apterous.org

Notes from the organizer: It's that time of year again. Again.

The goose is getting fat, which makes it difficult to know which size trousers to buy for it. You've tried putting a penny in the old man's hat, but he only accepts contactless payments now. Three ships just went sailing by, which is slightly alarming because you live in a basement in Milton Keynes. The halls are well and truly decked, the cavalry is well and truly stopped, and the door is well and truly shut to keep those figgy-pudding-demanding loons at bay.

What better time could there be to do some silly things on Apterous?

In this tourney, I'll give you 12 games against bots to play over the festive season (the last two weeks of December, ending on the 31st). Each game will be judged according to criteria that I'll provide fully on the page for that round, tournament points awarded (7 for first, 5 for second, 4 for third, 3 for fourth, 2 for fifth and 1 for everyone else), and the winner will be the person who accrues the most of those across all the rounds.

The games will be as follows:

1) Hypertouch LA: only words beginning with the same letter score
2) Junior CA: solve conundrums in alphabetical order
3) Goat CA: guess the Goat letter
4) Touchdown Jnr LA: best 20-word poem wins
5) Nasty NA: pretend it's Duckdown
6) Omelette LA: Zs score
7) Touchdown LA: use the fewest letters
8) Standard 15: beat Apterous Nude by scoring in the fewest rounds
9) Junior NA: only + and * permitted
10) German LA: most English game wins
11) Unlimited LA: only palindromes score
12) Beanstalk LA: don't repeat letters in halves of the beanstalk

Further details (including tie-break criteria) will be given on the individual round pages. Last year's Bonus Points will be back too, along with the now almost-compulsory spreadsheet. See https://www.apterous.org/to_meta.php?meta=5406 for last year's iteration of this tourney.

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.

Ran from: 6 – 30 December 2023. Format: 15 Rounder. Matches: One-off. Approved.

Fixtures: 0. Completed: 0.