[r-t] Proportion of Surprise Methods

[Mark Davies]

Eddie writes,

> Well yes but you cant have it both ways as MBD seems to want. In a plain
> lead there are two hunts, however, to obtain the extent, thery can't both
> be primary

But you can choose whichever one you want... so there's no difference
between them, is there? From the point of view of an extent with standard
calls, yes of course one hunt stays the hunt and another is chosen to be a
working bell. The choice of hunt for this touch is still arbitrary.

> defining the method by a succession of plain leads is I feel totally
> inadequte, even though this may well work on most if not all other methods
> & principals. A more meaningful definition would, I feel, have to include
> the alternation of plain & bobbed lead.

I appreciate the historical integrity of what you're trying to say, Eddie.
But it's better to know and love all that, and leave it as history. If you
try and bring it into the modern world things just don't fit very well. For
instance, you could indeed define a method so:

   3.1.5.1.5.1.5.1.5.1.3.1.5.1.5.1.5.1.3.1

Which is a plain and a bobbed lead of G5 (I hope). Treat that as the
defining unit of your method and you've sort of achieved what you want.
Except it's hopelessly ugly - you need three types of call (omit, bob and
single) and calls at both lead end and half-lead to achieve all the standard
touches of G5.

You might not like it very much, but what we've got now works reasonably
well. If you try and squeeze the old extent-based ideas in to any small
corner of the new method order, any consistency that we do have now becomes 
compromised.

Classify twin-hunt methods in a completely different way that acknowledges 
"standard" calls and extents? Well that probably only works for a small 
subset of twin-hunt methods, and then how can we splice them to single-hunt 
methods? An ugly mess is the result.

We've had this argument many a time, haven't we??

MBD