Round XXXVI Tournament

Scott Hardie | November 8, 2008
Here we go again. Good luck, players!

I hope all 15 players know that it's time. One of my top priorities after migrating the site to a new webhost is to set up email notifications for events like the GOO tournament starting and your turn in an RB concert. I hope this is the last tournament that risks players not knowing it's time to begin.

Scott Hardie | November 12, 2008
[Narrating for those unable to see today's goo...] Two players remain. Russ has guessed correctly. Can Amy solve the goo in the next ninety minutes?

Amy Austin | November 12, 2008
Doubtful.

Scott Hardie | November 12, 2008
Congrats, Russ! Today's win grants you admission into two very small groups: Players who have won consecutive rounds (Matt, Amy, Elliot) and players who have won the game three times (Matt, Aaron, Dave). Well done!

All fifteen players who made it into the tournament should be proud; this was a hard round, with some hard goos at the very end. You all played well. Runners-up will be declared after the answers are revealed on 11/23.

The game will resume in two weeks, on the day after Thanksgiving. There will probably be an RB block party that day too.

Amy Austin | November 12, 2008
Congratulations, Russ.

Richard Slominsky | November 12, 2008
Well Deserved. CONGRATS!! This was a hard round.....

Russ Wilhelm | November 13, 2008
Thanks everyone. I've said it before, and it still holds true, each round the competition gets tougher. I look forward to competing with you on the next round. Again thank you.

What I liked best about this round was that a player could log in on day 50, and still manage to pull it off. No one did, but it would have been awesome to see.

Steve West | November 13, 2008
You're on quite a roll. Congrats.

Steve Dunn | November 13, 2008
Hey, congratulations Russ! Three wins puts you in very elite company.

Tony Peters | November 14, 2008
when do we get to see all the goo's un goo'd

Amy Austin | November 14, 2008
Reread post –Scott Hardie • November 12 2008, 12:21am EST

Scott Hardie | November 15, 2008
I had originally set the goos to expire on 11/23, but I have moved up that date to 11/18, one week after the tournament ended. That should be enough time for anyone still trying to deny Russ a Golden Imelda on the last goo. When the time comes, I'll alter the Recent Goos page to show all 54 goos from last round instead of just 10.

Scott Hardie | November 18, 2008
All 54 answers are now revealed. Russ, would you like to explain how you solved the final goo? I think it's a good story, at least for teaching newer players. Feel free to keep your techniques to yourself. :-)

There were seven runners-up this round: Steve West, Amy Austin, Justin Woods, Joanna Woods, Richard Slominsky, and first-timers Samir Mehta and Lavonne Lemler. Congrats, all! The list is looking a little silly at the high end (that's a lot of Roman numerals), but the point of the runner-up award is still valid, which is to honor good gameplay beyond just the one person who triumphed in the tournament. Russ played a great round, but he wasn't the only one.

Tony Peters | November 18, 2008
thank you

Chris Lemler | November 18, 2008
Scott I know Russ wasn't the only one with a streak going. I was wandering if more people will be on the streaker list

Amy Austin | November 18, 2008
Chris... all the streaks were broken when Russ was the only one to answer correctly -- everyone, but Russ, is back at zero.

Chris Lemler | November 18, 2008
I thought that they might had like they did from the reg round

Scott Hardie | November 18, 2008
Does it make sense not to count tournament goos against a streak? I don't think so, but we'd see a lot longer streaks if so.

Amy Austin | November 18, 2008
I don't think so, either.

Tony Peters | November 18, 2008
Streaks have never been something I thought about but then until this round I've never really had one

Steve Dunn | November 19, 2008
A streak is a streak. You miss a goo, it's no longer a streak. Everything counts for streaks, I say.

Chris Lemler | November 19, 2008
yeah but i didn't miss any. I just requested some

Amy Austin | November 19, 2008
That doesn't count against you, Chris.

Russ Wilhelm | November 22, 2008
Goo Strategy 101? Perhaps not, but who knows.

I'll try and remember how this transpired. More detailed than I told Scott, and with any luck, I don't forget anything important.

I started off probably like everyone else. The clue initially led me to look at "Todd Beamer", who was aboard Flight 93, and is strongly associated with the phrase "Let's Go". Did he fit the categories? "Military and War"? That was the beginning of this "War on Terrorism" so OK. "Sports"? He was noted for his school athleticism (Wiki anyway), so perhaps. I would have thought "Accidents and Disasters" but maybe not.

Picture search time... What can I see in the picture to help me. It's a mess. The best I can see are the other people in the picture (lower left and right. Search time... Nothing (which seemed to be prominent in this round, and I'm big on finding the picture, even when I know who it is). I'll keep him in mind (one choice out of one searched.

The clue states that he answered the charge "Let's Roll". Perhaps it is another passenger that was involved in the revolt against the hijackers. Those searches were broken up by having to go to work, though I did manage a few minutes while there to search. During this time I saw the skull, as I wasn't concentrating on the total picture before. While they could fit the same way that Beamer did, "Accidents and Disasters" absence bugged me. Still I pressed on. I only worked a half day, being a holiday, the boss was kind.

Got another hour or two at home to search, before the grand daughter showed up. My search now was on athletes injured or killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Still nothing that stuck out, with the exception of Pat Tillman, who showed up in almost every search. Still no picture, but he's beginning to be my prime candidate.

Grand daughter shows up, I get a chance here and there to search, but by this time I'm just plugging in names, to no avail.

Tuesday's are when I take guitar lessons, and I leave at 6:30 (7:30 goo time). This denies me another hour and a half of searching, and my mind is made up that "Pat Tillman is my best bet so far, even though I have strong doubts. I will put him in if I haven't anything better to offer.

I continue my searching upon getting back home. Also I start looking harder at the picture to see if I've missed anything that would help me. What can I make of it. The goo'd photo is a mess, and it's a wild shot, which makes me have to assume little details. Lettering on the shirt, couldn't figure any of them out. Hair color, beats me. I still think he's injured or dead. Any signs of that? If he's injured, there may be some sign of that. I don't see any indication of a wheelchair, and what I take to be his legs seem normal (no prosthetic?). I think that's his head to the right. Can't tell if he's got any damage there (eye patch, dark sunglasses, missing nose..). I'm fairly certain I can see his left arm, could be missing his hand, as I can't figure out if it's there or not. Right arm? Can't see it. Where would it be in relation to the rest of the photo. Maybe I was mistaken about the head and it's actually the arm. Look harder. I still think it's the head. Maybe the arm is alongside his head. Doesn't seem right. I think perhaps it's gone.

I've got nothing to loose at this point., Tillman is still my guess, and I still think it's wrong. Why not. So I put into my search engine: athlete lost "right arm" Afghanistan

Athlete because the clue said he was, and sports is a category. Afghanistan because "Let's Roll" was a batle cry for troops going to Afghanistan. Lost "right arm" because I had nothing else. Several names went by, and I did picture searches on them all, including "Darrell Salzman", a champion log roller (Let's roll?). Nothing. When I saw J.R. Salzman's name show up, again listed as a log roller, I almost passed on it, thinking it was the same guy, but I didn't. They were one and the same, J.R. being a nickname I guess, but more widely known. There it was, right on the first page, four photo's in.

So it all came down to using everything available known and assumed, and not giving in too soon.

This relates closely to how I found "Nigella Lawson" as well. With her, I believe it was a piece of the counter top that I looked for in my photo searching, off of names I found using various searches, and then verifying the categories and clue once I thought I found the counter top situated where it should have been in the photo..

Not sure if this was helpful, as this process may not always yield positive results, but there is is. Good luck to all, and if this gives you something to add to your skill-set, all the better.

Scott Hardie | November 24, 2008
Thanks for the explanation. It also helps me to know how the good players solve goos. ;-)

I was hoping to get some Pat Tillman guesses on this one. This goo wound up being a bulls-eye for me: Exactly hard enough that only one tournament player could guess it right, no more and no less. I try for that on every tournament goo and rarely succeed.

Chris Lemler | November 24, 2008
nice job Scott get up the good work

Scott Hardie | November 24, 2008
Thanks, Chris. You asked a question in private that I think others might be wondering too: Will each goo in the next round time out after a week or last the whole round? I see the advantages in both, but for now I'm going to leave it the traditional way, timing out after one week. With additional tweaks, I might attempt the other method again someday.

Scott Hardie | January 9, 2009
Not only is he a double champion, Russ has now given other players even more reason to fear his skills in next week's (1/17) tournament: He has just acquired the longest streak of correct guesses ever, 89 and counting. It's actually 96 if you include the current goos, and soon to break 100. Who was the record-holder before him? Russ again, of course. Way to go, "Champ"! :-)

Fyi, I've adjusted some back-end code that updates streaks every night. Yeah, I know it's one of the most error-prone pieces of code on the site and I should leave well enough alone, but it was running very inefficiently and needed some re-organizing. If you notice any weirdness with future streak-counting in the next few days, please let me know.

Steve Dunn | January 20, 2009
Haha, great, I totally spaced on the goo tournament. I'll never make it into the top 10!

Scott Hardie | January 20, 2009
Well, there's still plenty of time to rack up some Golden Imeldas. Apparently these tournament goos are too hard, so here's attempting to make today's just slightly easier. As usual, I have no idea how hard these actually are until people starting guessing, or don't start guessing as the case may be.

Steve Dunn | January 20, 2009
Wait! I just noticed I guessed the first tournament goo. I didn't realize it was the tournament, though. ARGH!

Samir Mehta | January 20, 2009
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | January 20, 2009
You can guess it any time. In my observation over the years, it's probably smarter to try a hail-mary guess when you're stumped than no guess at all. Either way, you'll be eliminated by someone who guesses right, unless the freak occurrence happens that no one guesses correctly, in which case you luck out and survive anyway. Guessing wrong and not guessing are the same thing in the tournament.

But strictly speaking about tournament survival, yes, only today's goo matters and only for the first 24 hours. After that, it's no longer a tournament goo and it won't affect elimination.

Samir Mehta | January 21, 2009
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | January 21, 2009
Not guessing does not protect you in the tournament. It's the same as guessing wrong. If it did protect you, nobody would risk a guess they weren't absolutely certain of, and the tournament would take forever.

The main rule of the tournament is, failure to guess today's goo correctly (whether by guessing wrong or not guessing by midnight) means that you're eliminated. The catch is, if nobody guesses it correctly, then everyone would be eliminated and the round would end without a winner. To avoid that scenario, if nobody guesses the goo correctly during the first 24 hours, then everyone survives another day. This is normally a pretty rare occurrence, so it's crazy to see it three times in the same week.

I scaled back the difficulty even further on today's goo (1439), and I'm glad to see that it has already resulted in some correct guesses. We may see one or two eliminations today, but not enough to get us much closer to settling this.

Samir Mehta | January 21, 2009
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | January 21, 2009
Exactly. Maybe you only have a 1% chance of being right with that last-minute hail mary guess, but it's better than the 0% chance you have of being right by not guessing at all.

Steve Dunn | January 21, 2009
In retrospect, maybe I'm glad I missed this tournament. Three goos in a row that NO ONE correctly guessed? Yikes.

Amy Austin | January 21, 2009
Yikes indeed... I'm tired.

Scott Hardie | January 22, 2009
Back to another really hard goo tomorrow. I know how hard you're all trying and I commend you on it. While I can't give you any hints, I can give you encouragement: These goos are solvable, and one of you will pull off a victory because of your dogged determination to beat one of these. Good luck.

Samir Mehta | January 23, 2009
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | January 23, 2009
I tried to make it a lot easier than the four that nobody got, and only a little harder than the one that everybody got.

This contest is almost certainly going to go into Sunday's time-based finish. Today's goo is trying to shave off a couple of players before we get there.

Steve Dunn | January 23, 2009
All I know is, whoever wins this round deserves the congressional medal of honor.

Scott Hardie | January 23, 2009
Definitely. This will be one well-earned prize. I look forward to seeing who pulls it off. Good luck to everyone left.

Samir Mehta | January 23, 2009
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | January 23, 2009
You'll have to activate the goo. You go to the Current Goos page, and it explains how the timing works and asks if you're sure you're ready to start, then you click a button to see the goo. From that moment until you enter your guess is your time. Almost nobody activates it until the late morning or afternoon.

Chris Lemler | January 24, 2009
Hey Scott, i was wondering if you could look at this idea for the next tournament. Could you consider to this idea? My mom and I guessed wrong in the tournament and we both expected to be eliminated cause we guessed wrong. Even though know one guessed right, I think that if you guess and guess wrong you should be eliminated from the tournament. Just seems wrong for players to guess incorrectly and still advance to the next goo. If players fail to make a guess only they should advance to the next goo

Tony Peters | January 24, 2009
not guessing is the same as making a wrong guess, I would think that taking a risk should rate higher than failing to take the risk

Scott Hardie | January 24, 2009
I'd consider it that way, Chris. Another possibility is that if nobody guesses correctly, only the players who tried a guess (and were wrong) would advance, because at least they tried. The players who guessed nothing didn't venture the risk and would deserve to go.

Something I would like to see in future tournaments, but haven't quite figured out yet, is to make sure that at least one person gets eliminated daily. If everyone guesses correctly, maybe the person who guessed last is out, or a randomly selected person. If nobody guesses correctly, maybe one of them at random doesn't make it onward. It would force the tournament group to thin out, which is needs to do; this week's survival of the same eight players for six straight days is bad for the game and even bad for those eight. I'm still thinking about this.

I do have a few definite changes I plan to make for future tournaments, but they're minor differences, like only going seven days instead of nine. I'll announce them when the time comes.

Steve Dunn | January 24, 2009
I've been toying with an idea for the game. Check it out. Each player has to build three towers...

Scott Hardie | January 24, 2009
Haha. :-) What happens when fifteen people all finish their towers on the same goo?

Steve West | January 24, 2009
...if nobody guesses correctly, only the players who tried a guess (and were wrong) would advance...
If this were a rule, I'd answer Gomer Pyle just to advance, so I don't see an advantage there. The reason I didn't guess at any of those was I was willing to sacrifice the infinitisimally small chance of a correct guess for the slightly greater chance of getting a Golden Imelda later.

Eliminating people like musical chairs seems just a little unfair but does add a little spice to the events instead of seeing things drag on. But you have a built-in arrangement already with the timed goo that will certainly end things unless it's another in the series of impossi-goos.

Perhaps an alternating series of timed/untimed goos has appeal.

Samir Mehta | January 25, 2009
[hidden by request]

Amy Austin | January 25, 2009
Ditto on everything Steve said.

Scott Hardie | January 25, 2009
'The fastest that anyone has solved a timed goo is 7 seconds, but that was back when players faced off one-on-one in the bracketed tournament so it didn''t have much effect (and that short of a time still generated controversy anyway). My memory is a little fuzzy on sudden-death timed goos at the end of a regular tournament; I recall that Russ and Steve previously faced off on Lena Olin with Russ winning. There was an earlier example, where two players seemed unable to produce a winner between them after endless days of the regular tournament and I imposed a timed finish upon them to end the damn contest, but I can''t find it now. I want to say it was Russ and Mike Rothstein, but my memory isn''t as good as I would like.

Scott Hardie | January 26, 2009
We have a winner! This has been an insanely difficult tournament, the hardest in memory, and I commend everyone who lasted as long as they did. The prizes (four of them) are worth every penny.

Runners-up will be declared next Sunday. Prizes will be issued tomorrow. Round XXXVIII will begin tomorrow, with the first few goos as easy as I can make them.

Samir Mehta | January 26, 2009
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | January 26, 2009
Grrr, I was too quick to erase them from the page. Final times were Steve with 55 seconds, Mike with 1 minute 15 seconds, and Samir with 1 minute 40 seconds. Russ activated the goo but has not yet solved it.

Steve West | January 26, 2009
Thanks to everyone who sent me messages of congratulations, privately. As I said to one, this was a grueling round but that's what made it so satisfying. Kudos to those who lasted to the end and I take a small amount of pride in being able to withstand all the pressure you applied. Thanks again.

Amy Austin | January 26, 2009
Okay... I have a gripe. I specifically eliminated all Nobel Laureates from the "peace core" guess due to a lack of Contests & Competitions... I am not happy.

Russ Wilhelm | January 26, 2009
Congrats Steve. Tough one, and well earned.

Richard Slominsky | January 26, 2009
Well earned!! You da Man!!

Steve Dunn | January 26, 2009
Congratulations Steve!

Steve West | January 27, 2009
Thanks, again. I wish everyone who plays this game would stick around at least long enough to win one time. It feels pretty damn good. But it's not like those of us who have won already are gonna roll over 'cause there's only one thing better than winning this game. Winning again.

Amy Austin | January 29, 2009
Nelson Bragg. Not a chance in hell, I'm happy to see.

Btw, it looks like the current scores page is messed up -- looks like most were reset and some are off by one.

Scott Hardie | January 29, 2009
The modern site hasn't had goos from two rounds active at the same time, so it isn't really built for that. It just treats any correct guess as score+1 for the player, so guessing lingering goos from the tournament will temporarily boost your score. I haven't gone to the trouble of fixing it yet, because 1) I'm planning an overhaul of the goo game back-end in the next month that will solve this and many other issues – no worries, the front-end that you play will be almost identical – and 2) there's a script that runs automatically a few times each day that repairs the numbers. No worries about anybody getting ahead unfairly, but yeah, the numbers look weird this week. I have manually activated that script just now, so the numbers should be accurate for the moment.