January 16 2002 RussCon Report

News

Meta Party Game

Okay, I forgot I'm the meta devil until Whendy reminded me last night. So this is the best I can do on short notice:

Tonight's metagame is Alphabet Soup. You earn 1 point for each letter of the alphabet which appears in the title of a game you play tonight. For example, if your only games of the night are Carcassone and Tichu, you will earn eleven points for {C,A,R,S,O,N,E,T,I,H,U}. The player with the most points wins. Ties will be broken by the number of letters of which you have at least 2 copies, and so forth.

Articles (e.g. "the", "die") DO count. Subtitles (e.g. "Cosmic Encounter: the game that breaks its own rules") and other stuff printed on the box DO NOT. Letters with an accent, umlaut, etc. count as their unaccented English-alphabet counterpart; characters without a clear English counterpart do not count. Digits don't count, and you can't spell out a number unless it's printed that way on the box. If a game has more than one title (e.g. a German and an English title), use the one that's printed on the box of the copy you're playing. Please record the full title of every game in the book (including articles and such).

And, since Russ suggested "something involving Stephenson's Rocket": you get an extra point if you get all of the letters in "Stephenson's Rocket", (regardless of whether you played the game itself). This extra point also applies to your score in every tiebreaking round.

One interesting tidbit was the discussion of whether Quo Vadis contains 1 u and 1 v, or 2 v's; Sea Biscuit ruled the latter since it is spelled Qvo Vadis on the box.

Rank ratings:
 0.5000 Jeffles (4 games played)  
 0.4545 Ben (5)
 0.4444 RussD (3)
 0.4444 Whindy (5)
 0.4286 Carly (2)
 0.3636 RussW (6)
 0.3333 Daniel (5)
 0.2143 BobR (4)
 0.1579 Marty (5)
 0.0000 William (4)
-0.0400 JP (6)
-0.2667 MarkY (4)
-0.4000 JonathanC (3)
-0.5333 JimG (5)
-0.6000 Dan (5)
-0.6429 Clayton (3)
-0.7273 Zach (4)
-0.7500 Whendy (2)

New Win ratings:
 0.6667 Jeffles (4)
 0.5556 RussD (3)
 0.4286 Carly (2)
 0.3889 Daniel (5)
 0.3333 Whindy (5)
 0.0714 BobR (4)
 0.0526 Marty (5)
 0.0000 MarkY (4)
-0.0800 JP (6)
-0.0909 Ben (5)
-0.1364 RussW (6)
-0.2000 William (4)
-0.2143 Clayton (3)
-0.2500 Whendy (2)
-0.2667 JimG (5)
-0.4000 JonathanC (3)
-0.4545 Zach (4)
-0.5000 Dan (5)