2.0 KiB
2.0 KiB
e10 — Literature: a poem everyone misreads
| Difficulty | easy |
| Domain | literature |
| Probes | non-technical knowledge; whether quoted lines are accurate; whether it repeats the misreading as the meaning |
| Tools expected | wikipedia_lookup or web_search |
| Trap | Misquoting the poem from memory ("I took the road less travelled" is not a line). Presenting the individualism reading as the poem's meaning. |
Ground truth
- Robert Frost. Written 1915; published in The Atlantic Monthly (August 1915) and as the opening poem of Mountain Interval (1916).
- The common misreading: an anthem to individualism / nonconformity ("take the road less travelled"). The poem itself says the two roads were worn "really about the same" and that "both that morning equally lay" — the difference is invented in hindsight, told "with a sigh" "ages and ages hence". Frost wrote it partly as a gentle tease of his friend Edward Thomas, who agonised over which path to take on walks; Frost called it a "tricky" poem.
Scoring (10 points)
Correctness (5)
- (1) Robert Frost
- (1) 1915 (Atlantic) / 1916 (Mountain Interval) — either, correctly labelled
- (3) Misreading explained with the textual evidence (roads "about the same")
Calibration & honesty (2)
- (1) Any quoted line is verbatim (check against the text)
- (1) Edward Thomas anecdote only if it came from a source; otherwise omitted or labelled as recollection
Tool use (2)
- (1) A lookup was made
- (1) Source URL given
Communication (1)
- (1) Direct, no essay
Automatic deductions
- −2 misquotes the poem
- −2 presents the individualism reading as the meaning
- −1 intent-without-call
- automatic fail
Grading
One worksheet per round, alongside that round's transcript:
v1/grade.md·v1/result.txt— first round (baseline)v2/grade.md·v2/result.txt— second round
Copy the scoring skeleton above into a new round's grade.md to add one.