The game is based on predicting the deaths of celebrities in the coming year. Each player comes up with a list of twenty five predictions, and earns points for those which come true during the course of the game.
A complete submission includes:
No player may actively make any prediction come true.
The phone number and address are for administrative purposes only. Only your name and email address will be published on the web page. (And they can be withheld from the web page if you like. I'll just substitute initials or something quirky like that. Your email address will still appear on all outbound bulk announcements to all the players.)
Pick 25 people whom you predict will die during the course of the year. List at least two alternates in case one of your 25 predictions comes true between the time you send your list and the start of the game. Lists must include date of birth of picks.
I've heard some complaints about choosing bogus names like Barney, so we're establishing that all predictions have to be real people. I think picking Barney is funny, too, but you can get the same chuckle by picking individual members of N'Sync. The same goes for picking animals, no matter how famous. Cheetah the monkey may still be alive in some Florida zoo, but that need not concern us!
Payment must be received by January 10, 2004. Because of the new scoring rules, there will be absolutely no flexibility on the deadline.
A specific amount of points will be allocated to every prediction, the same number for each. If a prediction comes true, the point allocation is evenly split among all players who made the prediction--including the Angel of Life, rounded to the nearest whole number.
The purpose is to give more points for coming up with predictions that other players don't also think of. As someone pointed out when William S. Burroughs died, predicting the death of a famous 90-year-old junkie doesn't require you to be all that clever. Dividing scores amongst the players who made a particular prediction means a good list will probably still have some obvious choices, but the real points will be for the more obscure predictions. And including the Angel of Life in the division of points is a bit of mathematical cleverness designed to keep the scores a bit more level at the high end.
In a simple example, say there are 10 players and every prediction is worth 600 points total. That means that the per-player score would be:
| Predicted by # players | Each player receives | Or |
| 1 | 600 / 2 | 300 points |
| 2 | 600 / 3 | 200 points |
| 3 | 600 / 4 | 150 points |
| 4 | 600 / 5 | 120 points |
| 5 | 600 / 6 | 100 points |
| 6 | 600 / 7 | 86 points |
| 7 | 600 / 8 | 75 points |
| 8 | 600 / 9 | 67 points |
| 9 | 600 / 10 | 60 points |
| 10 | 600 / 11 | 55 points |
In the case of a tie, the winners split the cash and the glory.
Nope. Our Angel of Life invented the role and has tenure. Sorry.
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