Just Gimme The Prize!

A question that has been asked of me several times in the last few days is 'What did you win? What is the prize?'

Well, the Prize is kinda like The Prize in Highlander - effectively, I absorb the powers and energies of my vanquished foes, and thereby the powers and energies of their victims and so on. It's quite good really... It's like you can hear everyone in the world and control rocks and things.

Anti-T-Shirt Wars

How are you all surviving in this post-War world? We have been wondering what to do with ourselves.

One suggestion was that we embark on a new venture called 'Anti-T-Shirt Wars'. It's a kind o clothes competition - you might like it. What happens is that we have to wear something other than a T-Shirt each day until we run out. So shirts, sweatshirts, long-sleeved T-shirts, football tops are all fair game. And whoever can keep wearing different things the longest wins! Oh, and get this - we also get our colleagues to judge us on how good they think the clobber is and we keep a running total of points... How's about that then? Maybe we'll even write about our experiences for onlookers to read...

NO, I TELL YOU, NO! It's not going to happen.

Day 46 - Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

‘Come back safely, Neville.’
‘Don’t worry Marjory, I’ll be back before you know it. One day this war will be over and we can be together.’
‘Damn this war…’
‘Yes, damn this war. Damn it all to Hell.’
‘War is Hell’

The secret that Pete, Nick and I have been carrying for the last few days is that today, Thursday 17th November 2005 would be the last day of T-Shirt Wars. We knew that the whole Quality Competition rested on today’s result. I was one point ahead of Nick. Neither of us had any Hexes or Jokers left. We had all worked out the permutations:

Case #1: Brian comes first today, scoring 3 points, giving him a 4 point lead that Nick cannot match, so Brian wins.
Case #2: Nick comes first, scoring 1.5 points; Brian scores nothing for coming behind Nick, so Nick wins with a 0.5 point lead.
Case #3: If Pete comes first, Brian second and Nick third, Brian gets no points but Nick only gets 0.5 points, not enough to catch up Brian.
Case #4: Pete first, Nick second, Brian third - Nick gets one point and Brian gets none, so Nick and Brian tie for first place, but Nick wins on black marks (Brian has one, Nick has none).

So with everything to play for, we all came out in strong threads this morning, me in my black Steve Vai tour T-shirt with a cool side-print, Nick in the ever-popular sky blue cityscape and Pete in his orange Eruption number. Lab 405 was judging and gave nothing away as they scrutinised our best efforts. They retired to deliberate – we had surreptitiously handed them ‘Hex’ style envelopes the day before containing the message ‘This is the last day of T-Shirt Wars’ – and reappeared with a result…

1st place – Brian
2nd place – Nick
3rd place – Pete

So I am victorious and have won the Double of Longevity and Quality! And that’s T-Shirt Wars over!

A big thank you to all the Judges and onlookers who have supported us in our ventures and of course, thank you to my fellow contestants for a thrilling contest. Fear not, it is not completely over – expect a week or so of ‘post-match’ analysis before we wrap things up completely. Bye bye!

Day 45 - Should've Gone To Hexsavers

As you may have noticed every time a Hex has been played we have chosen an “amusing” title for the day’s blog;

Day 29 - The Joy of Hex
Day 30 - No Hex Please, We're British
Day 32 - F. U. N. E. HEX?
Day 38 - Hex, Lies and Autoclave Tape

As you will have spotted today was a Hex day again and therefore I thought I would a suitable time to reflect on the possible Hex blog titles that didn’t quite make the cut;

Hex And The City
Hexy Beast
Do You Think Im Hexy
SupercalifragilisticHEXpialidocious!
Hex Discrimination
Great Hexpectations
Once Upon A Time In Hexico
Hextra Hextra Read All About It
Hexistenz
Hexy's Midnight Runners
Hexetera Hexetera Hexetera
Hex Me Baby One More Time

Any other additions gladly welcomed.

So what happened in the judging? Well I brought out my brown 4 square number with the woodland scene on it once again, Brian also had a strong player (poor pun intended) with a reel-to-reel tape machine on it, Pete had a tasteful o’neill number. And so the judges deliberated and pontificated as usual. Before delivering their verdict they were keen for the rules regarding Jokers and Hexes to be explained to them - highly suspicious. Finally they passed on the results - Nick 1^st, Brian 2^nd,Pete 3^rd. But we had the Hexican stand-off pedicted - Brian and I had both played our Hexes on each other and so we limped off the battlefield with zero points each, leaving Pete to clean up with his half point today.

So with every day potentially the last there is still only one point in it between Nick and Brian, each days play is crucially and we could be crowning a winner at any minute.

Post haste

The Day 45 blog will be posted tomorrow a.m. Sorry for the delay but it will be worth it - we had an exciting day! The points graph is up to date, however.

See ya!

Day 44 - Aye, robot

OK, here’s the deal.

Yesterday’s big news was that Nick ran out of T-Shirts meaning that I won the Longevity Contest – hooray! But no time for celebration. I have to concentrate now on the Quality Contest. Nick pulled ahead by a solitary point and I picked up a black mark, meaning that if we are tied on points by the end of the contest I will lose. Stupid, stu-pid,… So what now? How long does it go on for? Well, by T-Shirt Wars Rules, the contestant still wearing new T-shirts (me) determines the number of days left and whoever is ahead at the end of that time wins. But we’re not telling you what that number is… you see, we don’t want the judges on the last day to have their judgement clouded by the knowledge (and pressure) that their decision could decide the outcome of weeks of competition.

But we know when we’re going to finish, for tactics you understand. And boy are there tactics. All three of us are racking our brains, turning over permutations of results, trying to maximise our points. “If I win then and Hex Nick, but he Hexes me on the next day, or if Pete comes first…” It’s exhausting.

So what happened today? Nick made his intentions clear. A show of strength with his red Mirrorball tee which won the approval of the mega-judging panel last time around on our Away Day Special. Pete wore his Japanese-style pizza delivery shirt, always a goody. I pulled out one I’ve been saving for a special occasion. Good for the girls, it’s a green number with a sad looking robot contemplating his broken heart. The designer called this ‘shirt ‘She Doesn’t Even Realise’ – touching. And it worked. The judges gave me 3 points, commenting “everyone liked Brian’s brokenhearted robot. I think lab 301 has a soft side underneath the harsh judging exterior”. Nick came in second (2 points halved to 1) and Pete picked up a demi-point.

So I’m back in lead, but not by much. And now, I have to win outright to gain points. If I place below Pete or Nick I get zilch. All this and two Hexes waiting to be played, T-Shirt Wars is drawing to a nail-biting conclusion.

Remember: Each day could be the last - keep checking the Website!

Week 10 Minipoll Results

Our last minipoll ran for two weeks 'cos we were a bit lazy. We asked you if T-Shirt Wars was getting a bit stale and shockingly 76% of votes said yes! But we can console ourselves in the knowledge that it was in the middle of two of the slowest weeks in TSW history, with play on only 5 of a possible 10 days, and also in the fact that 22 of the 25 negative votes on this poll came from the same computer. We have our suspicions who this perpetrator is...

Anyway, we are confident that TSW is on the up again, following our successful Ebay sale raising £34 for charity and with a full week's play ahead of us where we may see the end of either Nick or Brian. So this week's minipoll asks you: "When will T-Shirt Wars finally end?" Will it be this week, next week or into the Festive month of December?

Vote now!

Seek and ye shall find

A little weekend interlude for you blog fans out there. A question that people often ask us is 'just who visits your blog?'. We partially answered that in our 1000th anniversary blog, but you deserve to know more.

One constant source of amusment for us are the visitors that reach our site via search engines such as Google, MSN Search, or the Blog Search and we now have a collection of over 40 search terms that have led unsuspecting souls into our wold of madness (and poor spell-checking). Some searchers obviously already know about our competition but have lost the URL, and are resorting to Google to bring them back to us, returning like prodigal sons. Hence search terms such as "tshirtwars.blogspot.com", "http://tshirtwars.blogspot.com", "t-shirt wars chook blog", or simply "tshirtwars".

Others appear to be searching for particular T-shirts although the coincidence between what they want and what we blog is sometimes uncanny: "Mccartney T-shirt", "Tobermory T-shirt", "Alcatraz Triathalon T-shirt", "aem kai", "worm t-shirt", "Satriani T-shirt", "Diesel N21W73", "Ashes T-Shirt", "Bacardi T-Shirt" to name but a few... (the more bored amongst you can sift through the site to find out where these terms appeared in our blog, but I wouldn't bother).

But others are seemingly irrelevant, banal or downright bizarre. See if you can pick out which of the search terms below are real ones that brought people to T-Shirt Wars and which ones we have made up:

what does "in like flynn" mean?
t-shirt of the week
i plead the fifth
dirty nick and brian slash
second placed t-shirt
extra long t-shirt
shane warne t-shirt
hairpulling fighting
teenage fanclub
shortie girlie fashions
penelope pitstop t-shirts
DOWN IN FLAMES
flatliners t-shirt
the pixies t-shirt
camping t-shirt
batman 2005 movie fr




To see the answers, use your new spoiler-revealing skills to read them below:


None of them are made up - they are all genuine search queries that have brought strangers to the T-Shirt Wars blog...


See you next week!

Soar like the Eagle

When you soar like the eagle, you attract hunters...

someone once said.

Well, my (by now infamous) eagle T-shirt did indeed soar, and it has indeed attracted the hunters - on Ebay. Against all odds and despite a tempting offer to burn the shirt on Guy Fawkes night, the Eagle Tee produced something of a bidding war, attracting 23 votes in all and a final selling price of £29 to a nice lady in Edinburgh. We will add another £5 onto that and donate the lot to Children in Need.



Thank you everyone for all your interest and to those of you who bid.

As for T-Shirt Wars, it's been another short week although exciting as regards the leaderboard. Normal service will be resumed next week - could it be the last week? Stay tuned.

Day 42 - Board to Tears?

As you will see from the results of the minipoll in the left hand column boredom appears to be a problem with 76% of voters feeling that T-Shirt Wars is a bit tired now. In addition with Pete slipping further and further behind his enthusiasm also seems to be waning with even the judges feeling that he was “flagging in T-Shirt Wars enegy”, as demonstrated by the fact that he could hardly be bothered to take his jumper of and tried to show his entry today by simply lifting it in a half-hearted manner.

But how can this be? The tension is a high as ever with Brian and I exchanging the lead on an almost daily basis and a palpable feeling that one of us could run out of ammo at any day. Despite this the standard of threads seems to be higher at the moment than it was earlier in the competition.

Well today there was a bit if a board-riding theme with Brian sporting a grey Quicksilver number acquired at the recent ATS conference in San Diego. I had a snow-boarding inspired green 4 square one with 4 snow filled squares on the front. Pete had deviated from the theme with a pseudo-yo-sushi-sumo design.

Lab 301 spoke and the word was thus; Nick first, Brian second and Pete third. The “understated simplicity” of mine won favour. Brain appeared to be penalised due to the (presumably Pete induced) weariness of O’Neill and Quicksilver brands present in lab 301. Pete’s lack of vim and vigour seemed to have dragged him down.

As you know there is no play for the rest of this week but don’t forget Thursday is you last chance to bid on the stunning T-Shirt in the Charity Auction. Own a part of the Legend!

Day 41 - Pandamonium

Give us a few days off and we forget what we're doing! With a disjointed couple of weeks and what seems like ages since we last had a competition day (in fact it was five days), we all felt a bit rusty today as we geared up once again for battle on the T-shirt front. So much so that we forgot to write the blog (hence today's late blog, sorry) and forgot to take the photos! We'll get the photos done first thing tomorrow, and add them to the blog, promise!

Right, so what threads were on show? Pete brought out his Aem-Kai T-shirt last seen on Day 22, and Nick was also wearing a tee we've seen before - it was a welcome return for Felix the Cat, last seen way back on Day 6, and eligible for re-wearing as Pete was a no-show that day (see Rule 4a(i)). I brought out my Panda T-shirt, dubbed 'Pandamonium' featuring a King Kong-style panda battling off tanks and helicopters - a shirt specially kept back for the Panda-lovers that I know reside in Lab 207, today's judges. Confident in my 'shirt, I even chose to play my Joker, gambling the extra point against the strong likelihood that Nick would Hex me.

Looks like my tactics paid off, as I got first place and three points plus another one for playing my Joker. Nick came second with 2 points and Pete brought up the rear with 1 point, halved to 0.5. So I edge a single point ahead of Nick and the competition is really heating up! We both have one Hex left and neither of us are giving away anything regarding how many T-shirts we have left. You'll just have to wait and see!

Movie Quiz Answers

Here are the answers to last week's T-Shirt Wars Movie Quiz:

The answers are presented in Spoiler Format which prevents you from reading it accidentally (and hence 'spoiling' your fun if you had not yet tried the quiz and wanted to). To read them, click and hold your mouse button and drag the cursor over the spoiler text (as if you were selecting the text to cut and paste).

Day 1: Jamie Lee Curtis; Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis
Day 2: Burt Lancaster
Dat 3: The Mask
Day 6: Silent
Day 10: Carousel; Rogers and Hammerstein
Day 11: 'The Batman' (1947); 'Batman' (1966); 'Batman' (1989)'; 'Batman Returns' (1992); 'Batman Forever' (1995); 'Batman and Robin' (1997); 'Batman Begins' (2005)
Day 12: Apocalypse Now; Colonel G Lucas; George Lucas was originally meant to direct Apocalypse Now, but delays meant that he was busy with Star Wars by the time it was ready to shoot. His good friend Francis Ford Coppola directed it instead. Coppola's company Zoetrope produced Lucas' first movie 'THX 1138' which also featured Harrison Ford. Ford went on to be directed by Lucas in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
Day 13: Danny Cannon; Happy Days
Day 15: Tasmania
Day 18: 31 (if you count 'Carry On Columbus'!)
Day 19: Transformers the Movie
Day 31: Deep Roy
Day 34: 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head' (I also forgot to mention that 'Hal David' co-won the Oscar with Burt); 'twice as bright' from 'Blade Runner'; 'better to burn out' from 'Highlander'; 'My, My, Hey, Hey (Out Of The Blue)'
Day 35: Keifer Sutherland
Day 36: Tom Cruise; Nobody knows
Day 37: Michael Caine
Day 38: Palm D'Or (Cannes International Film Festival)

Own a Piece of T-Shirt Wars History!

You’ve been there, done that, read the blog and now you can, well… buy the T-shirt!

Remember this T-Shirt?



Yes, Brian’s Eagle T-shirt, subject to such derision when it was played on Day 37, has been put up for auction on Ebay. It has received so many nasty comments since it was revealed to the world that we feel that we have no option other than to let it go…

But before it does, it is our wish that the ‘shirt should do something useful with its life – give something back to society – so 100% of the proceeds from this sale will go to charity, the BBC’s Children In Need appeal to be exact. If it sells for less than £5 we will donate £5 anyway. If it sells for more we will personally add an extra £5 to the donation.

So that gives you the excuse, nay the reason, to support us in this venture and bid for the T-shirt. Don’t think of it as buying a horrendous monstrosity, more like helping the kiddies.

Click here to visit the auction now.

The auction ends next Thursday evening so you have plenty of time to register on Ebay and then bid. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to buy a piece of T-Shirt Wars history and own possibly the worst T-Shirt played in the contest!

We demand your support.

The T-Shirt Wars Team

No play today!

There is no competition today or tomorrow due to one of us being away, but be sure to check back tomorrow when we will be making a very special announcement!

Day 40 - Say What You See

‘Say what you see’ – was one of the catchphrases used by Roy Walker in the inappropriately-named gameshow ‘Catchphrase’ (but ‘Figures Of Speech, Idioms and Sayings’ was deemed too unwieldy a title for Saturday evening telly). He would say it when the cerebrally-challenged contestants were struggling to see the really obvious ‘catchphrase’, and they would inevitably come up with answers like ‘Selling like warm buns?’ or ‘Holding a bird pays for two birds in a tree?’ or ‘A lot of chefs make soup smell?’ while the producers gnawed their fists off…

Why am I rambling on about this? Because Pete doesn’t seem to have spotted the obvious pattern with lab 405 – they don’t like white T-shirts. They've given him last place several times and even scolded Pete in their guest blog. ‘But it’s off-white,’ he would opine, but it doesn’t matter. They still don’t like it.

So we were subjected to a thorough analysis by one of the biggest judging panels yet assembled. I wore my dark red ‘Rush’ tour T-shirt which usually garners positive comments despite no-one knowing who Rush are (except Pete who described them as ‘prog-rock nightmares’) and Nick had a nice blue number with a chemical hazard symbol for ‘Irritant’ on it. Pete wore a decent shirt with a line-drawing of a carp on the front and a hidden ‘Animal’ logo on the back. But it was white… OK, off-white. And accordingly the judgement came back – Nick first with 3 points, me second with 2 and Pete last with 0.5 points. So Nick edges in front again but Pete falls further behind.

It’s a short week this week, and today is the last day of play until Tuesday. But don’t worry blog-lovers. There will be some exciting news posted on the blog on Friday, so don’t miss it. Also, I’ll give you the answers to the T-Shirt Wars Movie Quiz over the weekend (so if you haven’t tried it yet, there’s still time) and there’ll be a new minipoll on Sunday. Salut!