Many thanks, ZipperJJ, for doing this. It was a lot of fun! Hope we can do it again.
I wondered a bit about the scoring, though. Why was there no eighth place (between Bayard and mullinator), and no tenth place (between Scarlett67 and me)?
I’ve seen scoring like this before (I think maybe MLB player stats, for example) so I used it - basically, there’s 27 players so I wanted to come up with 27 spaces.
In the example of the MLB stats, they’d want to show the top 10 people so if 3 guys tied for 2nd and they did the scoring 1-10, they’d end up with 12 players listed.
If 2 people tie for second, then the person who is next would have three people in front of them and be fourth, not third. So in your case mullinator and scarlett67 were 9 and 10 (tied for 9th place) so you were 11.
Just a different way of listing scores.
Exactly.
Indeed.
By all means.
Big thanks all around. Scattergories is my favorite board game of all time (although I seem to fare better when not playing with Dopers 
) and I just really enjoy playing this stuff.
Please share your scoring secrets and I might be willing to host one of these.
What techniques and data tricks are you using?
Jim
6th, yay, Much better than I do in the family fued ones. My brain just doesn’t think like other people.
Now to celebrate with a yummy Barbecued Egret. Hehe
Barbecued Egrets? I’ve had a few…
I learned some new tricks when scoring this one after I’d scored the first one.
First I set up an Excel spreadsheet with a person’s name in the top row, then their 1-12 A answers, 1-12 B answers and 1-12 C answers in the rows below. Pretty much exactly as it’s shown in each individual post.
One column for each person, with their answers aligned per row (so all the A1 are on the same row, A2 same row, etc). I do this across until I reach the end of the viewable area in 70% view size, then make another row set underneath for the next 9 or so folks, then another set for the next 9 (or however many fit across).
Then I use the “group” function in Excel to group each letter set so that I can expand and collapse each set of A’s, B’s and C’s.
Then I collapse all of the B’s and C’s and get to work on the A’s.
I do A1, comparing all the answers. I mark duplicate and blank/pass answers with a red background (fill). Having the data no wider than the screen helps immensely with this.
Then I use the “hide” function in Excel to hide A1, and now A2 is at the top of everyone’s list. Repeat this until I finish all the A’s, unhide all the A’s, then close the A group and move on to B.
Once that’s all done I count down all the non-red fields in a person’s column, adding extra points in my head, and type the score at the bottom.
Then I gather all the stuff up in Notepad and start applying the vB code and moving people around score-wise.
It took me 3 hours to do last night…kind of a bummer 
If you want, I can send you the Excel file (zipped) to your email address. Do you have Excel 2007? I am not sure how much of the functionality I used is accessible in the pre-2007 format.
Woohoo!
Winner…by…default?
Even second by non-default is awesome!
You know what’s funny about this game, to me? It’s about how well you can think on your feet. Like no matter how hard some people tried, they could not come up with a unique city name starting with their letter (non-US Dopers aside). Or me, for example, I could not come up with a Doper name off the top of my head starting with “W”…???
Trying to spit your answers out makes it a little more laughable, I think. Then when you see other people’s answers you gotta groan at how dense you can be.
Also, it was hilarious to see what people find “typical” in an office - lots of idiots, imbeciles, bastards and backstabbers 
Hmmm, I do have Excel 2007 on my laptop, but I think everything you described is available in Excel 2000. You would just have to save backwards.
However, I will chicken out, the 3 hour part is two hours too much.
Seeing what you went through, I really salute you for hosting this.
Jim
No problem. That’s why I suggested maybe a group thing in future rounds. If you just had to score, say, 6 people then it’d be much much easier.
I wonder how they score Family Feud? It seems like it’d be just as laborious (I guess maybe less total answers) but people jump on hosting that almost daily.
…
I had an Excel spreadsheet with the players on the first 50 rows and the answers below that. The 10 columns after each player’s name would be a reference to the cell which held the number of people who gave the given answer. (the eleventh would be the total). Every answer that came in, I’d manually update the number next to the answer they gave (adding that value if no one said it yet).
Probably an easier way to do that, but I’m no Excel expert.
Woo-hoo! I’m not at the bottom of the list! No one else picked Evil for “something found in an office!” I work at an evil place!
Let me add my thanks, ZipperJJ, for hosting and scoring this game. There were, however, at least three duplications you missed:
Thudlow Boink and tdn both said “barometric pressure” for the meteorology term
unauthorized cinnamon and freckafree both said “egg whites” for the cake ingredient (although the former wrote the term as one word, the latter as two)
Sir Dirx and mullinator both said “international” for the spam term
I’m happy with my fifth-place finish, especially as I assumed the “Extra-Strength Excedrin for Engineering Educators” answers weren’t counting for any bonus points in this round.
cmkeller: Thanks for the update on the babirusa controversy. As I said in my entry, I didn’t check any facts except for a few spellings. Last I read (a few years ago), the hoglike Indonesian animal had been deemed kosher. I now know better than to serve it when I have Jewish dinner guests who observe the dietary laws!
Thanks Sternvogel!! That sort of stuff is very hard to catch.
I also just noticed I had Thudlow Boink with 11 points instead of 12 (ack!)
So, lessee…Thudlow now has 11 and moves down to 16th place, tied with all the people who were previously 17th place (omg my scoring system sucks!!)
tdn now has 15 and is tied with mullinator and Scarlett67 for 8th… Bayard moves up to 7th on his own.
But mullinator then moves down to having 14 points, and all the 11th place people are tied with him for 10th.
Unauthorized cinnamon and yourself (Sternvogel) are tied for 4th.
Freckafree has 10 and moves down to 20th with all the 21st people.
Sir Dirx…well dude, you’re dead last now 
Man, what a clusterfuck of a game I run!
See, ZipperJJ, I think it’s fastest and easiest just to let the players themselves go through the topic and eliminate their own answers as they go along. It might save many minutes (nay, hours) of score tallying.
But great job doing it this time (again). Very impressive.
Yeah, the score is the kicker for me. It’s the only reason I didn’t want to host it again. But I think if everyone just kept track of their own score as the topic went on? Maybe as soon as they submit their answers, look back and follow the topic along and cross out their own as new replies (and repeated answers) come in?
How would that work?
But how would poster 5 get his tally? Posters 6 through 17 may have duplicated his answers?
Maybe we could decide every 5 posters equal a group and just score those. If there is 22 posters it would become 4 groups that can tally their score and then the last 2 would have to wait for 3 more posters.
That has problems too, but would make the scoring simpler. When I use to play, we maxed out to 6 players. Even six was a lot.
Jim
He wouldn’t. He’d keep tallying up the new score until the time limit/game was up. Eliminate his own answers as new replies/same answers are made. Or, if they’re not able to be on right away, just whenever they can.