Prizegiving

This week:

• The Secret Admirers award (for receiving the most challenges) goes to DOM, who was challenged 50 times
• The Open Relay award (for sending the most challenges) goes to Bunnery, who sent 69 challenges
• The Turing award (for the most solo games played) goes to DOM, who played solo 50 times
• The Enigma award (for sending the hardest codes) is awarded to Mr.Puzzlewit, whose codes took an average of 6.38 guesses to break
• The Plaintext award (for sending the easiest codes) is given to Bunnery, whose codes took only 4.57 guesses to break on average
• The Quick Thinking award (for the fastest game) goes to bin1, who completed a game in 15 seconds
• The Deep Thought award (for the slowest game) goes to Bunnery, who took 1 day 23:59:57 to finish one game
• The Upgrade award (for most improved average) goes to Mr.Puzzlewit, who decreased their average by 0.4
• The Downgrade award (for most worsened average) is given to Breadmower, whose average increased by 0.4
• The Brute Force award (for the highest average) goes to Bunnery, who took an average of 5.94 guesses to break codes
• The Bletchley award (for top codebreaker) is this week awarded to bin1, whose average number of guesses to break codes was 4.6 over 15 games

Not many active players this week - only six people made it onto the leaderboard this time, and not only did we have quite a small spread (1.34), but we had a tie for first place. Yes, whilst Bin1 had been having a good week in the lead, Mr.Puzzlewit managed to sneak ahead on Saturday afternoon, only for Bin1 to equal him on Saturday night. Bin1 had the advantage, though - the fact that he played three times as many games as Mr.Puzzlewit means that it's Bin1 that wins the Bletchley award. Well done!

In addition to the Bletchley, Bin1 also takes home a shiny Quick Thinking award (for completing a game in 15 seconds), but didn't get the matching Deep Thought award: that went to Bunnery, who took 1 day 23:59:57 to complete one game. She also won the Open Relay award (sent 69 challenges), the Plaintext award (her codes took an average of 4.57 guesses to find), and the Brute Force award (final average of 5.94 over 32 games).

Elsewhere, DOM and Mr.Puzzlewit were busy, winning a pair of awards each: DOM took Secret Admirers (received 50 challenges) and Turing (played 56 solo games), whilst Mr.Puzzlewit won Upgrade (improved by 0.4) and Enigma (set codes that took an average of 6.38 to find). The final award winner of the week was Breadmower, who disimproved the most (0.4 - coincidentally the same amount that Mr.Puzzlewit improved by) and won Downgrade.

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.

Predictions

...and now ladies and gentlemen, it's time for that section of the newsletter that seemed to randomly appear and become a regular segment... Would you please put your hands together for the Four Black Pegs resident pundits: Biiiiiiin1 and Bunneryyyyyyyyy [FX: Canned applause and cheesy title music].

So guys, last time Bin1 won the predictions and set Bunnery the task of writing a Haiku about Codex. A pretty interesting challenge... Her submissions consisted of "I'm wasting my time? / No! I'm using logic skills / and bugging bin1" (nice, I see what you did there), and "Playing Codex is / The most pleasant thing to do / when deadlines are near" (I think we can all relate to that). Bin1 responded with "Think! What do I know? / Yellow, position one and two / Sod it, four yellows", and I even had an attempt with the topical "Errors have appeared! / Hmmm... very interesting... / OK - sorted now."

Amidst all of this Japanese poetry, they even found time to make some predictions for this week. Let's see what they thought:

Bin1 said "I know I'm top (at the moment) but my otherwise-uninformed-predictions are: Sarah, Sharon, laura, Bunnery". Ah, Bin1 - you should've had more confidence in yourself - you could've had an easy extra black peg there, but sadly your actual result is one black peg. Still better than nothing, eh?

Bunnery's turn now - she said: "This week's prediction (after hours of thought): Breadmower, bin1, Mr Puzzlewit, will". Oh, interesting! Bin1 and Mr.Puzzlewit in second and third, but they were actually both in joint first, so no black pegs - just a pair of white ones.

So, one black to Bin1 and two white to Bunnery - but which of those is a better result? Perhaps you should put forward your cases for winning, and what you think the forfeit should be, then I'll let you know who's got to do it...

Until next week...