apterous.org

Notes from the organizer:
Four! I’m a jolly* good* fellow.

As you spring from your bed, brimming with energy and verve, your heart is light and hopeful. You skip gaily through your domicile, warmly greeting family, friends, pets and that nice man in Beijing who listens to everything you say within fifty metres of an electrical appliance. In the kitchen, you pour yourself a bowl of milk and a glass of cornflakes, sit down and contemplate the joys that today will hold. As you do, however, your eyes are drawn to an innocuous sheet of paper, pinned to the wall and covered in numbered boxes, almost all of which are crossed out.

Your heart sinks. Your pulse races. You think that you should perhaps have put some pants on.

IT’S CHRIS-MAS! AGAIN! WHAT FUN!


In this tourney, I'll give you 12 games against bots to play over the festive season (roughly the last two weeks of December, beginning on the 15th and ending on the 1st of January). Each game will be judged according to criteria that I'll provide fully on the page for that round and tournament points awarded accordingly (7 for first, 5 for second, 4 for third, 3 for fourth, 2 for fifth and 1 for everyone else). There will also be an extra Bonus Point available in each round for any player who achieves a secondary objective, and these will be added to your total tournament score. The winner will be the person who accrues the most points across all the rounds.

The games (some returning favourites, some vaguely innovative) will be as follows:

1) Hypertouch LA: only words beginning with the same letter score
2) Unlimited Jnr NA: be x-away (for certain values of x)
3) Lock Jnr CA: guess the superfluous letter
4) Touchdown Jnr LA: best 20-word poem wins
5) Aegilops NA: Omelette rules
6) Omelette LA: Hs score
7) Instant CA: anti-alphabetical declarations
8) Touchdown LA: a scavenger hunt
9) Standard 15: beat Nude as unconvincingly as you can
10) Finnish LA: most English game wins
11) Unlimited LA: only palindromes score
12) Hypergoat LA: best Chris-mas list wins

Further details (including tie-break criteria) will be given on the individual round pages, which will be added over the next couple of days. There is also a (currently very empty) spreadsheet, which you can view here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sEia7l7u7cJ6jBWZQWistIjD9j7KAwGvWK2OAcjpPno/edit?usp=sharing

See also:
https://www.apterous.org/to_meta.php?meta=5488 (2024)
https://www.apterous.org/to_meta.php?meta=5450 (2023)
https://www.apterous.org/to_meta.php?meta=5406 (2022)

There won't be any penalty for unplayed games, but please try to play each individual game in one sitting to avoid spurious accusations of skulduggery.

If this sort of tomfoolery sounds appealing, feel free to sign up below. Sign-ups will be left open throughout the tourney, so you can jump in at any time before New Year's Eve. The winner will be announced as soon as I've done the admin.

Ho-ho-ho.


* Citation needed

Runs from: 8 – 31 December 2025. Format: 15 Rounder. Matches: One-off. Approved.

Fixtures: 0. Completed: 0.