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Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Tube Challenge Hell!

OK, it's blogmania today but I've just come up with this (with a little help from my friend, and no, it wasn't Geoff given that it's a tube thing).

It's called the Chocolate Tube Challenge and here are the rules what I came up with:

1. The challenge is played by individual competitors; 10 would be an ideal number.

2. The game is played in rounds.

3. Round 1 - the competitors travel around the underground system on the same train until it arrives at a station with a chocolate machine on the platform. The position of the chocolate machine in round 1 should be directly opposite a set of train doors.

4. As soon as the doors open, one person runs from the train and attempts to purchase a chocolate bar from the machine and return to the train before the doors close. None of the other players are allowed to hold the doors for him or her and he or she must return to the train holding the chocolate bar in his or her possession. (See rule 15).

5. Players are allowed to use the correct change (50p) for faster transaction times.

6. Players continue taking it in turns at subsequent stations to run out and buy their chocolate. Round 2 will not begin until all the players have attempted to purchase a chocolate bar in round 1 and so on throughout the rounds.

7. Should a player not make it back onto a train before the doors close he or she will be eliminated from the game (and will have to find their way home, to the pub or back to join the others somewhere else).

8. Once a player has bought a bar of chocolate he or she must consume it immediately.

9. Once every player has had a turn at getting chocolate, round 2 begins. In this round players must alight from the train ONE SET OF DOORS further from the chocolate machine to make it more difficult.

10. Any player throwing up will be immediately disqualified.

11. If, for any reason a player returns to the train WITHOUT a chocolate bar (broken machine, wasn't fast enough, has no fingers so can't type in the number for Dairy Milk) then that player will not be allowed to take part in the next round but will have to wait for the round after that (meaning he'll have to run even further next time). Players can abandon their attempt and return to the train at any time but will suffer the "missing round" penalty. Confucious he say "No chocolate bar, no next round." The number of missed rounds must be noted down for later (see rule 14).

12. Every set of doors on a train counts as a "set of doors", not just the big double ones in the middle where such trains are used for the challenge. Players must choose a direction to move once round 1 is over and continue moving in that direction until the end of the challenge. Players may not move back towards the chocolate machine.

13. The winner is not simply the last person left at the end of the game. That's too easy. The winner is the person who collected and ate the most chocolate bars without throwing up, being locked out of a train or being arrested for dangerous platform behaviour. Once the last but one player has been eliminated and there is only one player left, that player MUST make an attempt from the door position attempted by the player before him. Regardless of whether he or she is successful, the winner will be determined as detailed above. This method also ensures that each remaining player gets a go in the current round.

14. Should two or more players be level on chocolate bars collected after the final round then their stats will be compared:

If one tying player has no failures to collect a chocolate car and the others do, he is the winner. Otherwise, the player with the smallest number of failures is the winner.

Should more than one tying player have the smallest number of failures, or more than one tying player have no failures then the number of missed rounds is taken into account.

The player with the fewest missed rounds is the winner. Should no tying players have any missed rounds then the game is tied between the players with no tying rounds.

If there are still two or more tying players with the same number of missed rounds then forget the whole thing and go down the pub. It's getting silly now and it's only a stupid game.

15. Players must purchase item number 11 - Dairy Milk from the vending machines. Any player returning to the train with any other chocolate bar will be disqualified.

16. Players may take their turn at any time during a round so long as they only make ONE attempt per round. The order in which players go in can therefore change between rounds as the winner is not simply the last one left (see rule 13).

17. Once a tube line has been chosen to travel on, all players must stay on that line to ensure the running distances from the doors remain synchronised.

18. Comments to this post suggesting rule changes will be ignored or, at best, replied to in a brusque fashion. It's MY idea so these are the rules. So ner! I may also tinker with the rules prior to this actually happening one day.

Obviously, there is no time limit to this. You just travel up and down your chosen line stopping at stations with machines. You will need to travel the line beforehand to work out the door positions for each station's machines and be in that position for each round at the station before.

Anyone up for it?


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