it may prove impossible! Please accept your lot with a smile! In the first event held within our club, mostly in or around London, 18 participants ran between 20 minutes and an hour and only two failed to get a letter from their word.

The objective is that each participant will select a chase-word out of three they are allocated by their starter. They then need to find the street signs of streets that start with each of the letters of their chase-word before returning home. They can visit the streets in any order. The event can be undertaken by runners and walkers. I consider it too easy for cyclists. There can be winners on two criteria. The first will be the individual who achieve the task in the shortest possible time - timed from when the participant selects their start-word and sets off, to when they finish. The second will be the individual who achieve the task with the shortest route.  The shortest route competition may favour walkers who can take their time to choose an optimum route.

The shortest route competition is also open to those unable to leave their homes - they can undertake the event with a 30 minute home exercise and submitting their route "on paper" e.g. a list of local street names to be visited in the order that they could have been run. The event adjudicator would estimate from the list of streets what distance would have been covered.

Each participant will be sent a set of three words, for instance from the list provided later in this page. Each of the words will be eight letters long and consist of eight different letters. The first two words will contain 16 different letters.   None of the words will include the letters "Q", "X" or "Z".  The third word will be the only one including a "U" or a "Y", but will only include one of these and won't include an "i" . This third word has a bonus attached to it - if selected and achieved then the participant would have five minutes deducted from their time and one kilometer deducted from their distance.

If the participant fails to get one of the letters of their word they should be given a ten minute and 2km penalty.  If they miss the "U" or "Y" of the third word then as well as the ten minute/2km penalty they will not get the bonus of having achieved that word.

Participants will need to find the street sign of each of the streets they visit. Those with suitable phones or cameras should take a photograph of each sign as they go round. Photographs should be taken without zoom from nearby (although it is permitted to take the photograph from the far side of a busy road, but it must be at the junction).

HINT: Roads usually have their street sign at the two ends of the road or where the road crosses a bigger road. It can be difficult, or impossible, to find a street sign for some bigger roads! The preparation time for this event can also be used to check on Street-View where street-signs are located (but note that the street furniture may have moved since the street-car visited!).

By "Streets" all thoroughfares are included such as streets, roads, avenues, roundabouts, footpaths, motorways (don't!) provided they have a council maintained sign giving the thoroughfare's name. Bus Stops can also be used if they indicate they are at the specific thoroughfare. Addresses on private properties such as shops do not count. Some example street sign photographs are provided below (including a "Q", not a useful street with this set of rules).

HINT: Do some research before your start time. Study the AtoZ or an online map and consider where your nearest letters are. And go for a walk and understand where the street signs are and whether any paths or short roads have interesting names on signs that weren't to be found on the maps. You could even prepare a physical map to take with you on the run.


Street Sign Examples

Event logistics: Each participant agrees a start location, day and time. Then agree with your fellow runners who will act as starter for each participant.  The role of the starter is to select a set of three words and to send them to the participant at their start time, and also to note the run start and finish times hence their duration. The starter is advised to use a random process for selecting the set of three words to use.

At the agreed start time the starter will send the participant an SMS text of the three eight letter words [BEWARE in case "predictive text" proposes different words!].  The participant has a free choice of any of the words and should choose the one they are most likely to achieve quickly. They can spend up to one hour considering which word to choose and planning the route they will run. Once decided, so within one hour, they need to reply to the starter with their choice of word. The time of that text will be taken as the start time for the participant.

The participant needs to run to local streets that start with each letter of their chase-word.  The participant can visit the streets in any order. They need to visit and, if possible, photograph a street sign that features the street name. Having visited the eight streets they need to return to their starting point.

Upon getting back to their starting point they would respond to the text from the starter with "Finished" or just "F". That will stop the timer. They should then send a follow-on text to confirm that they got all eight letters of the word or whether they missed any, and to advise on their timing of the run (to validate the time between the two texts) and the distance covered (for the minimum distance competition).

Once the event is over, with all participants having done their run, participants will be invited to post their photographs and a GPS trace of their route and time, for instance on Facebook. DO NOT post such photographs before that point, even privately, since others yet to run may have the same word to chase!

Once all of the results have been verified winners can be announced both on quickest time and shortest distance.

For Info - Letter Distribution

Street Spelling Letter DistributionThe chart shows the number of streets in London starting with each letter of the alphabet. This has been estimated from the street index of a copy of the London AtoZ.

Letters marked "**" are those excluded from the words of this event and those marked "*" are only included in the third word with a bonus attached.

An alternative mechanism for this event would be to have "Scrabble" like scoring of letters of a chosen word, perhaps allowing a freer choice of word. The following points are suggested:

  • B, C, S = 1 point
  • A, G, H, L, M, P, R, W = 2 points each
  • D, E, F, T = 3 points
  • K, N, O = 4 points
  • I, J, U, V, Y = 7 points
  • Q, X, Z = 10 points
  • Blank (missing letter) = 0 points + 10min/2km penalty

Each point earned would deduct a minute from your time and 200m from your distance. Note that this is instead of the a third word bonus.

Sample Word Sets

These use words found on https://www.morewords.com/unique-letters , but don't ask me what some of them mean!

Set # First Word Second Word Third Word with Bonus
1 WARBLING CHEFDOMS LUGWORMS
2 WATCHING PROBLEMS CAPTURED
3 WHIPCORD BLANKETS COWARDLY
4 WINGBACK DROPLETS CONFUSED
5 HANGBIRD FELWORTS COMPUTER
6 WAMBLING DEFROCKS MADHOUSE
7 HANDPICK FELWORTS MUDFLATS
8 BLIGHTED CRAMPONS MONARCHY

 

      

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