Matt J's "Word Racing" timewaster/game for the stay-at-home COVID-19 days of 2020

[matt j]

Good stuff, I'll pick and choose from that and other suggestions for next week.

So backing up a bit, after the time trial results, where the often-to-be-used Zebra scored a measly 12, I think the middle-of-pack time trial-ists found themselves at a slight disadvantage as to where to point.

I think a few people had zoned in a few values immediately, though Balderdasha had jumped the wrong way for the scratch race, scoring very low. Ad hoc jumped to an overall lead by dominating the scratch race with what would prove to be the theme for the week, lots of 'p-u-t-s'.

letter	Week 1 values
a	1
b	4
c	5
d	9
e	4
f	6
g	3
h	1
i	7
j	8
k	8
l	2
m	6
n	5
o	8
p	7
q	2
r	1
s	9
t	8
u	8
v	6
w	2
x	10
y	8
z	2

Into the tempo race:

After the first five letters, an immediate elimination for diable rouge whose 'threw' had the double 1's of (h-r) and only scored 16, way-under-half of the early leader ad hoc (scoring 41 right off the bat with stops). The early lead proved important as you will see in due time.

lap 6: three way tie on a 9-point letter, tiebreaker went to sits who was ahead over the others who tied.
lap 7: high letter score was only 8, went to ad hoc who lead overall
lap 8: high letter score of 9, went to slackster (Since diable rouge was already elminated)
lap 9: high letter score of 9, went to slackster again (double d's)
lap 10: multi-way tie on a letter score of 9, went to sits for overall
lap 11: another mult-way tie on 9, this time tie-break back to slackster
lap 12, 13,14: all went to ad hoc, (only 9-point letter in lap 12, tie-breaker in 13 and 14)

Final lap with a five-way tie on letter score, tie breaker going to Sporting (for overall score of 104) for the 3 points, and wouter D, slackster, and andrew7160 (all on 100 overall) splitting the 2nd and 3rd place last lap points (1.5 each )

all told that meant, places in the tempo race went:
1st: 3 lap points + 1.5 in the last lap - Slackster (vital last dash to get that 1.5)
2nd: 4 lap points - ad hoc
3rd: 3 points in the last lap - Sporting
4th:2 lap points - sits
5th: 1.5 in the last lap - Wouter D and Andrew7160

that concentration meant everyone else had to take the placement based on overall score, with a hard luck result for Vicarious Thrillseeker (overall score of 103 - in a normal race good enough for 3rd, but no single scores above 8 hurt bad)

Racer Name	placing
slackster	1
ad hoc	2
Sporting	3
sits	4
andrew7160	5
wouter d	5
Vicarious Thrillseeker	7
Balderdasha	8
lambers	9
Various Artist	10
southport zeb	11
Sean of the Sead	12
San Bernardhinault	13
nmrfox	14
diable rouge	15

[lambers]

I particularly like the ideas of banning double letters, alliteration, lowest score wins and super-high scoring words getting penalised (maybe not all in the same round!). Themes are also good, Balderdasha has picked out a few good ones.

Some ideas of mine:

• The converse of the most recent round – the most average score wins.
• Changing word patterns from the standard 5-5-5 formation, to perhaps a more attacking 4-5-6, or a midfield dream of 3-9-3 (with Pep still playing Mascherano at the back).
• Not to be combined with themed rounds, but if you can make a week's worth of entries into one coherent story then you get a bonus of about 10 points (or the number of opponents in the week?) to your weekly score from positioning. People would then have to calculate/gamble whether the trade off of using high (or low/average) scoring letters is enough to not continue a tale.

[matt j]

Leading us into the fantastically fun elimination race:

In this race, it was all about avoiding the low scoring letters (and if you did hit a low scoring letter, be lucky and hope somebody else did the same).

diable rouge hit the misfortune of immediate elimination again, getting the double 1's from 'terry' and a low score of 22.

Sean of the Shed was next to go ('h' in hippo)

nmrfox next ('r' in brown)

a tie, both VA and SB posted 1 point letters ('r' and 'a' respectively)

meaning andrew7160 was eliminated for the two-point 'l', next

SB's luck ran out with a four-point letter, then a string of ties until Southport Zeb was gone with the same, and lambers in the next.

ad hoc's dominance finally came to a close, with a 5-point letter spelling his doom ('n' in nutty)

sporting gone next with a 4-point, slackster with a 2-point ('z'), and sits with a 1 for 'r'.

Vicarious Thrillseeker fell afoul the same issue as ad hoc ('n' for nutty)

And left with just a trio of racers, Balderdasha (who hadn't scored lower 7 since letter 6) goes out on a 7-point letter.

Various Artist, close to elimination way back at letter 8, finally concedes.

leaving Wouter D as winner, having reeled off nothing lower than a 7 since letter 6.

[matt j]

Taking us to the blind high-low race:

The question was fundamentally, would more people go high (having some good examples from the scratch and some from the elimination) or would they try to go low. Almost invariably, everyone went low.

Racer Name	1st	2nd	3rd	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	60.13333333	dif from average
Vicarious Thrillseeker	beanz	meanz	heinz	4	4	1	5	2	6	4	1	5	2	1	4	7	5	2	53	7.133333333
Wouter D	levee	break	beats	2	4	6	4	4	4	1	4	1	8	4	4	1	8	9	64	3.866666667
nmrfox	trims	beard	shape	8	1	7	6	9	4	4	1	1	9	9	1	1	7	4	72	11.86666667
Southport Zeb	avoid	buzzy	mazes	1	6	8	7	9	4	8	2	2	8	6	1	2	4	9	77	16.86666667
lambers	helen	riles	hazel	1	4	2	4	5	1	7	2	4	9	1	1	2	4	2	49	11.13333333
Various Artist	elder	wheel	freer	4	2	9	4	1	2	1	4	4	2	6	1	4	4	1	49	11.13333333
sporting	eerie	arena	haven	4	4	1	7	4	1	1	4	5	1	1	1	6	4	5	49	11.13333333
Balderdasha	blaze	hazel	zebra	4	2	1	2	4	1	1	2	4	2	2	4	4	1	1	35	25.13333333
sits	kneel	girly	reeve	8	5	4	4	2	3	7	1	2	8	1	4	4	6	4	63	2.866666667
Sean of the Shed	Round	pound	found	1	8	8	5	9	7	8	8	5	9	6	8	8	5	9	104	43.86666667
diable rouge	thine	black	rhino	8	1	7	5	4	4	2	1	5	8	1	1	7	5	8	67	6.866666667
andrew7160	quick	zebra	races	2	8	7	5	8	2	4	4	1	1	1	1	5	4	9	62	1.866666667
slackster	needy	three	rebel	5	4	4	9	8	8	1	1	4	4	1	4	4	4	2	63	2.866666667
San Bernardhinault	barry	brews	beers	4	1	1	1	8	4	1	4	2	9	4	4	4	1	9	57	3.133333333
ad hoc	zebra	brawl	cable	2	4	4	1	1	4	1	1	2	2	5	1	4	2	4	38	22.13333333

Yes that's a incredibly low 35 total points from Balderdasha. Ad hoc not far above that with 38.

But that middling and under 75 crowd left Sean of the Shed way out in the distance from average. It wasn't even close.

Sean of the Sead	104	43.86666667	1
Balderdasha	35	25.13333333	2
ad hoc	38	22.13333333	3
Southport Zeb	77	16.86666667	4
nmrfox	72	11.86666667	5
lambers	49	11.13333333	6
Various Artist	49	11.13333333	6
sporting	49	11.13333333	6
Vicarious Thrillseeker	53	7.133333333	9
diable rouge	67	6.866666667	10
Wouter D	64	3.866666667	11
San Bernardhinault	57	3.133333333	12
sits	63	2.866666667	13
slackster	63	2.866666667	13
andrew7160	62	1.866666667	15

[matt j]

Racer Name	(time trial points)	Place Race #2	Place Race #3	Place Race #4	Place Race #5
ad hoc	22	1	2	8	3
Sporting	33	2	3	7	6
Various Artist	39	3	10	2	6
Vicarious Thrillseeker	23	5	7	4	9
wouter d	26	8	5	1	11
slackster	33	6	1	6	13
Balderdasha	29	15	8	3	2
Southport Zeb	12	7	11	10	4
lambers	29	9	9	9	6
sits	19	13	4	5	13
andrew7160	37	4	5	12	15
sean of the shed	27	14	12	14	1
nmrfox	38	11	14	13	5
San Bernardhinault	36	12	13	11	12
diable rouge	20	10	15	15	10

[matt j]

And that's the end of Season 2 - Week 1!

Thanks for playing, don't forgot to have the racers take their trash with them as the leave, we don't have the crew for clean-up over the weekend.

We'll return to the indoor circuit next week.

[Balderdasha]

Is there an overall list of the week's winners? Or is that information in there and I haven't read it somehow?

[matt j]

Is there an overall list of the week's winners? Or is that information in there and I haven't read it somehow?

the last chart is actually sorted by average placing for the week.

[Various Artist]

Amazing stuff matt, thanks so much for all that!

I'm actually a little gutted about the tempo race, now I've discovered what happened there – to score highly enough to rank 3rd in a regular sprint yet only come 10th is a bit of a kick in the teeth when the rest of my week held up really pretty well! A few places higher in that ranking and I might well have topped the overall standings for the week, looking at that last table. Never mind, a podium place is certainly not to be sniffed at against such great opposition.

[matt j]

Amazing stuff matt, thanks so much for all that!

I'm actually a little gutted about the tempo race, now I've discovered what happened there – to score highly enough to rank 3rd in a regular sprint yet only come 10th is a bit of a kick in the teeth when the rest of my week held up really pretty well! A few places higher in that ranking and I might well have topped the overall standings for the week, looking at that last table. Never mind, a podium place is certainly not to be sniffed at against such great opposition.

Actually that was a mistake in my report. Although you did score high in the tempo (91), it was Vicarious who would normally have finished 3rd.

[Sits]

Wow, this is amazing Matt.

[matt j]

Season 2 Week 2:
Here is my plot for this week... All values have been reset, so this is all fresh.

Our indoor season continues, thankfully the rent is still cheap!

Major changes for this week. There is no three-word requirement. You can use any number of words and any length of words.

You can use up to 25 letters total. (You don't 'have' to use all 25, but you can. You must still have at least 15 letters.)

Sentence construction will be much more scrutinized. You must have a noun and verb, and if I can't tell what they are, you are at risk of a penalty and point deduction. (E.g. more explanation is better than no explanation.)

There will be a very limited number of clues this week.

Race #6:
The Week 2 scratch race. I will give you a test racer score from a sentence of my choosing.

Race#7:
The cut-off race. I will provide a sentence. You will need to score under that sentence or be disqualified. If not disqualified, high score for the sentence wins.

Race#8:
The blind bet race. I will grab sentences from previously submitted weeks and provide potential bets/predictions you can make. You will earn points based on your bets (by private message).

Race #9:
Scratch race but words from other languages are allowed (English alphabet though). We should be able to find the words in the other languages somewhere online.. You must also try to rhyme an entry from Race #6. (Any entry. Rhyming couplet style.) Rhyming entries will receive a bonus.

Race#10 (possibly extended into week 3):
The big kahuna. The high-low head-to-head. More will be explained later.

---

All races (except for race #6) subject to change based upon public outcry.

[matt j]

Race #6:

Test Racer - This is one extended sentence. Scores 117.

There are three letters this week that will only score 1. There are three letters this week that will score 10.

Go. Please keep in mind the changes to this week's rules.

[lambers]

Parrots can eat pizza quickly.

If they're hungry enough, obviously. And if it doesn't have pineapple on it.

[Sporting]

Spicy onions discolour in oil.

[nmrfox]

My dogs love running in a field

[Southport Zeb]

Why do birds like tulips?

[Wouter D]

All the world is birthday cake

[Sporting]

All the world is birthday cake

(It's All Too Much.)

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

Is there any benefit in using fewer than 25 letters? I don't see why one would not use all 25 letters allowed.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

That's not my entry above, by the way - it contains more than 25 letters.

[Balderdasha]

Still digging up traffic cone.

(Photo for further explanation)

[Sporting]

Is there any benefit in using fewer than 25 letters? I don't see why one would not use all 25 letters allowed.

Was thinking the same.

[Balderdasha]

Classification question matt j

Is "Still digging up traffic cone" a good enough sentence? Or would it need to be the more conservative "We're digging up a traffic cone."?

[matt j]

Is there any benefit in using fewer than 25 letters? I don't see why one would not use all 25 letters allowed.

probably not in a scratch race. Unless you were extremely confident you'd put enough score up to declare and finish early.