Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Lateral thinking puzzle
Lateral thinking puzzle[edit source]
and this one... Pup 07:45, 17/02/2010
- I'll get this one. --ChiefjusticeDS 17:50, February 18, 2010 (UTC)
| Humour: | 6 | There is some good humour in this one and my interest was held pretty well throughout. However the article left me with the distinct feeling that it is incomplete and that the joke is not finished, I'll do my best to illustrate the reasons why in this review. The first thing that struck me was that you seem very anxious to get to the main focus of the article, the series of questions listed under the heading "Classic lateral thinking puzzles", now this section I will talk more about later, but in reading the article I felt that the context for the article was not very firmly established. It would be fair to argue that there isn't much of a context to establish, and this is fair enough, however, I did feel as though you were so desperate to dive into the main jokes for the article that you neglected to properly introduce the jokes to the reader. Consider it this way: when someone starts reading your article they will have a basic idea of what a lateral thinking puzzle is and the early text only establishes what you want the reader to think of Lateral Thinking Puzzles, not why. Permit me to expand, it is fair enough for one of your main jokes to be that these puzzles can drive people to the brink of insanity/suicide, and you have some good jokes on this idea, however you neglect to mention why this is exactly, this encourages me to wonder, what do you think makes these puzzles so bad? My feeling is that if you add some justification to the idea that these puzzles are horrendous to be subjected to-beyond the somewhat ambiguous conclusion a reader may draw from the "Classic lateral thinking puzzles" section- will cause your early jokes to have a bit more of an impact on the reader. My suggestion is not that you add a whole new section about how lateral thinking puzzles caused 9/11 but rather that you simply explain, just using a sentence if you want, what is so bad about these puzzles.
In a neat segue to the above you also seem to be suggesting that lateral thinking is some kind of condition and that by asking these questions one can establish whether one suffers from lateral thinking. My general feeling about this is that it seems to have started off as a promising idea that, with a little more justification, could lend context to the entire article. However the end product seems to have come out with some parts referring to the puzzles as games and others referring to them as a diagnostic device, this does lead to some confusion in the humour in general. I was unsure which was correct, you can have this one both ways, but it would require some explanation as to what happens if 'an individual suffers from lateral thinking'. I hope I am being plain enough with what I see as the difficulty here, the idea is good whether you want to say that lateral thinking puzzles are just horrendous or whether lateral thinking is some kind of condition, you are just lacking in explanation in either direction. Now that I have finished bemoaning the lack of context in the article I'll move onto some of the later sections. The "Classic lateral thinking puzzles" section is easily the best one, the questions and answers are, in general, very creatively written and genuinely amusing. My feeling was that some were better than others, for instance "The Albatross Soup Puzzle" amused me far more than the "The Miraculous Baby" one did. The reason for this is that the Albatross puzzle uses an answer which is intelligent in response to the question, it is a correct answer to the question and keeps things within the realm of believability, whereas the other puzzle answers with "It was magic" which was something of a disappointment to me, admittedly I did not anticipate the answer but it carried far less impact with it than did the Albatross soup one. I would, unless you feel that I am finding a problem where none exists, take a second look at some of the answers and try to come up with some more satisfying ones. To look at the final section of the article, once again the idea is good but the humour does not go far enough to encourage the reader to buy into the joke. This can be sorted by doing a similar thing to that which you do in the "Classic Lateral Thinking Puzzles" section, show these words being used in context. This carries with it the danger of the article beginning to feel slightly listy, but if you expand the prose that you do have in adding context to the article you can mitigate this issue. |
| Concept: | 7 | The idea behind the article is excellent, so it is a shame that you seem to have been unsure how best to present this one. As I mentioned above, try to choose one idea or find a way to connect two ideas as to what the article wants us to think about lateral thinking puzzles. The tone is pretty good and I must admit I did buy into the article's humour because it generally sounds so much like an actual encyclopaedia article. My only complaint is that at times in the early part of the article the article addresses the reader, this breaks the tone you had established for the article, you are already going for the idea that the article is an encyclopaedia article about lateral thinking puzzles not a self-help manual about how to make them up. This is not a massive problem and I have only brought it up because your tone is otherwise exemplary, as I hope the score demonstrates, but you should consider fixing it. You can do this simply by rearranging the sentence at the start of the "Classic lateral thinking puzzles" section. |
| Prose and formatting: | 8 | Pretty good on this one too, the prose where it is around is generally too short to be broken up and the existing images are formatted well away from the text. I would tentatively suggest a third image for the article, especially if you are going to make it a bit longer by making other edits. I would be hesitant about this as I don't want to disrupt your existing image joke, so I will leave a decision on it up to you, my main concern is that throughout the middle of the article there is a lot of space for an extra image. The spelling and grammar is of a pretty high standard and my only recommendation is that you make sure you are proofreading carefully as you continue to work on this one, just to make sure everything is correct. |
| Images: | 8 | Good here too, as I touched on above I like the image joke you have here and would encourage you to keep it in. I am a bit hesitant about the captions which seemed to me to leave a lot more to be desired, the second especially, where literally the only suggestion as to the problem with lateral thinking puzzles is mentioned in the reference, this reference should come out of the caption, in my view, and could be used elsewhere in the article, try to keep your captions relatively concise as long captions always seem a bit trying to me. This is of course up to you once again, and I trust you will use your judgement to decide what is best. |
| Miscellaneous: | 7 | My overall grade of the article. |
| Final Score: | 36 | Enjoyable, despite my moaning above, as I mentioned at the start the concept problems only bothered me when I looked back through the article having completed it, this demonstrates to me that the problem is not big enough to bother a reader straight away, but will definitely lead to confusion should anyone consider the article in more depth, a bit more work may be desirable for you because of this. The only part I would urge you with the greatest urgency to take a look at, is what you are doing with the context, decide what direction you are going in and back it up. If you have any questions or comments for me then feel free to leave them on my talk page. Good luck making any changes. |
| Reviewer: | --ChiefjusticeDS 15:36, February 19, 2010 (UTC) | |