Blue Peter

Well, it’s official – Pete has run out of T-shirts! On Friday he declared that he was on his last ‘T-shirt’ (I say T-shirt, but it was actually a football top) and so it only remained to be seen today whether it not he had acquired any new shirts over the weekend. He had not, and so he officially retires from the Longevity Contest.

What does this do to T-Shirt Wars? Well, the ramifications are many and we only have ourselves and the Byzantine rules that we wrote to blame for that. Here is a brief summary of what happens now…

So is Pete out of T-Shirt Wars then?
No. He is only eliminated from the Longevity Contest. He still competes in the Quality Contest every day, as before, but wearing his T-shirts a second time. He cannot wear them a third time until he has worn them all again!

So he can still get points then…
Yes, but he can only get half normal scores i.e. 1.5 for a First place, 1 for a Second and 0.5 for Third place. This reflects the fact that although one of his shirts may be good enough to win a day, it is being worn a second time. Everyone else gets normal points. Furthermore, any players who place below him in a day’s play score 0 points that day. So if Pete gets first place, no-one else gets any!

That makes no sense at all!
No, it makes perfect sense. It means that someone with a high quality collection of T-shirts is not beaten by someone with rubbish T-shirts just because they have more of them. However, they can’t just keep wearing the same T-shirts over and over again as the score that they get for them falls each time they wear it.

What about Jokers and Hexes?
If a player plays his Joker but is beaten by Pete, they get no points. However, if someone plays a Hex on Pete, they can score even if Pete ranks above them.

And what happens when a second player runs out of T-shirts?
At that point the one remaining player is the winner of the Longevity Contest. But the Quality Contest goes on! The third player must declare on that day how many more days the competition will go on (and they must have at least that many original T-shirts left) - thus the Quality Score will end on a predetermined date and whoever is in the lead at that stage is declared the winner.

So that’s how it works… Pete’s legacy to T-Shirt Wars is immeasurable, but his record is:

Played 32
‘Gold’ medals 8
‘Silver’ 11
‘Bronze’ 11
Nil point days 2

High Point – Winning ‘Immunology Day’ in Theme Week with a Luke O’Neill T-shirt
Low Point – Wearing his best T-shirt and not playing his Joker and then playing his Joker the two days later and ending up with no points.

And so the game goes on…