The Grand Canal of China (I: Bodies of Water) Quiz Information

11.4 was very difficult to achieve...

For the duration of this tournament, you can find all the Pentathlon games in one convenient place:

http://www.purposegames.com/memberfavs/14780

New games will be added as they are posted. They will likely remain in place even after the competition concludes. If there is a subsequent competition, they may be replaced.

Tickman:

East, yes of course. Thanks for the explanation. I'd never thought about the connection between the two meanings of 'orient' before. What you write makes sense.
I look forward to the next challenge. I think Cris51 and Arturo may be too fast for me on this one so I hope the next one has lots of dots and is harder to learn as that may (or may not) give me a better chance against them.

Itachi:

Actually, East is at the top. I decided to do this because the canal is long North to South, and the PurposeGames space is long left to right. So a simple 90 degree rotation, and it fits better, so allows a larger version of the map to be used.

As far as the game goes, it does add an element of unfamiliarity, which is OK because both my canal games are fairly simple.

There is another point worth noting. In the age before compasses became widely used, North was not the top of the map, East was. People would point their maps to the direction of sunrise.

"Orient" was a term for "East", so aligning the map was orienting it, and that's where the term "Orient" picked up the meanings of adjusting or aligning an object, get ting one's bearings, etc. That's not why I chose the rotated map, but it certainly fits the theme.

It's unusual to have West at the top rather than North.

utes ago

More about the Grand Canal Here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_of_China

See this map on its home page here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Modern_Course_of_Grand_Canal_of_China.png

The file comes with a GNU Free Documentation license, Version 1.2

Details:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:GNU_Free_Documentation_License