Prizegiving

This week:

• The Secret Admirers award (for receiving the most challenges) goes to Barb, who was challenged 26 times
  
• The Open Relay award (for sending the most challenges) goes to DOM, who sent 41 challenges
  
• The Turing award (for the most solo games played) goes to sharon, who played solo 54 times.
  
• The Enigma award (for sending the hardest codes) is awarded to laura, whose codes took an average of 7.33 guesses to break
  
• The Plaintext award (for sending the easiest codes) is given to Breadmower, whose codes took only 4 guesses to break on average
  
• The Quick Thinking award (for the fastest game) goes to Sarah, who completed a game in 12 seconds
  
• The Deep Thought award (for the slowest game) goes to sharon, who took 1 day 23:59:15 to finish one game
  
• The Brute Force award (for the highest average) goes to Sarah, who took an average of 13.09 guesses to break codes
  
• An Optimal Algorithm award (for finding a code in one guess) is given to Mike
  
• The Bletchley award (for top codebreaker) is this week awarded to Mr.Puzzlewit, whose average number of guesses to break codes was 4.54 over 13 games.

Last week, I decided to give Bunnery's prediction idea (base the following week's prediction on the current leaderboard) another go. That gave us 'DOM, Mr.Puzzlewit, Barb, Sharon' - compared to the actual result of 'Mr.Puzzlewit, Laura, Mike, Janet', that had one name in the wrong place (same as ever). Here's the interesting thing, though - the week before, Bunnery's system had predicted 'Mike, Janet, Laura, Mr.Puzzlewit', which would've been the correct names all in the wrong place - the best result ever (I think). Interesting...

Still, at least her theory is providing some kind of results - my 'DOM Quantity/Average Theory' didn't seem to hold up too well. We had another quiet week (362 games played), but DOM ended up being ranked 7th (average 5.98). I think that's probably due to pushing his luck trying to steal the Deep Thought award from Sharon (1 day 23:59:15? Come on - there was another 45 seconds to go, Sharon!). Whilst the site didn't notice that he'd let three games expire, Sarah spotted it straight away, and his adjusted score dropped him down a few places.

On the subject of Sarah, it looks either like she had a really unlucky week, or is following the trend started by Laura last week - trying to win at losing. Either way, whilst she did win the Brute Force award, she didn't equal Laura's perfect 14, managing to finish with an average of 13.09. Laura took the opportunity to prove that last week's result was deliberate, sneaking into second place (average 4.89) just before the leaderboard closed for the week.

Mr.Puzzlewit wins his first Bletchley award this week, after sitting alone at the top of the board for almost the whole week. Almost? Well, he was originally tied for first place with Bunnery, though she fell down several places when she received a penalty for an expired game. I gather that this due to her being at work, so obviously the moral of the story is don't go to work, stay at home and play Mastermind. Anyway, commiserations to Bunnery, but well done Mr.Puzzlewit - an average of 4.54 is good going, and you even proved that it wasn't fluke by playing 13 games. Nice work.

Now, this week's predictions... After discovering that Bunnery's system was reasonably accurate (but just out by a week), I think that's worthy of one more try, but with last week's results instead of this week's: 'DOM, Mr.Puzzlewit, Barb, Sharon'. Any other suggestions for prediction techniques?

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

Until next week...