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

[Kevin S]

Ah shit, been a bit busy, thanks for the reminder. How about:

Apply rouge lippy

[Various Artist]

Christ, I wasn't expecting another race in under 24 hours.

Skedaddling to the blocks now, hang on...

[Various Artist]

Was pleasantly surprised to have got a solid 30 in my first outing to roar straight to the foot of the leaderboard, and was trying to think how to describe pithily how it's possible for newcomers to this sport to feel both fortunate and baffled:

Lucky tyros fazed

[Sits]

We’re a DNS Matt, haven’t had time to think.

Well, in reality our treadmill donkey refuses to get off his straw bed.

[Hot Orange]

Sits has played start think straw there, I reckon.

[Sits]

Ha ha thanks HO. No I’m really not awake enough yet but will be there at the launch pad and chequered flag to enjoy the jousting.

[matt j]

Report of Race #5:

The racers, all nervous and eyeing each other suspiciously and thinking 'Did I hide the extra jet fuel injector well enough?' and 'Can uppers be tracked in blood tests?' and 'What's a five-letter word for extended loony-ness caused by overlong periods of time isolated indoors?', waited at the starting barricade to kick their springs into gear and their biceps into flexion.

After the traditional sacrificial burning of the effigy of George Will, the racers were off!

In the opening leg, most racers seemed to be under control, patient, wary of getting stopped by the doping officials heavily in attendance, some could say even 'more' than the official attendance. Still, two racers found themselves pulled over, brought to a complete stop, keys pulled from the ignition. Elgaupo04, who had been on record setting pace, a blistering start that couldn't go unnoticed was first, flagged down by orange and yellow intermediaries. Ursus Arctos, barely behind also found himself a victim of much unwanted temperature testing and LIDAR mechanical equipment scanning.

As it was, the interference certainly helped the other riders make up ground with the great horned diable rouge taking the best advantage to finish leg one as the initial leader.

Trailing from the get go, new racers Balderdasha, Patrick Thistle, and thought-to-be-dead San Bernardhinault. How nice of SB to introduce himself to the newbies!

Onto the second leg, a famous stretch of oval track that looked identical to the first leg, 5 more laps of bore... borderline ecstatic racing!

Hot Orange kept a good tempo, click-clacking on their rickshaw, not letting the leaders get out of sight, with Southport Zeb, and Shed of the Sean of the Shed carrying a decent burst thanks to roaring diesel.

The second leg those interfering officials, despite being unwanted and ungodly men, certainly doomed to the seven hells, targeted O.G. lambers for a stop, saying and I quote: "Zumba? What is this millennial nonsense?"

Giving up the literally goat in leg two was everyone's 4th or 5th favorite racer on a Friday in March, slackster, turning a half-decent start into a stroll in a park on Sunday in the 1880s with your best girl by your side.

Third-leg! the final leg! The Isle of Man leg, as everyone in the "Word Racing" elite call it!

Balderdasha couldn't escape the officials notice. "Pizza? What's that? some foreigner word or something?"

Last weeks winner, the ad hoc team, despite a solidly mediocre pace, could do nothing to match the outright speed and lets just say 'horniness' of the diable rouge team. A narrow victory, just edging out an impressive soaring last minute sprint, jump, lean, scream, and tantrum of Hot Orange.

Third place was much more distant, but Shed of the Sean of the Shed did enough to get onto the podium.

At the finish line, the other racers showed their disappointment, but none more so than lambers, their enforced delay certainly costing him a top three finish.

Down the pack we go. There's Wouter D. There's the ad hoc team. There's Zeb, and Kevin S. And further down, oh dear, still resting on their laurels, the team of Vicarious Thrillseeker, handing out samples of their latest CD, coming in last.

(And where was stalwart sits, around the house? Nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they'd heard of a bog roll sale up the street.)

[matt j]

Team/User	Place Race #5	Points Race #5
diable rouge	1	40
Hot Orange	2	38
sean of the shed	3	36
lambers	4	34
Wouter D	5	32
andrew7610	6	30
ad hoc	7	28
Southport Zeb	8	26
Kevin S	9	24
nmrfox	10	22
elgaupo04	11	20
San Bernardhinault	12	18
various artist	13	16
Balderdasha	14	14
slackster	15	12
Patrick Thistle	16	10
ursus arctos	17	8
Sporting	18	6
delicatemoth	19	4
Vicarious Thrillseeker	20	2

[matt j]

Team/User	Points Race#1	Points Race #2	Points Race #3	Points Race #4	Points Race #5	Season Points
ad hoc	6	18	36	38	28	126
sean of the shed	4	22	28	32	36	122
Wouter D	16	24	26	22	32	120
lambers	12	36	2	34	34	118
Kevin S	2	26	34	24	24	110
andrew7610	18	32	20	4	30	104
hot orange		16	16	26	38	96
diable rouge		8	4	36	40	88
delicatemoth	14	28	14	28	4	88
San Bernardhinault	8	30	24	2	18	82
ursus arctos	20	2	32	8	8	70
Southport Zeb		20	6	16	26	68
slackster	10	14	18	14	12	68
Sporting		12	30	20	6	68
elguapo04		10	12	18	20	60
nmrfox		6	22	6	22	56
sits		34	8	12		54
Vicarious Thrillseeker	22	4	10	10	2	48
Various Artist				30	16	46
Balderdasha					14	14
Patrick Thistle					10	10

[Diable Rouge]

Now that this season is over, will you explain the code later?

[lambers]

Awesome work matt, and congratulations to ad hoc.

Who would have thought that zumba could be someone's downfall?

[matt j]

Okay:

Word Racing is on hiatus until Monday, by which time the random numbers assigned to letters will be re-randomized, and I will have had time to think up another race variation. The season continues! Everyone has time to redeem themselves.

Notes on the season thus far:
High score of the 5 initial races was ad hoc's ridiculous "built until blitz" in Race 4 which scored a whopping 132, and I though the puzzle side of things was quite finished by that point.

He also avoided the dreaded 'e' penalties of that race.

"blitz' was by far the highest scoring individual word with a massive 46 out of 50. other high-scoring words: tulip, bleat, unlit, built, buzzy, until, unzip, llull, mimes, limbs, zippy.

What else is coming:
I have no idea, but betting/gambling is definitely on the table: A way for racers to win season points 'the other way'. Also certainly some further grammatical race restrictions. Adjective-noun-verb, or something like that.

Also lots more double/triple letter/word bonuses. Maybe even a 15-letter word challenge? It's all to be decided.

[matt j]

Week 1 (excluding race specific rules):

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

[delicatemoth]

Fuck sake, that's ruined my 'Miss Consistency' approach. That dismal 4 leaves Wouter D and slackster as the only entrants to score double figures in all five races.

[Sean of the Shed]

Congratulations ad hoc, personally I am chuffed with second place.
Matt, this is inspired. Great stuff.

[San Bernardhinault]

After the traditional sacrificial burning of the effigy of George Will, the racers were off!

Hurrah. All sports should change to this instead of National Anthems and handshakes and stupid Champions League wibbly flags and militaristic posturing. It should happen during the coin toss in cricket, during the ceremonial opening pitch in baseball.

[Sits]

Love your work Matt, and well done ad hoc.

[lambers]

I think I figured out a lot of the high end numbers after round 4 – I noted down what I thought the values were, and all of those that I thought were 8 and over were at least 7s, but I didn't get them in the right order, nor was my accuracy at the lower numbers any good. And just when I was thinking I could come up with some kind of super score, matt threw me for a loop with his race 5 stipulations. As Sean said, inspired.

[nmrfox]

Haven't a clue what is going on, but some of the replies have been genuinely brilliant and funny and thanks so much to Matt for everything he has done on this amazing thread. Genuinely in awe of his work!

[delicatemoth]

Hold on, was the code the same for all 5 races? I didn't understand any of the clues apart from the Perec one.

[ursus arctos]

Yeah, it took me four rounds to realise that

[Sits]

I think some of us were definitely operating at varying levels of understanding.

[Various Artist]

I think that's a massive understatement Sits. I'm proud to have come in late yet picked up an instant 5th place, followed by a not-too-shabby 13th, especially after I came up with tonight's entry on the spot in a minute flat to make sure I got a place on the starting grid. Felt I was starting to get the hang of it and was just beginning to ponder what to enter for the next race, only to find that the season is over already (I clearly didn't read the start of the thread well enough) and my putative submission for Race 6 would've been a 110-pointer under this week's system but now we've got to start again from scratch and with some new rules likely as well.

Huge congratulations to ad hoc anyway for coming out on top of the slightly confused heap, and to matt for this truly inspired madness that I think we all needed.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

I think some of us were definitely operating at varying levels of understanding.

....is this messageboard mantra.

Thanks matt j - this is absolute mad shit. I'm a little bit proud of my downward trajectory over time.

[matt j]

Thanks for the thanks, I'm just glad people are enjoying this lunacy.

As I said, the season continues, but ad hoc can declare himself Apertura champion and know he is the first ever winner of a Word Racing imaginary trophy.