Classification

I think I might be ready to begin My Quest. I have rules…I know what falls under the classification of pie…and I have a mechanism to determine if one pie is better than another.

What more could I possibly need? I’m all set to sample the selection of pies, assign each pie with an overall point value and the last pie standing will be declared the winner.

Bakers Square, here I come.

Hold on…now let’s think about this for a minute. I’m pitting all thirty-six or so pies against one another, assigning a point value and determining – based on overall points – which pie is the best. Is this a fair way to determine a winner? Is it really fair to put Apple pie up against Custard? What about Coconut Cream vs. Pumpkin?

These are completely different types of pies with different characteristics. We’re talking fruit pies and cream pies here.

Let’s see…I have 36 pies and baseball has 30 teams; maybe I do something similar to MLB. I could break the pies into divisions and have a 162-game season. Let me do some math here…each pie would have 162 matches (games), if I complete one match a week, that would be 52 matches a year, so…if I divide that by the total number of matches, that’d be 162 x 36 divided by 2…carry the 1…divided that by 52…YIKES! I think I need to rethink this. That’d be over 2,900 matches…at one match a week, we’re looking at fifty-plus years – and that’s not even counting the playoffs.

That won’t work.

Forget about it. There has to be a better way.

Maybe I could do this NCAA-Tournament style. It works for basketball, why not pie? I can break the pies into four groups: Fruit Pies; Cream Pies; Other Pies and the Pie of the Month.

Yes, I think brackets are the way to go.

In analyzing the Bakers Square pie menu, I’ve broken out the pies as follows:

Fruit Pies
Blueberry
Tripleberry
Raspberry
Strawberry
French Apple
Strawberry Rhubarb
Country Apple Cherry

Cream Pies
Banana Cream
French Silk
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup
Oreo Pie
Lemon Supreme
Lemon Meringue
Chocolate Cream
Coconut Cream

Other Pies
Pumpkin
Pecan
Carmel Pecan Silk Supreme
Carmel Apple a La Mode
Strawberry Cream Cheese
French Apple Cream Cheese
Custard
Cheesecake

Pie of the Month
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

Due to the number of Pies of the Month I think I’ll need to give four of the pies an automatic bye into the bracket and let the other eight pies fight for the remaining four slots.

This could get interesting.