OK then, here we go. Lets start with the item list for this year:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
bauble, candle, candy cane, cracker, crown, dove, gift, gingerbread tree, gloves, holly, jingle bell, mistletoe, pudding, robin, santa hat, scarf, shrub, snowflake, snowman, socks, star, stocking, teddy, woolly hat, xmas tree<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n All items appear at least once, so get strategising now!<\/p>\n\n\n\n On to the next big news \u2013 I was pleased with scoring being reverted to the original method last year in terms of rewarding the harder shot correctly, but it does create the possibility of making people uncompetitive with a fair bit of the competition still to play. I\u2019d love to say that I\u2019ve done a data deep-dive and worked through lots of possibilities to come up with the perfect system, but in reality this idea came to me at work when I was thinking about it this week and I\u2019ve run it past precisely one person who agreed it was worth a go. So behold the new scoring system:<\/p>\n\n\n\n A correct guess on day 1 will yield, as last year, 24 points. A correct guess on day 24, however, will now yield 12\u00bd points \u2013 and this figure isn\u2019t as random as it seems, but the result of decreasing the points available at half the rate they decreased previously. Spelled out more bluntly, day 1 = 24 points, day 2 = 23\u00bd, 3 = 23, 4 = 22\u00bd (decreasing by a half point each time) \u2026 day 22 = 13\u00bd, 23 = 13 and finally 24 = 12\u00bd. I debated adding Christmas Day in for the first time ever to end on a whole number but not every calendar has a day 25 window so it would create problems one day, so we\u2019ll have to deal with it how it is, if indeed this system sticks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To get into the weeds a bit: the available points for a window still decreases every day so the longer shots are still awarded more points, but the number of points available in the later stages is much higher. In last year\u2019s system the maximum you could earn in the final week was 28 but this year it\u2019ll be over three times higher at 99. There are 438 points available in the competition as a whole so 99 in the last week, since I chose to bring it up, equates to 23% of all points being on offer in the final 29% of the competition, (previously 9% in the same 29%) so it\u2019s arguably still a little light but there\u2019s potential for a further tweak if it turns out I like the principle but the exact start value\/end value\/decrease step are in some way wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I haven\u2019t, at time of writing, tweaked any of the parts of the website that deal with the scoring system so I ask for patience when it comes to getting all that right. Also, and I write this here mainly to remind myself to address it, the team\u2019s championship will need a tweak as currently it rounds every player\u2019s contribution up to the next whole number \u2013 this will now logically need to be the next half number. Make sure you code that Mr S. Should be a simple enough tweak!*<\/p>\n\n\n\n Usernames and PINs will be sent out tomorrow or Saturday so keep an eye on your inboxes for those. Good luck!<\/p>\n\n\n\n (* famous last words, obviously)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" OK then, here we go. Lets start with the item list for this year: bauble, candle, candy cane, cracker, crown, dove, gift, gingerbread tree, gloves, holly, jingle bell, mistletoe, pudding, robin, santa hat, scarf, shrub, snowflake, snowman, socks, star, stocking, teddy, woolly hat, xmas tree All items appear at least once, so get strategising now!…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gameplay","content","has-not-featured-image"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acc.scriv.me.uk\/moredepth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acc.scriv.me.uk\/moredepth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acc.scriv.me.uk\/moredepth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acc.scriv.me.uk\/moredepth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acc.scriv.me.uk\/moredepth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/acc.scriv.me.uk\/moredepth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":157,"href":"https:\/\/acc.scriv.me.uk\/moredepth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions\/157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acc.scriv.me.uk\/moredepth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acc.scriv.me.uk\/moredepth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acc.scriv.me.uk\/moredepth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}