By our research team, Albert Leving and Mike Tsay:
The Great Chicken Wing Hunt
Wing Scoring Instructions
1. Score your wings first thing. Don’t eat anything else prior to scoring. Focus your taste buds on the task at hand before indulging in the extra fair of each establishment.
2. The questions in the “Mood” and “Wing” sections are scored on a ten point scale (0-10). Half-points (0.5, 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5,…, 9.5) are acceptable scores, and the middle score of “5” represents the average. For example, the first question in the “Mood sections asks how you feel today in comparison to an average day. If you feel as you feel on most days, you would enter a score of “5”. If you felt better or worse than an average day, you would enter a value greater than or less than “5” respectively.
3. For taste and texture scoring of wings, a score of “5” on the ten point scale corresponds to a score for an average or mediocre wing. We are having you eat some know mediocre (or control) wings at the beginning of the hunt so that you have some sense of what a score of “5” should be. The average wing is your reference point for scoring, and it is important that you try to keep this same reference point for the duration of the hunt.
4. Be careful not to give out the highest scores too early in the hunt. You want to be able to reserve the high end of the scoring spectrum for wings that may come further down the road. If the wings never reach the quality of a “10” in any of the categories, that is fine. You just don’t want to make the mistake of giving out a “10” early and then finding a wing that may definitely be better.
5. Cleanse palette before tasting a different wing type. You don’t want the taste of the previous wing influencing the score for the current wing.
6. The “Sauce heat” category is in reference to your expectation based on the wing type. For example, if you order a hot wing and it comes out too mild, this would warrant a low score, similarly for a mild wing that comes out too hot. A sauce that meets your expectation perfectly would deserve a score of “10”.
7. Don’t drink any alcohol prior to or during scoring, as this may effect your ability to fairly score the wing.
8. Don’t pay attention to the place, price or other customers when scoring wings. Try your hardest to give each wing your best effort to score it fairly and impartially.
9. Don’t discuss or look at the scores of other wing hunters or patrons of the establishment while scoring each wing. Individual wing hunter scores should be completely independent of each other. This point is critical to ensuring the integrity of each wing score and the overall success of the hunt. Your individual taste is all that matters.
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