2005-03-16 RussCon Report

News

bonvolu trafi la pilkon malforte 14 of us played 14 games!

Putt-Putt Golf!: 10 of us played Putt Putt last Saturday afternoon as planned. The results:

54 Whendy
52 RussW
51 Sarah
50 Ben
49 Clayton MarkH
48 William
46 Jerrie
45 Jack (45 is the "amateur par".)
36 JeffS (He scored 4 holes-in-one! 36 is the "pro par".)

So Jeff was the Meta Devil and designed this week's Meta Game! He also earned the right to say what happens with the remaining money ($6) - and the result is that I shall use it to supply RussCon with some food which has not appeared at RussCon before. Hmm... that covers a lot of possibilities!

Spanish: 2pm Sunday at Texspresso on Anderson Lane (by Alamo Drafthouse Village) is the weekly basic informal Spanish RussCon study group... so far it consists of me studying Spanish by myself at Texspresso, except one time Whendy came with a Spanish instructional CD we played around with. :)

Game Results

Boggle	4	Tim 3 Ben 1 RussW -1 Clayton -3
WebOfPower	3	Jeffles 2 KevinU 0 MarkH -2
Cloud9	3	JP 2 Ben 0 MarkH -2
Blokus	4	Tim 2 Jeffles 2 RussW -1 Clayton -3
Tichu	2	( Shari JP ) 1 ( MarkH Ben ) -1
Tayu	2	KevinU 1 Jeffles -1
Cartagena	6	RussW 5 Jeffles 3 ToddG 0 Clayton 0 Tim -3 William -5
RicochetRobot	4	ToddG 3 Tim 1 RussW -2 Ben -2
Tayu	2	RussW 1 JeffS -1
Frank'sZoo	5	Clayton 4 Chad 2 Jeffles 0 KevinU -2 Ben -4
WebOfPower	3	Marty 2 Jeffles 0 KevinU -2
Tayu	2	Chad 1 Jeffles -1
SaintPetersburg	3	KevinU 2 Marty 0 William -2
Bluff	5	RussW 4 Chad 2 KevinU -1 Jeffles -1 Clayton -4

The classic Boggle seems to be a hot new RussCon game. And Tim seems to be an unstoppable Boggle juggernaut.

Cartagena officially supports 5, but we added a sixth player and it seemed to go ok.

Lots of Tayu lately, which is pleasing. It seems Jeffles can only win it if he's playing against one of his relatives!

Ratings

Rank Ratings:       
 2.5903 RussW
 2.0794 Chad
 1.7918 JP
 1.5686 Tim
 1.3863 ToddG
 1.0986 Marty
 1.0341 Jeffles
 0.6931 Shari
-0.2877 KevinU
-0.6931 JeffS
-2.5903 Ben
-2.7726 Clayton
-2.8896 William
-2.8896 MarkH

Win Ratings:
 2.8258 RussW won 3 of 6
 1.7918 JP won 2 of 2
 1.6094 Tim won 2 of 4
 1.2040 ToddG won 1 of 2
 0.6931 Marty won 1 of 2
 0.6931 Shari won 1 of 1
 0.5346 KevinU won 2 of 6
 0.2469 Chad won 1 of 3
 0.2231 Clayton won 1 of 5
-0.5877 William won 0 of 2
-0.6287 Jeffles won 2 of 8
-0.6931 JeffS won 0 of 1
-1.5042 MarkH won 0 of 3
-1.8971 Ben won 0 of 5

I am the Devil! JP and Chad are Co-Vice-Devils!

A wacky thin tall ratings graph this week, indeed.

If you are confused how the ratings work, you could peruse the FAQ.

I used GraphViz to generate the graph image.

Meta Game

JeffS was the Meta Devil and did not mail out the following surprise Meta Game, so people only knew what it was when they came to RussCon:

The meta-game for this week is called "Surprise!"

Object: To gather the most "surprise points" by the end of the evening.

Play: At any time during the evening, for any reason whatever, people may award others a single "surprise point" for doing something out of the ordinary. It may be for a particularly good/bad/unusual play, or some behavior considered uncharacteristic for the individual, or unusual for RussCon. Points will be tallied on a score card, along with the reasons for the awards.

At the end of the night, bonus points will be awarded to the recorded events (judged by the meta-devil or his designate):

3 surprise-points for the most interesting surprise related to game play
3 surprise-points for the most interesting surprise not related to game play
5 surprise-points for the nicest surprise of the evening

As meta-devil, I reserve the right to add surprise changes to the above.

We had a few surprises in the evening, though none of them were what you could really call amazing spectacular surprises. Indeed, it was a bit of a stretch calling some of them surprises. Here they are, along with the bonus point awards by Jeff:

JeffS actually showed up at RussCon
Tim got a point in Boggle because "loth" is actually a real word (a variant spelling of "loath")
Shari's cell phone ringing startled Jeffles several times
Jeffles used only 1 of 3 actions as the first player in Cartagena and, inexplicably, this surprised Tim
+3: Shari was heard to utter the word "Tofu" (the name of a dog) in a phone conversation
+3: Todd got 9 chips, more than the rest of us combined, in a glorious Ricochet Robot victory
Clayton won Frank's Zoo in a last-minute upset
+5: Jeffles asked Chad to lunch for the first time in a year

So Jeffles ended up with the most meta points (7) and is the Meta Devil and will design next week's Meta Game!

Links

A Guide To SF Chronophysics

Family Makes Foul Discovery Inside Frozen Turkey - OMG, animals that are eaten for food actually have heads!!!

A New Bunny - Flash cartoon with Buzzed Bunny who is rather crude

New Feather for Old Hats is an interesting article about white supremacist militia con artists pretending to be Indians to scam people and take advantage of sovereignty laws

The Wheels on the Bus Flash cartoon video by Mad Donna

Redmond A. Simonsen RIP by Greg Costikyan