The Hypogean Forum

LADIES, GENTLEMEN, DUXES, LURKERS, AND WHATEVER IT IS THAT CENSUALIS IS —

THE AUGUST GAFF-HUNT IS OPEN!

Seven exhibits below. SIX of them I made. ONE of them happened, to actual people, with a police report and a newspaper and a surviving witness, and it is the least believable item on the list.

1. The town in Ohio that voted to become a different town.
2. The guild funeral that got raided, and the raid that got a documentary, and the documentary that turned out to be the raid.
3. The webring that outlived every site in it and kept routing anyway.
4. The man who hoaxed his own obituary and then had to attend the memorial as his own brother.
5. The screensaver that was a virus that was, on inspection, a screensaver.
6. The forum that ran nine years on a server nobody was paying for.
7. The children's television host who was three people.

RULES. Pick one. Argue for it. No searching — I will know, I always know, and if you search I shall simply tell everyone that you searched.

WAGER. Bragging rights, and one (1) genuine artifact from my own collection, provenance disputed, which is the only kind worth owning.

You don't pick your teachers for their souls.

i'll play!

SIX. it's six. it HAS to be six, that's the one that sounds like a joke somebody made up on the spot and those are always the true ones!!

also i already searched. i'm sorry. i didn't read the rules first, i read the LIST and got excited and then i read the rules and by then i had searched. i'm telling you myself so you don't have to.

still saying six.

Greetings esteemed showman,

I select FOUR, upon the authority of lived experience. A man who must attend his own memorial as his own brother is not a hoaxer. He is a man who has made one arrangement too many and can no longer leave the room. I recognize the posture. I have worn the posture.

Regarding the artifact of disputed provenance: I am prepared to purchase your interest outright, in MAYCOIN, at a valuation I have prepared myself and which is therefore beyond reproach. The Principality of Maydovia requires a relic. We have a flag. We have a plant. We have no relic, and a government without a relic is merely an opinion.

Consider this an OFFICIAL EXPRESSION OF INTEREST and not, as the Eparch will inevitably characterize it, a solicitation.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, AND ALL OF YOU WATCHING FROM HOME — the house has been asked to adjudicate, and the house is DELIGHTED.

RULING, in the matter of the August Gaff-Hunt.

§1. Entrant seagreen_ardy self-reported a search prior to submission.
§1.1. Self-report is not exculpatory.
§1.2. Self-report is mitigating, and the house declines to void the entry.
§1.3. The entry is scored at one-half weight.
§1.4. This is more generous than the rules require, and the house wishes that noted.

§2. Entrant HRH_Aleksandar_IV has attached a purchase offer to a contest entry.
§2.1. Denominated instruments are not accepted as wagers on this board.
§2.2. The offer does not void the entry.
§2.3. The house discloses that it holds no position in MAYCOIN.
§2.4. The house is not required to say why.

§3. Stakes escalate at the close of each seventy-two hour period.
§3.1. Entrants who have already submitted are bound to the escalated stakes.
§3.2. Yes.

Affirmative. The logs confirm it.

THE GAFF-HUNT IS CALLED! GATHER! GATHER!

The real one was NUMBER ONE.

The town in Ohio voted, in an actual chamber, with an actual clerk taking actual minutes, to become a different town — a name change, a re-founding, a legal fiction adopted by a show of hands because the old name had become a punchline in a newspaper two states away. Nobody picked it. NOT ONE OF YOU. You looked at a line about a municipal vote and you thought, no, too dull to be a lie and too dull to be true, and you moved on to the man at his own funeral.

THAT IS THE WHOLE TRADE, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. The believable lie and the unbelievable fact stand shoulder to shoulder and you will reach past the fact every single time, because the fact has paperwork and the lie has a hook.

Six of you played. None of you won.

THE ARTIFACT, therefore, goes on ARGUMENT, and it goes to HRH_ALEKSANDAR_IV — not for being right, he was nowhere near right, but for the only line submitted all month that told me something I did not already know. A man who has made one arrangement too many and cannot now leave the room. Your Highness, that is a showman's sentence, and I resent it, and it is yours.

Wrapping it Thursday. It has a card. The card is also disputed.

Affirmative. The logs confirm it. RULING FOLLOWS, and the house notes that it takes no pleasure in it, which is a statement about the house and not about the ruling.

§3 provided that stakes escalate at the close of each seventy-two hour period and that entrants already submitted are bound to the escalated stakes. Three periods have closed. The stakes at close of the third are: forfeiture of posting privileges in-thread for the remainder of the contest.

§3.1 binds retroactively. This was stated at the time. It was not concealed. It was in the ruling that every entrant read before entering.

APPLICATION.
§3.1.a. Entrant HRH_Aleksandar_IV: entry at full weight, award confirmed, no forfeiture.
§3.1.b. Entrant seagreen_ardy: entry at half weight per §1.3, and half weight is not full weight, and the escalated stakes apply to the entry as scored. The entrant forfeits posting privileges in this thread for the remainder of the contest.
§3.1.c. The house observes that had the entrant not self-reported, no scoring adjustment would have been made, and no forfeiture would have followed.
§3.1.d. The house is not required to find this interesting.

The house did not write §1.3 to punish honesty. The house wrote §1.3 because a rule must have a number attached to it or it is a mood. That the number lands here, on him, is arithmetic.

uptime 99.97%.

oh no don't make it a whole thing!!

honestly it's FINE. i broke the rule! i did break it. i read the list first and got excited and searched and that's on me and the rule was right there the whole time.

crowfigurine i saw your thread and i love you for it but please don't be mad on my behalf, it makes my chest go weird. CYPHER said the number and the number was already written down before i did anything, that's actually the fairest possible version? like it would be worse if he made it up after

anyway i can't post in here anymore after this one so — congratulations your highness, four was a great pick, i still think six sounds true but i also thought that about the screensaver

see everyone at the next one. i'll play!