apterous.org

Matthew Tassier Fixtures up. Anyone not already in the tournament who fancies joining in should say so here or by aptomail before the end of Sunday 10th.

Matty Artell Completed my fixture before this comment was even posted - get it together, everyone else (apart from Dave) ;)

Matthew Tassier And maxed it! Nice work.

James Laverty How come Jon is Player 1 when nobody else is?

Jack Worsley My understanding is that whichever member joined the site first is displayed as "player 1" on tourney pages and Jon must be the only player to join before Nude. When it comes to the game, though, the order will be consistent with what the organiser entered into the fixture generator, so it doesn't affect things.

Jim B Jack's correct here, except it goes by member number, rather than joining date. Quite a few of us in the tourney predate Nude, I think.

Jack Worsley Interesting, I thought member numbers were determined by joining dates. If that's not strictly true, them how are they determined?

Jon Stitcher I was the 6th ever user on Apterous so I guess that's why I'm player 1.

Jim B Jack: alpha testers (July-August 2008) are user numbers 1-20 odd, then beta testers (August 2008) are 101-120 odd. Not sure where it goes after that but I think there was another tranche starting 301, then 1,001, 10,001 and some others. Nude is user 99 - although she only "started playing" in December 2008, the concept may well have been around beforehand.

Matthew Tassier An impressive turn out of 46 entrants. And with just 5 players left to play their first round match there have been 20 scores of 200 and also 6 maxed 197 games. By just 3 points Jamie R. is currently in danger of being the weakest link, but should any of the 5 remaining players fail to play their game then they will definitely take that spot.

Tricia Lockhart I've learnt the hard way that if the junior numbers target is 20 and there is a twenty in the selection, you cannot just click on the 20. Rather than keeping that quiet, I'm sharing so others don't get caught as it is a little disconcerting in the middle of play.

Bjorn Aas I did just the 20 for 20 in my game, and looking back at my score I was given 10 points and a max, but it's also noted as "20 x" as if I failed.

Probably worthy of a bug report, and also very unlucky.

Julie McCarthy I doubt if it's a bug as such. Some calculation has to be made, such as 20 x 1 if there's a 1.
ty for mentioning it though, Tricia and Bjorn.
I've been busy, but should play mine soon, probably on Tues or Weds, long before deadline.

Bjorn Aas Is it a genuine rule that a calculation must be made?

Are the full Countdown/Apterous rules available somewhere?

Matty Artell As far as I'm aware, in actual Countdown, 100 can't be given as a target. It was probably an oversight that 20 can be given.

Chris Butler It seems very strange that it accepted Bjorn's 20 but not Tricia's....

Tricia Lockhart I'll check my game, then.

Tricia Lockhart No, just checked, it didn't give me the points.

Chris Butler Sorry I should have made it clearer, I wasn't accusing you of being wrong! I checked both rounds in question myself and can't understand it either. I thought apterous would be consistant one way or the other but it doesn't appear so in this case

Tricia Lockhart I'll be a bit miffed if I am the weakest link because of it, though to be honest I hardly deserved to get through to round 3. I just didn't want others to have the same thing happen. Sorry I misunderstood, Chris.

Dave Noble It would seem unfair to treat them differently. Given that it is marked as incorrect and that there is no operation undertaken to reach the 20 , that both be considered incorrect for scoring, though could see it fair to treat both as correct since getting 20 using 20 does meet the requirement. Either seems fair but just scoring 1 as ok and 1 as bad, def seems wrong to me

Gevin Chapwell I just got a target of 20 and used "20" as my solution. I used the notes box rather than the clicky interface if that makes a difference. I was aware it might go wrong but decided it didn't matter because I could enter a different solution in the clicky interface if it didn't accept it. Looking at the game, it does have an x by my 20 but I still have the points.

It's clearly not a rule on actual Countdown that you have to do anything with the 100 if 100 was the target. It used to be a possible target even if it isn't now. And someone could still declare 100 if 101 was the target and just saying 100 would obviously be accepted (assuming the other player hasn't got it spot on, which they would have).

Tricia Lockhart I entered mine the clicky way

Jon Stitcher I have always found the 20 to be quite a hinderence when playing junior so would normally pick for 5s. Dunno if anyone has the stats on which selection provides the mostimpossible solutions in junior. 5s 4l+10 or 4l+20. Would be interesting.

Bjorn Aas Is it actually suggested above that my 20 is considered incorrect? I know you like your strong opinons, Noble, but that is very weak.

The difference I can see between mine and Tricia's answer is that the bot didn't have a solution in my case. I also assume I entered my solution via notes.

They shouldn't be scored differently, but unless someone can find the rule that states an operation has to be made, I think Tricia's answer should be treated as a 10.

Dave Noble It is just as valid an argument that doing no calculation is correct as is incorrect depending on how it is viewed. Using standard arithmetic operations to reach the target implies that an operation takes place. Whether it is accepted that no operation taking place is valid as a solution or is not valid, it should be applied consistently to all taking part. The key difference between you and Tricia is that it was scored 10 points despite being marked as incorrect

Bjorn Aas If what Gevin states above is correct, to which you offer no counter argument, then no - it's not a valid argument that doing no calculation is incorrect.

It seems glaringly obvious that countdown accepts declaring just the number, as there would be no reason to remove 100 as a possible target if not.

Captain Obvious thanks you for doing his dirty work with regards to the rest. The discussion stems purely from the difference in scoring, hence why I was putting forward the differences in the answers, to get an idea to what causes the inconsistency.

Julie McCarthy Heck, maybe raising a bug ticket to get a definitive solution to this problem would be the best thing after all.

Matt Hamer I would guess that the reason Tricia's declaration of 20 scored zero points, yet Bjorn's declaration of 20 scored the ten points, is because Waldorf declared and made 20 in Tricia's game, but failed to make the target (only declared 18) in Bjorn's game. Clearly, if this is indeed the reason, then it is a bug and needs to be fixed.

Bjorn Aas Seems it isn't so either; http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=1627197&round=26026467#r26026467

Matt Hamer Good counterpoint, thanks Bjorn. So we're no closer to finding out the reason for this seemingly inconsistent behaviour.

Jim B Whichever way this comes down, I think the commonsense view would be that you have to do some sort of calculation to make your solution, surely? And in all the cases above, it's trivially easy to do that, even if it does amount to doing 20 x 1 or whatever.

Matt Hamer I disagree. Any combination of 4 small numbers can be manipulated to give a result of 1, so yes, it's trivial. However, as this is such a rare occurrence, it seems harsh to penalise a user who doesn't know s/he might not score if s/he just types "20".

Gevin Chapwell I think the difference was probably that Bjorn typed it in the box (as I did) and Tricia used the clicky interface. It would be crazy to then deny me and Bjorn the points retrospectively. I played my game knowing already that there was some controversy and that if it didn't accept my 20 in the box it would go to the clicky interface, and I already knew how to make 20 using more than one number.

Sean D Matt suggests that it's a rare occurrence, but 20 will be th etraget once in every 90 rounds on average, so every 4-5 number attacks (with 20 in the selection approx 50% of the time).
The simplest and most sensible solution, I think, is to change the target range to 21-99. I don't think any other format has a minimum target less than or equal to the maximum big number. (This would reflect what Countdown did removing 100 from the possible targets on the show.)
The rules/guidelines for Countdown and Apterous are quite vague on exactly what is required in a numbers round. Indeed the definition of 'calculation' on the Oxford website is no use either. I believe Tricia has fallen victim to a bug, in that (in my opinion) clicking 20 should resolve a target of 20 in the same way typing 20 seems to have. For this specific issue I think Matthew has outlined an elegant and fair solution, but let's just remove the issue by adjusting the target range.