Summer 2020

Scott Hardie | August 17, 2020
From time to time, a celebrity goo has been made with the wrong image by mistake, an image showing a different person. It's unfortunate but inevitable.

It took me way too long to codify in the advanced rules what should happen to guesses for the person actually shown in the image. In the past, sometimes I would mark them right, sometimes I would mark them wrong, and sometimes I would delete them and let the player guess again. These days, the rules force me to delete these guesses and let the player guess again.

But there's more room to rectify the mistake properly. I'm officially changing the rules to go even further with this: When it's discovered that a current goo has the wrong person in the source image, I will replace the images entirely, and extend the deadline to guess by another week. I will not change the date of the end of the season; that date remains fixed. And I won't bother if the mistake is discovered after the goo expires, because by then the answer has already been revealed. (I don't recall with certainty, but when this has happened in the past, I think sometimes I would replace the images and usually not replace them; it's long past time to have a standard procedure for this.)

Steve, I'm sorry to put you on the spot (I've certainly made this same mistake plenty of times myself over the years), but: This came about because of Steve's Movies goo that was published on August 11. It used an image of a different famous person, and most players have been guessing that other person all week. Erik caught the mistake a couple of days ago and pointed it out to me, at which point I began deleting the incorrect guesses for the other person and letting players guess again. Chris pointed out to me today that solving the goo depends in part upon having the gooed image as a reference, so I decided to swap the images. And as long as it doesn't extend the season, there's no real reason not to let the players have more time to re-guess once their first guess has been deleted; we no longer have season-ending tournaments that depend on a rigid schedule, so i decided to change that too.

For the game's 20th anniversary, I ran a theme of goos that changed the course of the game. At the time, I wondered what goo would come along next that would change the way that game is run or played. Today, I guess we have the answer. Thank you to Steve, Erik, Chris, and the many people who guessed the other celebrity, for prompting me to make this overdue correction.

Steve West | August 17, 2020
Without revealing the other guy's name, let me just say that when creating this goo I was struck by how similar their appearances were when in costume. It was a fluke error that led me to the other guy's picture. Sincere apologies.

Scott Hardie | August 21, 2020
Normally we don't have fictional characters as goos any more, but I'm about to make a single exception to that policy because of a combination of factors, not the least of which is that the goo makes me happy. :-)

Denise Sawicki | August 22, 2020
Oh sorry, I was not trying to bend the rules. I thought I recalled something about fictional characters being disallowed but didn't see anything about it on the goo submission page. I should have looked more closely!

Scott Hardie | August 22, 2020
It's all good. I'm just mentioning this in case players wonder about that aspect of the rules. I would expect to get asked several times about it if I didn't say something. :-)

Scott Hardie | August 26, 2020
I was going to comment on this today after looking it up last night, but it seems that the midnight release process beat me to it: Fyi, when a player-created goo's deadline is extended, as happened with Steve's last goo, it will not delay the next goo created by that player. The gap between them is based on publication date not expiration date.

Scott Hardie | August 29, 2020
Steve, congrats on another victory! You've now won three of the last four seasons, so you're on quite a tear lately. This was a close season with a lot of people within reach of the top score, so it wasn't an easy win. Way to go!

LaVonne Lemler | August 29, 2020
Congrats, Steve, on your 9th victory! Winning three of the last four seasons is most impressive! You're an awesome player on a roll --- keep it up! :-)

Steve West | August 29, 2020
Thanks. It's funny that I felt badly enough about the wrong picture screw-up that I penalized myself and skipped three goos in a row. I didn't expect to win and was okay with that but somehow this was the result! I'll take it!!!

Russ Wilhelm | August 29, 2020
Way to go Steve!!!

Erik Bates | August 29, 2020
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | August 30, 2020
For whatever it's worth, the goo of Howard Scott Warshaw was not inspired by his prominent appearance in the first episode of High Score, the new hit series on Netflix. The timing was coincidental.

Samir Mehta | September 2, 2020
[hidden by request]

Steve West | September 2, 2020
It seemed ironic that no matter how much research is done on a particular subject, some people will find a way to challenge any conclusions endlessly.

Scott Hardie | September 4, 2020
Russ, congrats on playing another perfect season! It was even harder this summer than most seasons. :-)