Based on the idea of “Six Degrees of Separation,” find the quickest route connecting Bob Dylan to various well-known people. Since his first album in 1962, Dylan has been at the heart of contemporary art and culture, so it ought to be fairly easy to find a thread. The challenge is to do it creatively and in as few degrees as possible. Good luck.

We'll announce the winners of this last question on Monday, November 6th and the Grand Prize Winners on Tuesday the 7th. Stay tuned.

Entries are now closed, stay tuned for the big winners!

a quick example Of How This Works

For demonstration purposes, let's assume that today's contest question is "How do you get from Muhammad Ali to Bob Dylan?" You might do a bit of creative research and come up with a way to make the connection in just four steps. Like this:

1: Muhammad Ali's manager for most of his career was Angelo Dundee.

2: Angelo Dundee also managed Heavyweight Champion Jimmy Ellis.

3: In 1964, Jimmy Ellis was defeated by Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.

4: The song Hurricane was written about Rubin Carter and appears on Bob Dylan's album Desire.

That's all there is to it. We'll be publishing a new question every few days for the next month. You can submit only one answer for each question we ask, but the more questions you answer, the more chances you'll have for the Grand Prize.

More information about our partners.

the prizes

Winners get a copy of Bob Dylan's new album Modern Times from Columbia and everyone who enters is eligible to win the really big prize. At the conclusion of the contest we'll pick three names at random and those three people will win the complete catalogue of every single Bob Dylan album ever released on Columbia Records (47 in all).

The Rules

You must be 18 years old to play. Your 'connections' must be valid (we'll be checking up on you) but you can go through music, politics, movies, culture, whatever. But just so you know, "I was listening to Jokerman while driving to see the movie When We Were Kings," isn't going to cut it.

For each question, we'll choose at random a correct entry with the lowest number of valid connections and send that person a copy of Bob Dylan's Modern Times.

We'll occasionally highlight particularly creative connection-making in the entries we receive and when we do that, we'll send the people responsible the new record too. The decision of the judges in this and other matters is final. Contest ends October 31, 2006.

Buy the album.

the FEED

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the weblog

We can announce two of our three grand prize winners now. Congratulations to Sarah D. at Willamette University and Stefanie S. in Reading, PA. The full Dylan catalog is on its way! jw-11.10

The grand prize winners are entries #645 (linking Mary Kate and Ashley to Dylan), #207 (linking Condie Rice to Dylan) and #1037 (linking Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Dylan). That means nothing to you right now, but we'll replace the numbers with the names after we get e-mails back from the grand prize winners. jw-11.10

Our final "yourself" winner: (1) I was a programmer for Celerex, a startup that made credit card validators in the early '90s, which hired comedian / presidential candidate Pat Paulsen to do a TV commercial. (2) Pat Paulsen was a regular on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. (3) The Smothers Brothers lived in the apartment over (and got their big break at) the Satire Lounge in Denver, CO. (4) Bob Dylan was hissed off the stage playing Woody Guthrie songs at the Satire Lounge. jw-11.10

"(1) Me (2) Lotte, a good friend I met in high school... (3) Lottes Aunt, who supposedly had a short fling with Bob Dylan many years ago." We searched for proof, but we'll take your word for it. jw-11.10

Previous questions and weblog entries can be found here.

Digg the contest.