second your anglo-saxon word; I had him on my 2010 list so that made it inevitable that he would die in 2011:smack:
I guess he was iller than we realized.
Are Dopers getting better at this? I’m kind of surprised that my 123 points (from Ballesteros, Eleanor Mondale, and Kim) is still only going to put me somewhere in the mid-20ths. Even if one of my older remainders joins the choir immortal in the next 12 days, I’m still probably not going to make the top 20.
wouldn’t you want one of your younger listees to kick it? more points that way.
Since you asked, I had to go back and look. In most years, 120 points would get you a top 10 finish, including last year. The exception was 2009 with the Fawcett-Swayze-Jackson trifecta, which required 200 points to break into the top 10. Looks like this year is just another rich year, dead celebrity wise anyway. Don’t forget there is 100 points spread between #1 and #2.
Back in the early 2000s 120 points was more than enough to win it! **Rachim Qoch **raised the bar in 2005 so that you needed 7 or more dead celebrities and over 200 points to win it.
If everyone on my list were to suddenly die before midnight December 31st, I would score 286 points. Not enough for first place. Of course I keep looking for quanity of corpses as opposed to a high score and still end up with nothing.
Still, this is a fine way to fill up time. I do enjoy the paperwork.
As per the rule that Baker quoted, I am going with 70 unless we get concrete proof of his being 69, such as seeing the original birth certificate. Except I understand that is in Hawaii or Kenya or somewhere equally inaccessible.
The figures during my time as administrator of the game are:
07 08 09 10 11
1st 283 344 401 321 369
10th 125 90 200 110 175
20th 83 49 149 75 133
Average 32.9 23.4 74 32.4 61.8
Oh, if Lil Wayne or Leonid Stadnyk kicked it, I’d be up there, but still not in the top 10. And even if both kicked it, I would not win. I need a very selective meteor shower to win, I think.
Thanks for the stats, Registered at Last and amarone!
Vaclav Havel, the playwright who became Czechoslovakia’s president after leading the country’s anti-Communist “Velvet Revolution”, has died at the age of 75. After Czechoslovakia (which he led from 1989 to '92) split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, he served as president of the former from 1993 to 2003.
Jason Richards, Australian race car driver, died on Thursday.
Every news story I have read lists his age as 69; only Wikipedia has raised the possibility that he was actually 70.
NPR and quite a few other news stories have mentioned that he was most likely 70.
I don’t think Wikipedia is even close to being the only one to raise the possibility.
Can we call this part of December **The 12 Deaths of Christmas **
For no other reason because we can?
I love it! I think I have ten remaining contestants.
On the 10th Deaths of Christmas, my true love gave to me… One concidental Cruise Ship run in with an iceberg that just happened to contained all the remaining ten people on my 2011 Celebrity Death Pool list…
Catchy Tune! 
Since we can’t decide for sure if he was 69 or 70, I think the only fair thing to do for the rest of us in the game is to award no points.
Who’s with me? Show of hands?
I fully understand, and agree with the original posted rule as is.
I’m just surprised that we actually have to enforce it. I thought that we were past the era of not knowing when someone was born. It’s one of those moments where I thought “yeah, but when will that happen?”
If you want to give the top half of players -70 points, well that’s something else entirely.
And because it is, I won’t argue against it.
I’m surprised we have to enforce it, too. I’m surprised it affects someone actually worth some points!
Looks like we may have to enforce it when Jong-un kicks it, too, since no one knows how old he is, either. 
Local Lunatic, Lee Groban dies at 64.
Decades ago, I saw a bit on him on Wild Chicago. So despite his tv appearance and nice obit, does any of this really make him a celebrity? I know this has been brought up before, but just wondering what the death pool thought.
Curtis Sliwa dubbed him “Kim Jong Mentally Ill”