c4countdown

JackHurst

Phil Stanton wrote: ↑Fri Feb 28, 2025 6:18 pm 03. Why do you have a leading zero on your dates (01st and 02nd August) but then inconsistently not have one on your warm-up entry fee (£5 instead of £05)?

JackHurst

Someone called Jack Hurst seemed to agree when it came up before. I reserve the right to change my opinion :) I've experienced competing 2 Colin Finals and 1 more Focal finals since that post, which has influenced my perspective (sorry, not intended to be a boast). Some of your posts have a hint of...

JackHurst

But as I've said, in terms of a big one-off event where you have to be present on the day, we have COLIN, and that's bigger and more prestigious than the FOCAL finals. Great. That's your opinion, not a fact. I wonder if there's anybody on here who we could ask what it feels like to win each of them...

JackHurst

I would say that given the top players going to enough events, the points winner is a better indicator of the best player of the year than the FOCAL champion. Let's suppose you were correct with this point. Of the 20ish regular players on the circuit at the moment who entertain the idea of trying t...

JackHurst

Some bollocks Finalists do have to pay for their entry to Focal finals. I wouldn't expect them to have free entry either for reasons you say. I agree that the "Fancy venue" for finals doesn't necessarily add much. The suggestion of getting rid of FOCAL finals is total shite. Just because ...

JackHurst

I don't think more choice of events is ever a bad thing. I'd disagree here, I think there is a point where the calendar gets saturated and events become no fun because they are so sparsely attended. What that point of saturation is remains a matter of opinion that varies between people. To echo wha...

JackHurst

Echo the thoughts about event prices. Compared to the cost of travel, hotels and giving up a weekend, the £12 or whatever it costs is nothing at all. I'd still go to as many events even if it were £20 an event. I also feel the same as others about the calendar congestion and event fatigue. It's grea...

JackHurst

I've got an update going out early next week. It adds words such as DATASET(S) and OMURICE. There are some removals such as MINUTER and DRAINCOCK. This should bring the app dictionary in line with the latest suggested dictionary changes by the people who maintain apto dict. Thanks to all involved in...

JackHurst

A conundrum I was hoping might come up in one of the finals

TWENTYBOI

JackHurst

Andy Platt wrote: ↑Wed Feb 05, 2025 12:52 pm Is anyone thinking about coming but holding back for any reason? Cheers

Just did a 3 tourney weekeneder @ CoLin and I am still recovering. Also it's the day after valentines day and I didn't want to bugger off to the other end of the country to leave my partner alone.

JackHurst

Calling out letters primary school style: I'm having badges made for next year that have simply 'NO' written on them in order to discourage this. Do we get a "NO" badge if we refrain from acting like children, or if we do? :lol: If you get the no badge, it gets stuck into your forehead.

JackHurst

The bit where we have to stand still in silence and listen to a 15 minute exhaustive checkbox list of upcoming events is always excrutiatingly boring and kills a lot of momentum and excitement in the room. I understand that hosts need to promote events, and this is seen as a good opportunity to do s...

JackHurst

None of this "buh kuh duh" nonsense. Yeah several people said this, I'm fairly sure it's been noted and won't happen again. For events where the event host is happy to let volunteers officiate/present the final, may I suggest to anybody who is wanting to present/officiate a final, but doe...

JackHurst

Had a great time, thanks for 20 years of Colining Ben W, and thanks to all of you whacky bunch for turning up love you all xxx Confession time: I stole a chocolate orange accidentally because I misunderstood what colour team won the team thing. Confession time #2: I've already eaten 90% of said choc...

JackHurst

Massively prefer the new system too. Had loads of competitive games over the weekend, but more importantly I had a really good variety of opponent too! From 16 games played, Tim Down was the only person I played twice all weekend. That's a big improvement in before. I appreciate this is probably a l...

JackHurst

Can somebody clarify the rules? I saw a bit of this a couple of weeks ago, and the contestants seemed to play like it's Wordle Hard mode. For examples, starter is R???. Contestants only guess words beginning with R. Is this required? Surely a much better strategy is to open with 3 words using distin...

JackHurst

At a Co-event, suppose somebody were to use the deck of small number cards as a target generator (without replacement) before/after drawing the 6 numbers, you end up with some selections which are not possible. 100, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 -> 666 (There aren't three 6 cards to draw for the target) 100, 9, 9, ...

JackHurst

If the "play a random opponent on the same number of wins" method gets adopted by more organisers and becomes the most widely used system ("becomes the standard method?"), then I'll change the default to match. But I don't think it's right for me to change the default otherwise....

JackHurst

Never seen it

JackHurst

Merry Xmas again. I hope Santa busts a fat sack for you all.

JackHurst

Tracey Anne Mills wrote: ↑Sun Dec 15, 2024 10:43 pm I got most of those but seven of them eluded me

Coming here to boast that you got minus two out of five is a bold move

JackHurst

Thanks to everybody who helped make this (and all other events throughout the year) happens. We really are very lucky to have so many of these to go to throughout the year. Also big thanks to the people who keep turning up to these events, without the players, they'd be nothing. Well done to Callum ...

JackHurst

Thanks for setting this up Fiona, I thought they were great fun, and I think we had plenty of people in the room who managed to solve at least one, so that was great to see. I think they are not for everybody, but for Elite vs Elite games where it's a crucial, a Supernundrum is a much better climax ...

JackHurst

I don't think we want to make things too complex. I think a set number of events with equal weighting makes sense. And set number rather than proportion. It's just a question of how many that should be. And I would say 6. 6 plus the finals is 7 weekends potentially all over the country and that's n...

JackHurst

I trust your rankings more than ChatGPT, thanks for posting them!

JackHurst

Here's is what ChatGPT says the rankings would look like if that scoring system was applied to 2024 New Ranking | Old Ranking | Change | Name | Events Played | Weighted Score ------------|-------------|--------|---------------------|---------------|---------------- 1 | 1 | 0 | Jack Hurst | 11 | 2851...

JackHurst

I wonder how things would work out with the following scoring system for FOCAL. Not saying it's any good, but it just popped into my head and thought it might be interesting to share. Scores per event remain calculated as they are. Then instead of taking the 8 best scores and adding them up for an ...

JackHurst

So for lunchtime amusement - We've got 5 supernundrums in increasing difficulty (my judgement). Plan for a lunchtime distraction is that anyone who wants to play them can - once you fail to solve one, you're out. Anyone who's still playing the last is on a buzzer race to determine the winner. Sound...

JackHurst

Do you have a link to the Colin Stat file? Always makes an interesting read.

JackHurst

More about squeezing an extra 3 or 4 people in over turning people away Channelling my inner Jeff Clayton here, what do you expect hosts to do about your suggestion? Accept any number of players to their events, and if the room is horribly over crowded, then make attendees suffer for it? Or always ...

JackHurst

I really don't like capping sign ups to an event. I think you'll have to live with it. If hosts didn't need caps, they wouldn't have them. Fiona's post highlights that your assertion about it being easy to predict event attendance isn't right. George also makes a good point about scarcity driving d...

JackHurst

We're very close to a couple of Milestones: - Due to hit 1 Million high scores sent to the server in about 8 days - The app should start showing in the play store as 100K downloads soon Version 1.144 is currently rolling out which brings the dictionary in sync with the latest used on apterous. If yo...

JackHurst

Eighteen Inch Nails
3 Biggie 3 smalls

JackHurst

Conor wrote: ↑Sun Nov 03, 2024 9:55 am Hansford & Sons

Laughed my head off at this. Presumably, the lead singer always starts singing before the instrumentalists are ready to start playing the intro to any song.

JackHurst

System of a (not written) Down
Mötley Crücial

JackHurst

Thanks Jeff and Rachel once again for another great event. I think I've been coming to your events for over 14 years now, and they never fail to be a great day out. Thanks for accepting my bribe to include TCap on my quiz team for another year, that definitely helped me enjoy it even more ;) Congrat...

JackHurst

A player accidentally hit the buzzer before the time started and only noticed when they went to buzz in properly with the correct solution after the clock had started. Was clear they buzzed first, but they wanted to play another con for fairness. Yes for the event policy, wrong spelling = no points...

JackHurst

You are at a co-event, and about to watch the final between Players A and B. The host wants some help picking a good conundrum for the final, and the pull you over to consider three options. One of the options is a word which came up in a group chat with Player A yesterday. You know that if this opt...

JackHurst

Bucket of gunge for people who ask for all 9 of their letters up front at Bristol style events. "CV9 please" Double bucket of gunge for the people who pick the first 7 letters like they care that they are picking, and then they just double up with their final pick. "And 2 more consona...

JackHurst

I know in some Scrabble tournaments WhatsApp groups are created for attendees Just FTR, if this is opt in, then that's ok, but if hosts are doing that without asking people first, that's really out of order. I would be absolutely furious if I got added to an attendees WhatsApp group without my prio...

JackHurst

Also, I think that some people suggested events that have fewer rounds could be worth fewer points, but I'm not sure how that really ties in with the "best of" thing. If someone does really well at a "half" event, then it could still be useless to them unless they find another h...

JackHurst

Attendee lists should be private by default. I've wanted this for a long time. Publicly naming sign ups in lists or announcement posts should require consent from that person to do so. Simple.

JackHurst

Points of note: - Jack is always first (this only changes if you go down to just 1 event) - The contents of the top 8 are the same for all of 7-10 events - 6 and 5 introduce Callum, then Rob and Zohaib, having played exactly that number of events - Tom Stevenson appears at 6 (having played 7), but ...

JackHurst

My approach going forward if my opponent if nwd, is going to be to write it down as they say it (which I already do) but tell them I am doing that and make sure they are looking at what I'm writing (they are saying) and if they disagree with it to say at the time! But yeah it is tricky especially i...

JackHurst

These rules create more problems than they solve.

Adding potential stress and penalties for everybody in reaction to a very small amount of players (one player) having poor sportsmanship seems like an overreaction.

JackHurst

I enjoy the FOCAL season system because it gives me a bit of motivation and focus to try and keep good at the game, and it's a nice outlet for my competitive side. However, the amount of spare weekends you have to sacrifice for all this is already untenable at 8 events. I like all of you, but it's p...

JackHurst

Looks good. If it doesn't already, I think it would be good to make it idiot proof obvious when a conundrum that it's 9 or 10 letters. - Don't assume people will remember what the host said at the start of the game. - Don't assume people will Count 10 squares before the reveal. - Don't assume the ho...

JackHurst

You can certainly make the argument that the COLIN Hangover should only be worth two-thirds the FOCAL points of the main COLIN event, but only because it has two-thirds of the games, not because players should receive less reward for travelling fewer miles. One thing we need to be careful about her...

JackHurst

From the perspective of an organiser who hosts his event in the middle of winter in the middle of nowhere, 8 games almost certainly isn't going to happen. COLIN would need to start at about 11am instead of 11:45am (and that's just the actual 'sit down to start playing' and not just my pre-event waf...

JackHurst

I enjoyed doing 15R at Reading, but 5 games didn't feel like enough to get proper rankings. 6 (my original intention) would have been very tight. Maybe the different options available on atropine to match on wins only might help things. Will probs stick with 15R for next year as it's traditional fo...

JackHurst

The most chaotic/slow/overrunning event I can recall from past couple of years was Liverpool 2024 and that was 6 Lincoln games. Both Birminghams and Rugbys from past two years had 8 games and I found them to be smoother and feel less rushed. I strongly prefer 8 games! Very happy with the current mix...

JackHurst

Co event ELO would be awesome. I tried to do it but gave up because aggregating the data was hard. Asking hosts to produce accurate individual results of games with the correct variation of Tom/Thomas/Maus/TCap as the player name initially sounded doable, but honestly I think a host has so much goin...

JackHurst

Red onion skin. Why does it get everywhere so easily? We somehow took a small piece on holiday with us last week.

JackHurst

How is the word lookup bring done? Is it checking against some list that needs to be maintained by Tom? Also is there any tracking. This looks great, but I have 2 concerns: 1) Yet another separate source of truth for word check 2) This is the most easy to use, free to use, anonymous to use Countdow...

JackHurst

How is the word lookup bring done? Is it checking against some list that needs to be maintained by Tom? Also is there any tracking. This looks great, but I have 2 concerns: 1) Yet another separate source of truth for word check 2) This is the most easy to use, free to use, anonymous to use Countdown...

JackHurst

Attention numbers geeks, the next tourney is a numbers one

Subscribers can join here https://wordgamegeeks.com/countdowntournament?QLPWZ

JackHurst

Question for the northern lot. Are there any times of the year where you feel like it's tough to get to any event because there are several in a row so very far away? Last few years, for the southern lot I think it's this time of year that it happens. E.g next three Blackpool/Dublin/Glasgow. Getting...

JackHurst

I mean I tapped the phone to indicate I was having a guess but if someone is scribbling it down that would indicate they're also 'buzzing'. In terms of seeing what the other person has written, that's fine IMO but maybe does need explaining in the preamble Is there a grey area here for people who l...

JackHurst

https://wordgamegeeks.com/countdowntournament?QLNMo Hey folks. I'm running another experimental tournament in the app. You can click the link above to enroll and view standings. There are 20 spaces and the tournament kicks off tomorrow evening. The format is Round Robin "Turbo" (LLNNC). Yo...

JackHurst

Great to see everybody again this weekend. Well done to TCap on a great win on Saturday!

Thanks Phil for putting the whole thing on, and Sam was a great co-host/atropine whizz.

I think the silent declaration idea worked quite well, kudos to whoever invented that

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