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Cardinal Points

 Race to the Poles
  (+6)
(+6) 		  [vote for,
against]

A number of teams of six people are assembled at a TV studio somewhere in Bracknell or Reading I suppose. There is some kind of starting signal, and then they set off (followed by camera crews)

To win, the team has to position its six persons at orthogonal points on the globe. The winning act is to have a 6-way video-call wherein each person shows the screen of their handheld GPS unit, and the judges verify that indeed all six devices show orthogonal points on the surface of the earth at 90 degrees to each other.

A lot of the interest from the show comes from the mathematicians and geographers who provide live analysis and commentary on fhe different teams's strategies and choices of locations.

—pocmloc, Jan 22 2018

Cardinal Pole https://en.m.wikipe.../wiki/Reginald_Pole
He approves. [pertinax, Jan 23 2018]

Longitude map http://www.compassd...-lon-coordinate.gif
Standard longitude coordinates on a Mercator map-projection of the world [Vernon, Jan 23 2018]

Couple it with this classic As_20the_20crow_20walks
for an ultramarathon / iron man to end all etc etc [calum, Jan 24 2018]

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       Can they choose their own orthogonal points, or does it have to be the poles and the 90 degree longitude points?   

       Also, if one team succeeds in drilling to the centre of the earth and they all jump down the hole, would that count?
—MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 22 2018
   

       [+]   

       Superb.
—pertinax, Jan 22 2018
   

       We're gonna need bigger boats.   

       Wasn't Cardinal Points part of the Spanish Inquisition?
—MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 22 2018
   

       I’ll sign up, as long as my destination is Hawaii.
—RayfordSteele, Jan 23 2018
   

       While the polar points are obvious (associated with Earth's axis), who decides what 4 points to specify along the Equator? We may have a tradition of assigning certain values to various longitude lines, but it was still an arbitrary designation.   

       Besides, I'm curious to see if as many as 3 of those equatorial points might align with land masses, if the contestants were allowed to pick their own equatorial spots.
—Vernon, Jan 23 2018
   

       I'm having a slight crisis contemplating this. North, North pole, easy, I'm good. South, South pole, easy, with it so far. West and East are also easy, simply find London on the map (Right in the middle, toward the top at a pleasing eye level) and move 90 degrees in either direction along the equator. That gets you somewhere in the pacific and somewhere in the Indian ocean. Now, the other two people are going 90 degrees to the east/west people. How do you describe their position? There's no N/S component if they're on the equator, and there's no E/W component. I'm pretty sure you could permanently damage a sailor by putting them at one of these two spots.
—bs0u0155, Jan 23 2018
   

       My reading of this is that the winning positions are relative, not absolute. So, for example, one person could go to Reykjavik (64.1265° N, 21.8174° W), balanced by another in the Southern Ocean at 64.1265° S, 158.1826° E. The remaining four would then have to spread themselves evenly around the great circle equidistant from those two points, and not around the actual equator.   

       There are many winning scenarios where one person stays in Bracknell.
—pertinax, Jan 23 2018
   

       //There are many winning scenarios where one person stays in Bracknell.// I find that hard to believe.
—MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 23 2018
   

       [bs0u0155], the longitude line south of London intersects the Equator in the Atlantic Ocean (see linked longitude map). If that was a formally selected coordinate for meeting the conditions of this "Cardinal Points" challenge, then the other three longitude lines are 90 degrees west of that (a little west of South America in the Pacific), 90 degrees east of that (in the Indian Ocean just west of Indonesia) and 180 degrees either east or west, kind-of in the middle of the Pacific (and closely associated with the International Date Line).   

       But as I mentioned in another anno, the rules of the challenge might allow selecting other coordinates. Looks to me like it might be possible to get land points in Indonesia, Africa, and South America....
—Vernon, Jan 23 2018
   

       There's nothing in the rules to say that the points have to align with the Earth's poles or equator.
—pocmloc, Jan 25 2018
   


 

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