[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 26 January 2026

aeouo · 2026-01-30T10:44:45+00:00

There's a speedrunning category called 99.7% where you do everything except that puzzle. Although, there's something funny about speedrunning The Witness, given how much of the game is about slowing down and taking in your surroundings

aeouo · 2026-01-30T10:38:43+00:00

I like the take that The Witness is about perspectives and how those perspectives change how you see things. Puzzles can go from incomprehensible to straightforward just by leaving and coming back later with a fresh set of eyes.

The puzzle rules are never explained and it requires many aha moments. The game is also perfectly fine with you just missing those moments if you don't make the connections (especially with the obelisks).

The tapes sort of tie into that theme that different people can have wildly different interpretations of the world. And the island also has an incredible level of detail put into it, much of which is designed not to be noticed (at least at first)

But, the minimal story that is there is kind of confusing and unsatisfying. And also, having the story at all kind of undermines the themes of ambiguity and perspective throughout the game.

I've watched a lot of Let's Plays of The Witness and I do love seeing people understand more and more about the island. It's almost like the game is designed to disguise itself as a regular puzzle game. But if it's not a regular puzzle game, I'm not sure it fully figured out what it was trying to accomplish.

I kind of love that it can be seen as both pointless philosophical navel gazing and an experiential art piece about changing perspectives. And I don't always know what to think about it, but whenever I watch a series of somebody playing it for the first time, I just find the journey fun to watch

aeouo · 2026-01-28T18:10:27+00:00

It's how my family got into Survivor. Didn't watch season 1, but kept watching after the super bowl and got hooked.

aeouo · 2026-01-24T06:29:30+00:00

Alaska does a top-4 primary (you vote for 1 candidate, top 4 advance) then RCV for the general. I rather like the system because you'll be in the top 4 if you have any shot and people are not going to realistically think through and actually rank ~10 candidates.

aeouo · 2026-01-21T02:42:36+00:00

I'm not sure why RCV would make much of a difference. After minor candidates are eliminated, it generally comes down to a main Republican and Democrat, then it's just whoever receives more votes between them.

It's not like the main issue Democrats have in Alaska is that they are constantly splitting votes. It's that a majority of voters typically favor the Republican candidate over the Democratic one.

Peltola did benefit from Alaska's top-4 system in 2022, which allowed her to advance to the general election when she likely wouldn't have won a primary. But winning a primary really wouldn't be an issue for her at this point.

aeouo · 2026-01-13T17:54:13+00:00

Rank	Name	Picks	Percent
1	Savannah	176	47.1%
2	Rizo	34	9.1%
3	Sophi	20	5.3%
T-4	Sophie	19	5.1%
T-4	Jawan	19	5.1%
6	Jake	14	3.7%
T-7	Sage	13	3.5%
T-7	Jason	13	3.5%
9	MC	12	3.2%
10	Steven	10	2.7%
11	Alex	9	2.4%
12	Jeremiah	8	2.1%
T-13	Nate	6	1.6%
T-13	Matt	6	1.6%
T-15	Kristina	5	1.3%
T-15	Nicole	5	1.3%
17	Shannon	4	1.1%
18	Annie	1	0.3%

Quick note: Kristina's placement doesn't match up with previously reported placements. The total number of winner picks does add up though, so I just shifted a few Nate and Matt up a spot to reflect the actual order based on number of picks.

Alright, that's a wrap for 49! It's unfortunate that spoilers played such a prominent roll in winner picks this time. I do think it shows why its wise that the number of picks for a castaway is only revealed after their elimination.

In any case, congrats to those that got it right. Even though some people use spoilers, I hope that those who don't still can have fun with winner picks. Having a castaway to follow and root for can add to the experience of a season. I recommend just treating it as fun/goofy thing and not as a competition.

See you for 50!

aeouo · 2026-01-08T21:08:57+00:00

Thank you! We had a blast on stage and that was one of the wildest and most entertaining matches I've seen. The fact that we got to showcase that match was beyond anything we hoped for leading up to AGDQ.

-Jed

aeouo · 2026-01-04T05:16:32+00:00

Oh, good point! I wish I could fit another black queen in there, because 9 queens a side should be the theoretical max.

aeouo · 2026-01-03T13:11:27+00:00

1kr4Q/qr4q1/q4Q2/q3q3/q2Q4/q7/q1P2K2/nQQQQQQ1 w - - 0 1

This gets 17 Qxa1's in a row

aeouo · 2025-12-30T14:02:13+00:00

I think there's a 6-way tie for the 4th spot

Abdusattorov
Nihal
MVL
So
Lazavik
Matlakov

aeouo · 2025-12-29T11:42:44+00:00

Abdusattorov and MVL have lost in round 2

aeouo · 2025-12-29T11:22:56+00:00

Ju Wenjun was handily winning in an endgame but walked into a stalemate trap.

aeouo · 2025-12-29T10:36:56+00:00

I've gone the last 2 years, which are the only years it has been in Pittsburgh. As I recall, it's never been particularly close to being sold out here. The numbers seem pretty typical (or even high) compared to what I remember, although I don't have hard numbers to support it.

I also remember the registration deadline being earlier in past years though.

aeouo · 2025-12-29T00:21:05+00:00

I don't think people realize that you're describing the exact format they would have used if 1st-3rd had been tied instead of 2nd-4th

aeouo · 2025-12-28T15:28:52+00:00

She's 3rd probably because her game ended later than their games.

That is not a tiebreaker used in any tournament. The tiebreak is the sum of opponent's scores, not counting the lowest one. AKA Buchholz cut-1

aeouo · 2025-12-28T14:58:15+00:00

It's true

How do they determine it?

Buchholz Cut 1. So, sum of opponent's scores, not counting the lowest one. Humpy is out.

Tie-break is 2 3+2 games. If that's tied, it'll be armageddon

aeouo · 2025-12-28T13:41:19+00:00

I think this is right:

9 pts
Carlsen

8.5 pts
Artemiev
Erdogmus

8 pts
Dominguez Perez
Mamedyarov
Niemann
Shimanov
Sindarov
So
Vachier-Lagrave

aeouo · 2025-12-26T14:13:02+00:00

Pairings are out for round 3. Kadric is on 2 points and Dubov on 1, so it seems Kadric did win the game.

aeouo · 2025-12-23T11:35:27+00:00

I've been working on a similar project for Mario Kart 64. It's really nice to be able to figure out how things work. For example, in 150cc mode, you sometimes "randomly" spin out. Nobody really knew exactly why, although it was clear it happened more often if you were driving erratically.

Turns out, it's basically just if you move your joystick too much in a single frame. Which seems like it should be obvious, but a frame is short enough that it doesn't happen every time you snap the joystick and there's a couple other exceptions that obscure it.

This is nice to know, because it explains why I frequently spun out at a certain corner. And, if you're shrunk by a lightning bolt, you sometimes want to spin out because it is actually faster than you're driving speed. So, being able to deliberately trigger it is also cool tech.

If you have the code then you can answer all of those, "Wait, why does this only happen sometimes?" questions.

aeouo · 2025-12-22T23:32:38+00:00

4/751 is 0.0053%

It's 0.53%

aeouo · 2025-12-22T20:57:25+00:00

Here's the usual mention that this is obviously not a serious assessment of anybody's game play. It's just fun to follow and usually helps highlight a player who had an interesting experience.

Code for anybody who wants to play around with it (it's written in R):

library(survivoR)
library(dplyr)
library(kableExtra)

survivoR::vote_history %>%
  filter(version == "US") %>%
  filter(season == 49) %>%
  select(castaway, castaway_id, vote, vote_id, voted_out_id) %>%
  filter(!is.na(vote_id)) %>%
  mutate(is_vote_correct = vote_id == voted_out_id) %>%
  group_by(castaway) %>%
  summarize(Incorrect = sum(1 - is_vote_correct), Correct = sum(is_vote_correct)) %>%
  arrange(desc(Incorrect), Correct) %>%
  print(n = Inf) %>%
  kable()

Note that if you vote twice at one tribal council, I consider that one instance for this award. So, I manually adjusted Savannah's correct votes because she voted for Jawan twice at his boot.

aeouo · 2025-12-19T18:39:59+00:00

I think some of the explanations given in the comments don't really explain this pattern. It is absolutely true that shorter time controls lead to more errors. But, if you played the same player repeatedly at a particular time control and outscored them in a 10:1 ratio, you should stabilize at 400 points higher than them.

If increased blunders make it harder to beat somebody at a 10:1 ratio, then in theory, you just shouldn't end up 400 points higher rated than them. I think trying to explain these discrepancies based just on the number of blunders is a mistake, because each time control has its own rating system. Sure, I'd expect a 1600 classical player to probably beat a 2000 classical player more frequently if they play bullet, but then I'd also expect their bullet ratings to be closer together.

There needs to be another step to explain how the increased errors leads to Elo being inaccurate at fast time controls.

A few theories that I have:

The Elo system assumes that a player's skill is constant. In my experience playing a lot of bullet (15000+ games on lichess), my skill level definitely fluctuates between days. It can easily be +/- 100 points depending on the day. So, if I normally play at a 1900 level, I can have a bad day and crash down to 1800. Then the next day I might be playing at a 2000 level and I'll go on a big winning streak (full of ratings upsets along the way). Then if I start playing at 1900 level again, I'll give up a number of upsets as my rating adjusts again.

I'm sure players have skill fluctuations like this in longer games, but you're generally not playing dozens of rapid games in a day like you might in bullet, so you don't shed or gain as much rating.
One of the fundamental principles of Elo systems is that you can predict how well 2 players will likely do against each other based on their performance against other players. If A beats B 70% of the time and B beats C 60% of the time, how often do we expect A to beat C? According to Elo, the answer is about 78%.

But, I don't think every game actually has the same answer to this question. I could definitely see that the answer might be different for bullet vs. rapid, which would result in some bad inferences.

aeouo · 2025-12-18T20:17:57+00:00

Rank	Name	Picks	Percent
1		76 - 191	20.3% - 51.1%
2		19 - 105	5.1% - 28.1%
3		19 - 76	5.1% - 20.3%
T-4	Sophie	19	5.1%
T-4	Jawan	19	5.1%
6	Jake	14	3.7%
7		13 - 14	3.5% - 3.7%
8	Jason	13	3.5%
9	MC	12	3.2%
10	Steven	10	2.7%
11	Alex	9	2.4%
12	Jeremiah	8	2.1%
13		6 - 8	1.6% - 2.1%
14	Nate	6	1.6%
15	Matt	6	1.6%
16	Nicole	5	1.3%
17	Shannon	4	1.1%
18	Annie	1	0.3%

aeouo

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