Firstly, lets start with the item list. I was pleased to find that I had an unused calendar in my stash so no panic buying from a random country is required this month! Your 2026 items are:
advent calendar, bauble, bell, brussel sprout, candle, candy cane, carol singers, christmas cake, christmas tree, cracker, gingerbread man, mince pie, mistletoe, mulled wine, nutcracker, poinsettia, reindeer, robin, snowflake, snowglobe, snowman, stocking, tinsel, yule log
I have yet to update the main page with these so the list for last year is currently present. I also need to do some things like update the Hall of Fame and archive last year’s final results as part of this process – it will all follow.
I was pleased with the scoring system for last year and think I willlargely leave it in place, but with one small tweak to remove the half points on alternate days – or to spell it out, we’ll be going 24 – 23 – 23 – 22 – 22 – 21 – 21 – … – 14 – 14 – 13 – 13 – 12. Whilst I am a little unhappy that a guess on day 2 is the same value as day 3 despite a slightly bigger field to choose from, it’s close enough and much cleaner. I debated keeping the half points in the background but always rounding up where the points are displayed, but that would inevitably lead to players thinking they had points go missing where, say a 12.5 (shown as 13 at the time) and a 6.5 (shown as 7) add up to 19 and not 20.
Many many days left to get all this working. More news soon, mainly about AI and bots and the INSANE amount of registration attempts I’ve been getting through the year. Bye for now!