Matt Weiner wrote:--I am not opposed to the idea of letting people correct themselves (it was in fact included in my original draft) but it's a very complicated thing to specify once you start thinking about it. If people can elucidate exactly how and when this situation should be allowed, I can try to come up with a precise rule for it.
I think the following are necessary, though not sufficient, conditions for when this should be allowed:
1. There is no significant pause between the given answer and the corrected answer. I propose the standard one-second pause. Since the answer must be started within the five-second answer period anyway, I feel this is a fair discrimination between time periods when this is acceptable and not acceptable.
2. The answer is incomplete. There are two categories to this. The first is that multiple categories are sought within the answer, and if the player were actually correct at the point he/she begins a correction, would have to be prompted. I realize this punishes people for answering "Beethoven's Piano Sonatas--no, Concertos" while "Mozart's, no Beethoven's Piano Concertos" would be okay; however, in the first case a plausible answer satisfying all three categories sought (composer, instrument, type of work) in the underlined answer has been given while in the second case the answer of "Mozart's", had Mozart been correct, would still need to be prompted. The second category is that the entirety of the answer seeking only one category has not yet been given. Thus, "transcen--no, irrational" and "Federico--no, Gabriel Garcia Marquez" would be acceptable, while "transcendental, no, irrational" and "Garcia Lorca--no, Garcia Marquez" would not.
3. Only one relevant piece of information is changed (this is similar to what Magin typed up while I was still typing this).
4. The correction is not construed as an attempt to slow the game down (and thus gain more time to come up with the correct answer).
Additionally, for completeness, my suggested directions for the moderator:
1. The moderator must accept the corrected answer, regardless of whether the original answer was correct or incorrect. Accepting both the original and changed information as directed leads to incorrect examples of blitzing.
2. If a player's attempt to change an answer is interpreted as an attempt to slow the game down (for whatever reason), the moderator should rule a pause, impose any accompanying penalties (e.g., -5) and should clearly delineate this without any indication of what, if any, parts of the answer were correct.