Goo Game Rule Tweaks

Scott Hardie | August 19, 2024
These minor changes to Celebrity Goo Game won't take effect until next month, but here's announcing them early so that players have time to adjust.

1) Goos will once again belong to the month in which they are published, not the month in which they expire. I thought that changing to the latter would be a small improvement, but it's mostly been confusing and error-prone, so I'm putting the schedule back to the way it was. (The September round will last a week longer on account of the shift.)

2) Rather than having "bonus goos" that don't earn points for the previous winner, all goos will earn points for all players, but each player's score will be reduced by 1 for each victory in the previous 12 rounds. So in other words, if you've won 6 times in the last 12 months, expect to start the round with a score of -6 instead of 0, but every goo this month will earn you a point. The game has been stuck in an alternating pattern of the same two winners for some time now, and the goal with this change is to (slightly) raise the likelihood of breaking out of that pattern while keeping the game at the same level of fairness for everyone as it currently is. My testing with historical data indicates that it should work.

If you have concerns about these changes, or suggestions for more, please speak up in the next two weeks. I'm always grateful for feedback. Thanks!

Scott Hardie | August 30, 2024
The code changes are complete. Please let me know if anything seems strange in the next few days. I'll be monitoring for problems and fixing ASAP. If a problem does occur, adjustments will be made to get us back on track, undoing whatever mistakes happened.

Scott Hardie | September 17, 2024
When the goo game went monthly, I said that I was going to stop praising individual winners because there would just be too many of them and I didn't want the message to get repetitive. But that doesn't mean that there's not still praiseworthy gameplay happening. Here's observing that:

• Russ and Steve have been alternating victories for a year and a half, taking turns winning the game from January 2023 through July 2024. There have been equally long time periods with only two winners before, but never with anywhere near this many rounds and thus this many opportunities for someone else to break through; it tended to happen only in previous 1.5-year periods when there were 4-6 rounds instead of 19.

• Samir was the one to finally beat Russ and Steve, and he did it before the rule tweaks announced on this page. Those guys do not make it easy to get ahead, but through perseverance, Samir pulled it off.

• Steve has been creating a lot of goos lately, which no doubt helps with the winning. The random selector that publishes a goo every night really seems to favor his over mine; what can I say? I'm grateful for any goos that players create, and Steve has made some fun ones that I really appreciate.

• Although it is certainly diminished after all of this time, Celebrity Goo Game remains active. As I write this, four players are currently in contention to win in September: Denise, Russ, Samir, and Steve. And the fifth player on the current list, Richard, has been near the top score in most rounds for years.

I'm grateful to everyone who keeps solving and/or submitting goos. Keep it up! :-)

Scott Hardie | October 9, 2024
And I should add:

• Denise's win in September is her third overall in the game, and first since 2010. This comeback to win again is the second-longest gap between wins in game history after Matthew Preston's 16 years. There were several players competing hard for that September victory, and they all deserve praise for playing so well... which means that Denise's triumph is even more impressive. Well done, Denise! And well played, everybody.

Denise Sawicki | October 10, 2024
Thanks! The other top players had a major handicap ("each player's score will be reduced by 1 for each victory in the previous 12 rounds") and I still could barely do it... So congrats Steve and Russ on your skills!

Steve West | October 10, 2024
Congrats back at ya!

Scott Hardie | November 9, 2024
The October season turned out to be the first ever to have two winners. I am so glad that I changed that rule, because the requirement that there always be only a single winner tended to force us into problematic scoring systems. Congrats Russ and Steve! You are both worthy winners!