We thought we'd stick with a daily theme for next week's tournaments. By the way, if you have a suggestion/demand for a theme, just add it in the comments or @ringorang on the Twitters.

1. Monday - King of Pop: We thought the best way to honor the Gloved One was with a whole tournament dedicated to the man, the moves, and the music. No doubt you'll watch at least one retrospective of the man this weekend. Take notes.
   
2. Tuesday - 80's Movie Quotes: The 80s are awesome. We'll have to revisit the song lyrics one day, but until then, we'll challenge your knowledge of radical movie quotes. "This is heavy!"
   
3. Wednesday - Famous Figures of Folklore: This Sunday is actually Paul Bunyan Day, so we thought we'd gather up some of his mythic friends from around the globe.
   
4. Thursday - Geography: Did you know the Far East is actually to the west of us? I know, right!
   
5. Friday - American Revolution: What better way to kick off a weekend of charred meat and exploding fireworks?

Happy Weekend!

As Week 32 winds down, I wanted to give everybody a heads up for next week. We're switching it up a wee bit and doing themed questions every day. The schedule will be as follows:

Monday - Wimbledon

Anything and everything about the history and players of tennis' third Grand Slam event (not-so-coincidentally, the 2009 Wimbledon Championships begin today).

Tuesday - 80's Song Lyrics

In lieu of the standard questions will be lyrics excerpted from a hit 1980s song. The answer choices will be song titles. Match 'em up! We're only using songs that peaked at #1 on either the US or UK singles charts (if not both) during this decade of awesomeness.

Wednesday - James Bond

Because he's cool.

Thursday - Food

Because cuisine is the bedrock of human civilization.

Friday - "Bird" is the word

Every question or answer will revolve around "bird." The animal, or a person named Bird, or a term used in bird watching... you get the idea.

...until then, Happy Father's Day!

This might be perhaps the easiest of the achievement contests that we have planned.

But then again, when I was young and a scrub in the classroom, my dad would tell me "You have to work hard to earn an F." I didn't get it but I realized that teachers try to avoid giving kids F's because it looks bad on them.

Anyway, here's your challenge: Finish a day with 0 dallions. You must play at least five Q's to qualify. If there happens to be more than one person who reaches this epic feat, we will have a drawing to determine the winner.

The prize is a Ringorang T-shirt.

Just because we've announced this doesn't mean we've canceled the other achievement contests. There are still some up for grabs:

* -- Score 450 dallions on one Q

* -- Score -300 dallions on one Q

* -- Finish a day with exactly 500 dallions

The next Ringorang achievement challenge is underway. Much like the other ones, this challenge will go until someone completes the task.

Your goal is to finish a day with exactly 500 dallions.

Yep, we've upped the difficulty a little bit on these challenges. It's still not as extreme as the +450 dallions on one question, but we believe it's tough.

We'll be rooting everyone on to get this challenge, so good luck!

UPDATE: Forgot to put the prize. Whoops. The winner will receive a Ringorang T-shirt.

We're catching up on our daily drawings, so let the fireworks begin!

Wednesday: AMorris525
Thursday: ygetup
Friday: Chance
Monday: Candiluu

Also, congrats to our two achievement winners so far!

NCFriend passed the 1-to-9 dallions challenge, finishing Monday's contest with 4 dallions.

Martian1 was one of several to finish Monday with a 50 percent win percentage.

NCFriend will receive a $25 Old Navy gift card. Everyone else will receive a Ringorang T-shirt!

Stay tuned later today when we announce the next challenge. And by the way, the other challenges are still up for grabs!

Hey everyone, aside from the Achievements that we've started today (you can read more about those here), we're going to run another contest.

It's really simple: Play everyday this week. Everyone that does will be entered into a drawing, where the winner receives a Ringorang T-shirt.

This is separate from the daily drawing, where you have to play at least three questions. You're entered into the drawing even if you win a daily challenge.

Good luck everyone; this is going to be a fun week for those trying the challenges or trying to win.

A quick clarification about yesterday's tournament, because I know some of you are wondering what happened.

Apeminkie finished the competition in first place, squeaking out a win over mwilliams1319. I was following the final hours of the competition, wondering how it would play out. And then when Apeminkie prevailed, I had a perplexed look, wondering if we had to rethink everything. It kinda looked like this ...


I'm really trying to put you in the basket from 15 feet away.

However, because Apeminkie already won on Monday, he was disqualified from winning another Ringorang T-shirt. Champions can keep on playing, and we encourage that, but you can only win once.

So therefore, mwilliams1319 is Thursday's winner and will receive the Ringorang T-shirt. He will also be out of the running for today's competition. You may now raise your hands like this:


"Do you believe in magic?"

To close out, I came up with the concept of the "winning then you're out" clause in the daily competitions. I didn't know if that would be fair in a competitive sense. However, I've seen it happen in other places (and I've been the victim of it, as I told the team here yesterday, but I'll save that story for a future time because it's hilarious).

Do you all like the win-and-out concept? Or, would you make it 2-wins-and-out? Or, maybe more days? Keep in mind a couple things: Apeminkie is the first to "win" twice on the same week (we've had past champs keep playing, and they haven't won). Also, Friday winners can play on Monday, because the board resets.

The drawing for Thursday's shirt will be later in the day.

I'm sure everyone playing has personal game milestones other than winning. We've always wanted to reward you for these small accomplishments. A long-term solution is in the works that is (if I may) quite ambitious in scope, so in the meantime we thought we'd do it on a smaller scale.

Achievements will be active starting with the Question Everything Daily this Monday, June 15th. The first person to achieve any one of said achievements will receive a prize. If more than one player achieves an achievement at the same time, then we do a random drawing of those who have achieved it for the prize. Once one player has attained the achievement, that achievement is inactive until all other achievements are... ahem... achieved.

We'll have seven total achievements for this initial run. When all seven have been rendered inactive, we'll regroup here in HQ and decide when to do it again. There is no time limit.

For example, let's say Achievement #1 is: Use the word "achievement" 10 times in a single blog post.

(...er, achievement!)

Boom! As I have just accomplished this task, I win the prize (in this case, keeping my job) and no one else can achieve this until further notice.

Of course, the real achievements will all be game related. They are:

1. Score 450 dallions on a single Q. Which means a 3-in-a-row bonus with a perfect score on that third Q. You must do a screen capture and send it to us (e-mail or twitpic). Prize: $25 Old Navy gift card.
2. Finish a daily contest with your total dallions between 0 and 10. That is, a final daily dallion count of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9. Prize: $25 Old Navy gift card.
3. Finish a daily contest with your correct rate at exactly 50% (this is regardless of how many questions you play). Prize: Ringorang T-shirt.
4. Score -300 dallions on a single Q. You must get it wrong. And again, you must screen capture and send it to us to verify. Prize: Ringorang T-shirt.
   
5. Finish a day with exactly 500 dallions.
   
6. Finish a day with exactly 0 dallions, having played at least 5 Qs.
   
7. To be announced on Friday, June 19th.
   

For now, there are no restrictions as to how many any one player can achieve, nor do these achievements restrict your ability to win our daily prize or daily raffle. Of course, most of these will take you off the leaderboard right quick, but we think it'll be fun.

Congrats to Apeminkie, our sixth different winner of the daily challenges. It looked like Toryn was going to prevail for the second time since we changed the format, but Apeminkie took hold of first place for four of the final five hours.

Alrighty, you know the drill; Apeminkie is out of the running for the rest of the week. Everyone else can now storm to first place and win that Ringorang T-shirt.

Also, there was something I wanted to know. Are there some questions that stick with you the whole day? And I'm not talking about just in the competitive, "That Q cost me the win." What makes a question stick in your head? Is it because you knew the answer and you goofed? Or, because it's a topic that you don't like? Or, it's because a topic that you really like?

With the first week of the daily tournaments in the bag, let us know what you think.



And if you haven't joined the rest of us in the Ringoverse, be sure to do so.

Finally, congrats to itsthedem for winning a back-and-forth affair on Friday. Itsthedem is eligible to play this week, since the weekly results reset. All of last week's winners are eligible to play this week.

You know when you wake up in the morning and turn on the television and it's showing the end of an unknown movie or a sporting event? Whenever that happens to me, I wonder what happened in the whole time I was asleep.

That's how I feel this morning.

I missed Wednesday's challenge because I was at E3 playing Madden 10. So I couldn't see the progression of the scores by hour (which I'm tracking and I will make mention sometime later this month to get your feedback).

The only thing I can say is ... what happened to the scores?

In the first two daily challenges, there were only 13 (Tuesday) and 17 (Monday) people with 1,000 dallions. That was more than double on Wednesday.

Although I track all of the players regardless of score, I keep a big focus on those that have at least 500 dallions. And there were more than double of what it was the previous two days.

So let me and the team know: What happened on Wednesday that didn't happen on Monday and Tuesday? Were the questions easier? Did you get to play more? Are you used to the format now?

We'll have a chat later today on the Ringoverse. If you haven't signed up there, be sure to do so because that's the only way you can join us.

Oh, and for tournament's sake, congrats to Scott From Wyoming for winning (has to feel good after Tuesday's runner-up finish). As he joins the winners circle, keep in mind that he is out of the running for the rest of the week.

Good luck everyone, the competition starts now.

Well, let's see here. I saw this scenario happen about 4 months ago and while I tried to explain the side that most competitive players would take, I was told to not be so persistent in my opinion because one of our players was trying to make an opinion of his own and we have to play nice. And that player knows who he is.

What the heck am I talking about? I'm talking about this scenario:

You're in second place and within 300 dallions of first place. With 1 question to go, do you not do anything and let the other person determine fate? Or, do you make an attempt to answer the question, hoping the chips fall your way?

My belief is, you ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS answer the question. You never leave it up to the other person to determine your fate, especially since the winner receives a prize and second place receives nothing.

I think what happened was that Maryte, who led by 100 dallions with one question to go, played the question while Scott (in second place) did not. Maryte got it right, and it was game over. Now, if Maryte got it wrong (75 percent chance) then we're talking about this all differently.

But why do you want to leave things to the other person? Do as much as you can to win the competition.

Being a former competitive gamer, I could go on and on about this, but I'll do that in a later post.

OK, so here's today's info:

Maryte and Toryn are out of the running for the rest of the week because they won the competition. So if you see their names on the board, do not worry because they're ineligible to win again.

Have fun today!

Congrats to Toryn for winning Monday's competition. Toryn grabbed the lead after the 5 p.m. question and held on for the final two questions of the day to win the tournament.

But that doesn't mean we're done. It is a brand new day and that means another tournament has started. So, here's your chance to win a Ringorang T-shirt and join Toryn in this week's winner's circle.

Keep in mind that Toryn is out of the running for the rest of the week.

Toryn finished with 2,694 dallions. Whether that's the barometer or not remains to be seen; I predicted that the winner would have to have at least 2,900 dallions to win the competition. But it's a good starting point.

Let me and the team know what you think about Monday's tournament (aside from the duplicate question glitch, that is totally our fault and we apologize for that). Did 12 questions work for you? Was the competition more exciting or less exciting? Did one question cost you a chance at winning because it was a spor...uh, a topic you didn't like?

Also, thanks to everyone during yesterday's chat for letting us know what kind of themed topics we should do for a day or week. We're taking those into consideration and if we go forward in doing those, we'll try to tackle some of those topics.

Alrighty!?!?!

Anything else, leave a comment here or in the feedback forum.

Thanks and good luck today!

UPDATE: We will do the drawing at 11 a.m. PT