Subject: 6x6 challenge! Go!

Date: Sat Jan 5 12:04:51 2019
User: Denny
Message:
6x6 is an interesting variant, pretty winnable, but definitely requiring different strategy. Let's see who can run up the biggest daily streak today. Go!

Date: Sat Jan 5 20:06:58 2019
User: Denny
Message:
Dr.Bombay ahead by a pretty wide margin at this point. And he's still going...

Date: Sat Jan 5 20:13:57 2019
User: Dr.Bombay
Message:
It’s timeout to watch the Seahawks vs. the Boys

Date: Sat Jan 5 21:14:50 2019
User: joeygray
Message:
As with the 7x5 lass week, I didn't feel like risking an existing streak trying for it. I remember the SSC days when it was best practice just to lose a game on Friday night in the variant in question, just to make sure you'd get to start with 10 easiest ones. I was strongly thinking about putting some code together to run the SSC again, after it's been gone for a couple years now. But for a couple reasons I haven't been motivated to do it. For one thing, many of the variants in question are 11sum and 12sum, and for those variants paragraph one above would keep applying to me. TN knows the other reason.

Date: Sat Jan 5 21:45:59 2019
User: Mastermind
Message:
7x5 competition was announced around 2.30 PM EST and the present one at 12 noon EST. In both cases only players in North America have daytime playing possibilities and even here PST players have advantage since they don't have to stay up till midnight. It would be nice if variant is announced on Friday.

Date: Sun Jan 6 08:51:57 2019
User: Denny
Message:
Duly noted. I'm just kinda making this up as I go along. Joey-- what was the SSC? What's that stand for?

Date: Sun Jan 6 10:16:49 2019
User: TNmountainman
Message:
The *original* SSC was the "Super-Conducting Supercollider" -- what would have been an even bigger collider than CERN, and the cancellation of which was/is a sad stain on the scientific knowledge and capabilities of this country. While it's great that CERN is doing it's thing, the SSC would have been bigger, and likely even better, although who knows about the management of it? Just imagine the physics discussions on this very board if we had finished it!

Date: Sun Jan 6 10:32:22 2019
User: TNmountainman
Message:
Oh...……..….and we also had on this site a moderately-long-running contest on Saturdays with the same acronym..... Sample SSC contest from 2010: https://www.freecell.net/f/c/disctopic.html?code=8099&replies=22 (Unfortunately, tho, the links in that thread (other than the very last one) are no longer workable.) All that said...……….I'm not *quite* sure I know what joey's referring to in terms of a knowledge bit I supposedly possess. The "external aids" aspect??

Link: What were the SSC and WWC, you ask?

Date: Sun Jan 6 15:48:14 2019
User: Dr.Bombay
Message:
Well, like the Seahawks, my streak is all over but the shouting.

Date: Sun Jan 6 22:00:06 2019
User: joeygray
Message:
TN: Good deduction. To avoid audience boredom, my advice is to stop reading now. IIRC there are three historical phases of the SSC, which stands for Saturday Streak Competition. Originally, it was as Denny has done the last two weeks: we pick a variant, we see who can get the highest streak in that variant on Saturday "Freecell Time" (which is currently the Eastern, or New York, time), and we huzzah the winner. You can tell all next day who won by looking at Past Daily. Pretty near the beginning it was a chore nobody wanted, to pick the variant. So it was decided that the variant would be whatever random variant was selected for the first All-In-One tournament following the Masters every Sunday. I don't know when the scoring system came in. But at some point we (stat geeks that we are) wanted to compare and summarize SSC results from different weeks, so we assigned a value to placing anywhere from first to 25th, and then we could add up those values for an overall leader of some kind. Because Denny's Past Daily list only lists the top 25, we usually didn't give points to folks 26 or higher although TT did sometimes attempt to capture a snap of the Daily right before midnight in order to give points for 'tied for 25th'. In any case, enter free@last phase. When free took over running the SSC, discussions determined which variants everybody wanted to play in these, and free made 4 lists of these: easy (click fest), medium, hard, and super hard. Also, he set up the variant rotation scheme: a three week rotation in which one week we would play a medium, one week a hard, and the third week either a super easy or a super hard. Thus super-easy and super-hards were played half as often, alternating between the two in the third weeks. Linked below is the set of variants played and the scheme. After free ceded administration, Titanic Tony took it over, kept the same rotation, and expanded the stats reporting. Thanks to Denny, we added wikitable support around this time to get the lined-up tables (the same ones I used for the streak rankings and pop used for the football contests this year.) And he also added the Wednesday Winnable Competition along similar lines but for winnable variants. But it was a lot of work for Tony, and for this and perhaps another reason, he ceded administration of both of these competitions. I think this was three years ago, right at the end of 2015, but correct me if I'm wrong. I have not yet ruled out reinstating the SSC with some automation code; I even started to do it a while back. And of course I can remove my own objection - streak-ruining - by simply competing under another nic. My distaste for capricious nic-expansion kept me from realizing until now that this would be a legitimate use - when I saw Dr.Bombay win yesterdays's 6x6. The Dr notation employed by the tournament Ratings Crew was perfectly legitimate. But see sentence 1.

Link: The thread's second post on page 2

Date: Sun Jan 6 23:46:58 2019
User: jamesblackburn-lynch
Message:
Oh! That's what it was! Thanks Joey. James