req.co.uk Codex newsletter #91

posted by Breadmower on Sun 13th Jul, 08 at 21:47:26

What's this newsletter all about then?

Welcome to the Codex newsletter, where we bring you up to speed with what's going on at the site and - more importantly - let you know the results of the weekly leaderboard, and what accolades have been awarded to the movers and shakers this week.

Bored of this waffle already? If you're receiving it by email, then you can unsubscribe by going to the blog and clicking "unsubscribe from this blog"...

In this issue

• API-aye - what's this?
• Leaderboard update
• Prizegiving

API-aye - what's this?

There's been some more progress on the backend updates to the site - there's the start of a nice little API for retreiving user data, giving awards, and doing things like blog posts (basically, you'll "soon" (ish) be able to use software like Windows Live Writer to post blogs, but that's not really relevant to Codex, is it?). Still no particularly visible updates, I'm afraid, but that's coming once I've got the server-side stuff all sorted out.

Leaderboard update

When the leaderboard closed for the week, here's how things looked (rank - user - average guesses):

1st - sharon - 4.67 (21 games)
2nd - Bunnery - 4.86 (22 games)
3rd - DOM - 5.24 (302 games)
xx - Breadmower - 6.0 (3 games)
4th - Smonkey - 7.47 (19 games)

Total games played: 372

See the full leaderboard, along with a trend graph for the top five players on the statistics page.

Prizegiving

This week:

• The Secret Admirers award (for receiving the most challenges) goes to DOM, who was challenged 124 times
• The Open Relay award (for sending the most challenges) goes to sharon, who sent 124 challenges
• The Turing award (for the most solo games played) goes to DOM, who played solo 145 times
• The Enigma award (for sending the hardest codes) is awarded to DOM, whose codes took an average of 6 guesses to break
• The Plaintext award (for sending the easiest codes) is given to sharon, whose codes took only 4.99 guesses to break on average
• The Quick Thinking award (for the fastest game) goes to DOM, who completed a game in 16 seconds
• The Deep Thought award (for the slowest game) goes to DOM, who took 1 day 18:01:10 to finish one game
• The Upgrade award (for most improved average) goes to Bunnery, who decreased their average by 0.43
• The Downgrade award (for most worsened average) is given to DOM, whose average increased by 0.43
• The Brute Force award (for the highest average) goes to Smonkey, who took an average of 7.47 guesses to break codes
• The Bletchley award (for top codebreaker) is this week awarded to sharon, whose average number of guesses to break codes was 4.67 over 21 games

Now, you'll have to bear with me if things look a little odd here, but I'm writing this over a mobile broadband link, which has stripped out the fancy blog posting system, leaving me with a slightly confusing preview of what I'm writing.

OK, so Sharon was our top player this week, finishing with an average of 4.67 over 21 games - just 0.19 ahead of Bunnery. Still, that's enough, so she wins this week's Bletchley award - nice work, Sharon. In addition to a Bletchley, she also wins an Open Relay award (for sending 124 games) and a Plaintext award (for setting codes that took an average of 4.99 guesses to find).

Bunnery might have been slightly behind for the Bletchley, but she did manage to improve the most (by 0.43) and wins this week's Upgrade award. On the other end of the scale, DOM disimproved the most (oddly enough, by 0.43) and wins the Downgrade award. He's been quite busy though, as he also wins the Secret Admirers award (for sending 124 games), the Turing award (for playing 145 solo games), the Enigma award (for setting codes that took an average of 6 guesses to find), the Quick Thinking award (for completing a game in 16 seconds) and the Deep Thought award (for taking 1 day 18:01:10 to complete one game). Think he's done? Nope - he also won a Colossus award, for completing over 100 games in 24 hours. Very impressive, but he wasn't the only one to win one of the special (non-regular awards) - Smonkey won an Optimal Algorithm award for finding a code on her first guess, which goes alongside her Brute Force award (finishing average of 7.47 over 19 games).

Congratulations to everyone who won an award - they'll now be visible on your personal statistics pages so that the rest of us can marvel at your skills.

Got a suggestion for a new award? Let us know - leave a comment on the blog.

See the full award details on the statistics page.

Until next week...

That's it for this newsletter, thanks for reading. Want to make a comment or suggestion? Leave a comment on the blog.

Remember, you've got under seven days to make your mark on this week's leaderboard... get to it!

Have fun,

Breadmower and the rest of team req.co.uk