Your chance to make me do silly things in public

At this year's Balticon, I will once again be leading the Liars' Panel. The panel is a fund-raiser for Balticon's literacy charity. It works like this:

• I’ll ask ten questions (time permitting).

• The panelists have seen the questions in advance.

• Each panelist will answer each question.

• Three of each panelist’s answers will be lies--though if we don't get to all ten questions, you may not hear three lies from each of us. I have no way to know if you will.

• No one else knows which answers are lies; even I don’t. We have not shared our answers with each other.

• After an answer, I’ll ask if there are any challenges.

• Each person who wants to challenge may do so by holding up a hand with a dollar in it. Panelists may challenge each other.

• If the answer was a lie, the panelist puts $10 in the bucket.

• If the answer was the truth, each challenger must put $1 in the bucket.

When it works well, the panel is screamingly funny, everyone laughs, lots of people make challenges, and we raise a bunch of dough to help kids get books.

Two ingredients are essential to the panel working well: Panelists who can be funny in a short time, and great questions.

We have the first.

Which brings me to your opportunity: We need good questions. The ideal questions let the panelists tell interesting stories from their pasts--or interesting lies.

A few questions that have worked well:

• What's the weirdest gift you've ever received?

• What's the oddest purchase you've ever made?

• What talent do you have that few would suspect?

You get the idea.

If you'd like to make me deal with embarrassing questions in front of a large audience, send me some questions. I won't guarantee to use them, and I definitely won't promise whether I'll answer them truthfully, but the best of the best are likely to find their way into the Balticon Liars' Panel.

Fire away!