Aim Here

Yeah, usually it doesn't matter about the exact date, except if it's before or after the birthday or in December, so I'm a little slipshod about hitting the right date. In this case, it does matter because of the bonus situation.

The 'Players' worksheet in my results spreadsheet gives you an at-a-glance view of which of your picks is a solo or not (deep blue = solo, light blue = duo). In your case 8 solos, and 3 duos. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yfhdssUxqb8bZfMcgZKdPigZNqp83pJHRVdMR23MnyY/edit#gid=0

People seem to be ramping up their solo shots this year - from 442 to 517, with almost the same number of players. I don't know if it's that all the low-hanging fruit got picked last year and nobody knows who's going to die next, or they're actually putting in more research into the slightly-off-the-beaten-track picks. The two big risers in the popularity stakes are Bruce Willis, from 5 picks last year, to 30 this time round, while Esther Rantzen stops being a deadly duo, and gets a whopping 42 picks. Right at the top, experienced old Dead Pool hands Jimmy Carter (57), Rob Burrow(51) and Shannen Doherty(49) are still putting in a good showing, popularitywise. Long may they continue to do so! The two most similar teams this year are The_Craig and last year's runner-up psv_killie who share a whopping *eleven* picks between them. I suspect there's a good chance that it's only captain and vice-captain bonus points that will separate them this year.

Not to mention that a number of the police 'heroes' in Simon's books and who formed the basis for characters in his earlier shows later had their names mentioned in miscarriage of justice scandals. There is a corrective of sorts in 'We Own This City', Simon's later show about a real-life corrupt Baltimore police task force, where the show is less sympathetic to the individual police officers, shows them being far more corrupt than in THe Wire, and it shows the policing system as essentially unfixable.

The rules are that they can't be famous for being terminally ill. It's to weed out all those people who get in the news for doing a charity marathon before they croak, or for announcing they're off to guzzle a few glasses of Chateau Dignitas or for legal battles after their parents trying to stop the doctor turning off the life support system, that kind of thing. Some hitherto famous person who announces that they have stage four cancer or MND is perfectly fine as a pick.

Young, extremely ill, dies in the first few days of January. Derek has @Ned Nederlander pick written all over him.

I'm annoyed that I missed this thread. I'd have given a full ten points to Heimat (presumably getting it some notice on the score table) and a second place to the Wire (helping push it closer to the top spot), and given the unjustly forgotten Edge of Darkness at least some points. I'm also pondering Das Boot. Are you sure all the Das Boot votes were for the newer minseries rather than the 1980s version, which was an extended version of the movie and the format I remember first seeing it in?

Brigadier Frank Kitson, who wrote infamous counter-insurgency manuals advocating tactics such as 'counter-gangs' (using terrorist groups against insurgents) and 'pseudo-gangs' (forming fake insurgent groups to entrap activists), and who seemingly put those tactics in place when he ran the British Army in Northern Ireland during the disastrous early years of the Troubles, has died aged 91.

procedure obituary (readerisprogrammer : boolean; readersage : integer); begin writeln('Computer Scientist Niklaus Wirth, who died on January 1st'); writeln('was a famous name for computer programmers of a certain vintage'); if ((not readerisprogrammer) or (readersage < 50)) then begin writeln('He was famous for writing some ancient computer languages'); writeln('that you''ve never heard of and for advocating a style of'); writeln('writing computer programs in an orderly fashion that most'); writeln('programmers use today.'); end else begin writeln('He was most famous for developing Pascal, EULER and variants'); writeln('of ALGOL, as well as his advocacy of structured programming'); if (readersage < 50) then begin writeln ('You probably use structured programming in'); writeln('every computer program you write without even knowing it.'); end else begin writeln('He also coined the famous slogan ''GOTO Considered Harmful'''); writeln('often misattributed to Edsger Dijkstra'); end end end;

I can see either one or two mistakes, and happily, my top-spot place isn't one of them. Ben Cull seems to have conflicting birthday information; the Daily Mail puts him at 23, while the Mirror and Wikipedia put him at 24. It just means that sparky88 might be on 415 rather than 416. alta-pete is on the high-score table twice, at 139 and 199. The 199 score is the right one. Happy with the win, though it was about the tightest one possible. I'm still half expecting to turn on the news at Easter and hear that the body of 70s Crackerjack star Don Maclean was found in a bedsit in Cricklewood after the neighbours complained about the smell and his demise has been forensically backdated to New Year's Eve. Thanks to Miguel for an excellently run competition, as always, and to all my picks, especially Ryan O' Neal for punching far higher above his weight than any octagenarian should ever be expected to, in this game.

Patrick Stewart didn't even have hair back then. He went bald in the early sixties. He's wearing a wig in Claudius.

You might be mistaken. Maybe some other Camilla, or some other Batman.

Among other things, yes.

The real Dead Pool contest is whether Miguel can get his team lists out before Ned Nederlander scores his first hit.

I wasn't going to tell him until after midnight.

Wrong thread. Right now, the captains are getting their photos taken, the goalie is chucking his towel and bottle of lucozade sport behind the goal line and the little kid mascots are being marched off the pitch.

The Tidy ending was in March this year.

Division B Table and Fixtures Division B P W D L Pts redVtop 18 17 1 0 52 pleslie999 19 16 1 2 49 PnbMathematics 20 12 2 6 38 Basedgodsa1nt 18 12 1 5 37 Dandies1983 15 9 1 5 28 mackieboz 17 7 1 9 22 N5_Spur 19 7 1 11 22 RBWatson 17 6 1 10 19 markf268 14 4 0 10 12 DieHardDoonhamer 17 4 0 13 12 Dustysghost 20 4 0 16 12 XCTR94 16 2 1 13 7 Round 21 redVtop vs markf268 mackieboz vs pleslie999 Basedgodsa1nt vs DieHardDoonhamer XCTR94 vs Dustysghost Dandies1983 vs N5_Spur RBWatson vs PnbMathematics Round 22 mackieboz vs redVtop DieHardDoonhamer vs markf268 pleslie999 vs XCTR94 N5_Spur vs Basedgodsa1nt Dustysghost vs RBWatson PnbMathematics vs Dandies1983 These are the last sets of fixtures. From next week onwards, I'll be listing all the outstanding results and unplayed fixtures to catch up on.

Division A Table and Fixtures Division A P W D L Pts ancientnoise 16 14 2 0 44 DearyMe 16 14 1 1 43 The_Curmudgeon 17 12 2 3 38 AimHere 16 10 0 6 30 stewartmathers 17 9 0 8 27 KenDeans 17 6 2 9 20 AlbinoRov 17 4 2 11 14 invergowrie 17 3 4 10 13 AH13STU 9 3 0 6 9 beef2711 11 2 2 7 8 Arabjoe 13 2 2 9 8 The_kid1433 14 2 1 11 7 Round 21 invergowrie vs AlbinoRov DearyMe vs ancientnoise AimHere vs Arabjoe KenDeans vs AH13STU The_kid1433 vs beef2711 stewartmathers vs The_Curmudgeon Round 22 DearyMe vs invergowrie Arabjoe vs AlbinoRov ancientnoise vs KenDeans beef2711 vs AimHere AH13STU vs stewartmathers The_Curmudgeon vs The_kid1433 As usual, results and calculations are recorded on the spreadsheet at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YwODlp2A0TBMf2VuyjJox4ZaiyNKmLk37TH0_HrC-jk/

It's particularly annoying when after solving the puzzle, it doesn't redirect me! I have to redo the entire rotten post. And hit the rotten spamtrap again. I'm assuming that it doesn't like the repetitive format of the weekly chess league updates.

Looks like we're on track for a record-breaking year. Unless people are sending them in early, we should be on track for at least 150 teams.

Doesn't always work though. Ed Asner was so busy up until he died of old age that they released twelve films and TV shows that he'd been working on afterwards. And Richard O' Sullivan has been retired since 1996 and living it up in a care home since 2003.

We signed him by accident when he had one year left on a four-year contract, and somehow that turned into a three-year contract. Rocky Bushiri's agent is the second biggest miracle worker in Scottish fitba', after Steve Clarke.

What do you mean penalties aside? The penalties were crap too.