Leaderboard

Twenty seven teams in contention Game is now underway but verification is still outstanding on about half the teams. Hits are now legitimate so let me know if any of yours go and I will take account of death dates during the verification process Thank you to everyone who submitted a team

While Biblio gets all the admin done for Round 6, time to have a look back at how previous rounds are progressing before we get engrossed in another Scavenger Hunt! I’m noting significant updates since January 2023, when Round 5 started… (and it may take a couple of posts!) Game 1: June 2016-September 2017 Several players have completed the game via a different method in the past 18 months. @Handrejka completed her House of Lords Category with the death of Betty Boothroyd in February 2023 and @ImNotHades did likewise with the death of the 29th Earl of Crawford a month later. @CaptainChorizo followed suit in June 2023 with the death of 3rd Viscount Tenby. In July 2023, @Switch completed the game for a second time with the death of Tony Bennett seeing off all 5 of his #1 Hit Artists. The sad death of Richard Franklin in December saw @RadGuy score a hit in the Doctor Who category meaning he completed All 5 categories and won for a second time, while Handy scored her final Doctor Who death at the same time, meaning she’d completed a second full category, becoming the first person to win the game 4 times over (and she hadn’t completed once when the game actually ended!). And Ysanne Churchman’s death a few days ago was a Unique Pick for Switch, which allowed him to win again for 3 Uniques, completing the game all 3 ways. 9 of the 15 players who entered the original Scavenger Hunt have completed the game by all 3 methods now and 14 of the 15 have won at least once. Only poor @time, who has only had 9 of his 25 original picks die so far, has yet to finish Round 1, still needing one of Tony Caunter, Julian Glover, Frazer Hines, Milton Johns and Jean Marsh (all Dr Who alumni) to fall as his quickest method of completion. No one has successfully killed off all 25 of their picks yet, with me (@RoverAndOut) top of the pile with 22/25 (Jean Marsh, Lady Saltoun and Plas Johnson my remaining standers), closely followed by @Death Impends (21/25) and @Toast (20/25). Highest category for deaths across the entire game span is House of Lords with 34, followed by Doctor Who (25), #1 Hit Artists (20), Test Match Cricketers (18) and US Presidential Candidates (9 – none of whom is Jimmy Carter STILL!). Game 2: March 2018-June 2020 Since January 2023, there have been 21 further scoring hits in the Round 2 categories. This has allowed 2 further players to complete this round of the game, both in July 2023: Arnaldo Forlani’s death (EU Leaders) saw @Spade_Cooley score a hit in all 5 categories, while Tony Bennett’s demise (Grammy Winners) allowed @FixedBusiness to complete by the same method. They finish in 14th and 15th place! In April 2023, April Stevens’ death allowed Death Impends to be the first person to complete Round 2 by all 3 possible methods, as all 5 of her Grammy Winners had fallen. Toast became the second to achieve this feat, after Burt Bacharach (Grammy Winners) became her third Unique Pick to fall in February 2023 and then in April 2024, Josip Manolic was her final EU Leader to die. He was also Fixed Business’s last EU Leader to fall, so he completed for a second time, less than a year after completing for the first time. But before him, Time won for a second time (more success in Round 2 than Round 1!) when Sinead O’Connor (Grammy Winners) became his 3rd Unique Pick to pass. 7 of the 15 players to start this round have completed the game by 2 methods, only 2 have completed by all 3 methods. And everybody has completed the game at least once, with Spade and Fixed Business being the last 2 last July! Toast has the most overall hits with 19 of her 25 having died, while me (Rover) and @Sir Creep are close behind with 16/25 dead. Most profitable category in this round so far has been Grammy Winners (31), followed by EU Leaders (19), Kevin Bacon Co-Stars (17), World Title Winning Boxers (13) and Dallas Stars (12). Game 3: September 2020-May 2021 Continuing the theme of Round 3, which was a very speedy game due to a massacre of James Bond Stars, there have been a further 32 hits since January 2023 in this round. This has enabled a further 12 completions of the game, 6 of them completing the game for the first time! The death of Gianluca Vialli (World Cup Footballers) last January allowed @An Fear Beag to complete the game by a third and final method with a 3rd Unique Pick dying. He became the second to complete all 3 methods in this round. By the end of the same month, someone else had had a third Unique hit, and that was Time, with the death of Odd Borre (Eurovision Performers), which made him the 12th person to complete Round 3! 13th spot went to esteemed game runner @Bibliogryphon with the death of Kenzaburo Oe (Nobel Prize Winners) in March 2023, which was his third Unique Pick too. 14th spot went to @Great Uncle Bulgaria via the same method, with the death of Toto Cutugno (Eurovision Performers) in August 2023. In November 2023, @theoldlady became the 15th placed finisher in Round 3, with the passing of Henry Kissinger (Nobel Prize Winners). The next 4 completes were all for Whole Categories being completed, and they were all re-completes rather than new finishers: January 2024’s death of Mario Zagallo saw the final death in the World Cup Footballers category for both Death Impends and Toast, which was a second completion for Death Impends and a third for Toast, although she’d already completed by Whole Category in the Bond Category! The deaths of Kurt Hamrin and Jorge Toro in February were also in the World Cup category and saw Captain Chorizo and @msc respectively both complete for the second time. The same month, the death of Roger Guillemin (Nobel Prize Winners) saw @chilean way complete the game, finishing in 16th place. It also saw a first Nobel Prize hit for Captain Chorizo, who became the third person to complete Round 3 by all 3 methods! And before the month was out, Michael Culver (Bond Actors) died, which was, astonishingly, @Dying Probably’s first hit in the Bond category, which allowed him to complete in 17th place. Just one person has completed since then – me! My speculative punt on Mohammed Faris (Space Fliers) finally paid off and he gave me a third Unique Pick, allowing me to complete for a second time – it’s the first time I’ve ever been able to win by this method as I didn’t have 3 Uniques in Rounds 1 and 2! 3 players have completed Round 3 by all 3 methods and 5 more have completed twice. 17 of the 19 players have completed at least once, with @YoungWillz still needing a Space Flier (Vance Brand, Charlie Duke, Joseph Kerwin, Pyotr Klimuk or Ken Mattingly) to complete, and @YorkshireBanker needing either a Eurovision Performer (Romauld Figuier, Siw Malmqvist, Massiel, Simone de Olivieira or Iva Zanicchikaicek) or one of his 11 (ELEVEN) Unique Picks to die to get him to the finish line. Most hits in this round belongs to champion @Banana, with 21 of his 25 having fallen, closely followed by An Fear Beag (20) and @Grim Up North (18). Most prolific category in this round has been World Cup Footballers (23), followed by Nobel Prize Winners (17), James Bond Actors (15), Eurovision Performers (14) and Space Fliers (14). Incredibly, since the game ended in May 2021, there have only been 5 scoring hits in the James Bond category, compared to a whopping 10 in the 9 months of gameplay from September 2020 to May 2021 – how’s my luck when picking the categories?! Will put the Round 4 update in a separate post, as it's quite big (obviously, more of those are still alive than earlier rounds, so more hits!)

Whoops! The Card Roulette Table needed an extra dusting, given how long it has been in storage. So here is the draw, and the updated leaderboard will follow: Timestamp: 2024-08-01 11:09:10 UTC

Israel's military says it has confirmed that Mohammed Deif is dead after a strike in Khan Yunis last month.

American tennis player Hugh Stewart (Wiki) dead at 96 He played his collegiate tennis at the University of Southern California and won the doubles title at the 1951 NCAA Tennis Championships partnering Earl Cochell and the following year won the singles title at the 1952 NCAA Tennis Championships. At the Pacific Coast Championships in 1953 he was a doubles runner-up with Enrique Morea to Tony Trabert and Vic Seixas.

She has also had an extraordinary number of pets die while in her care. There is a quite awful celebrity gossip website called Tattle with threads dedicated to her - the majority of posters are twats however there are a few that have seemingly dedicated their lives to documenting all the bullshit and lies this piece of shit comes out with, and it makes for an interesting read. Katie Price is not all she makes herself out to be. The sooner she is in prison the better for everyone in her sphere.

Actually read an article in the Guardian Magazine on Saturday about something very similar called The Knock: an account of a man being arrested for possessing very similar images from both his and his wife's viewpoint. He was actually more severe than Huw in that he installed software on his devices to explore the dark web and find some really disturbing stuff. The article stated that most such cases don't involve bad people, they involve bad decisions, usually related to an extreme interest in porn, which has become so extreme you end up in illegal territory. They know it's wrong but they can't stop, or they keep returning to it. In a case like this (and I stress that this is based on what is currently known, not the "more that comes out" that you suggest without proof), he hasn't made any illegal images, he hasn't distributed any illegal images to anybody else, he has not installed any illegal software on his devices to search for this content, he has taken interest in these images, consumed them, done nothing to stop the man from sending them or reported him and kept it quiet to protect his own reputation and career. And for all of that, he will rightly be punished, possibly with custodial time (I've not looked into the likely sentences) and with the loss of his career and reputation. The reason it matters is that we need to stick to the facts and we need to have different levels of severity so that the truly reprehensible individuals (like the man he was talking to) are given appropriately severe sentences for the damage they've caused and the danger they pose. Returning to the article to close, apparently in 2022, the police were arresting 850 people every month for online sexual offending, and that won't all be child abuse images like these, but a decent chunk I imagine would be. This is hardly an isolated case, and understanding the reasons surely helps in preventing it from happening, rather than just writing them all off as disgraceful individuals who deserve the book thrown at them without any nuance.

8/1/2024 64 Ultravox - Dancing with Tears in My Eyes 43 Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time 40 Bronski Beat - Smalltown Boy 35 Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill 33 Giorgio Moroder & Philip Oakey - Together In Electric Dreams 33 Queen - I Want to Break Free 33 Tina Turner - What’s Love Got to Do With It +4 25 Madonna - Like a Virgin -6 14 Tina Turner - We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)

YOU WHAT?!?!

1/8/2024 66 Lewis Capaldi — Someone You Loved 56 Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper — Shallow 52 Lil Nas X — Old Town Road 52 Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa — One Kiss +4 30 Benny Blanco, Halsey & Khalid — Eastside -4 30 Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello — Señorita 27 Ava Max — Sweet But Psycho 17 Stormzy — Vossi Bop 16 Ariana Grande — Thank U, Next -2 12 Calvin Harris & Sam Smith — Promises

Show what liars Hamas men are. Deif is a huge blow to the organization, he was kind of a national "hero". I don't think there will be mercy for Sinwar, even if he surrenders.

I wouldn't mind being the filling of a Marchand sandwich. I'd have his French stick any time.

1/8/2024 66 Lewis Capaldi — Someone You Loved 56 Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper — Shallow 52 Lil Nas X — Old Town Road 48 Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa — One Kiss +4 34 Benny Blanco, Halsey & Khalid — Eastside -6 30 Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello — Señorita 27 Ava Max — Sweet But Psycho 18 Ariana Grande — Thank U, Next 17 Stormzy — Vossi Bop 12 Calvin Harris & Sam Smith — Promises

1/8/24 64 Ultravox - Dancing with Tears in My Eyes 46 Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time 38 Tina Turner - What’s Love Got to Do With It 36 Bronski Beat - Smalltown Boy 33 Giorgio Moroder & Philip Oakey - Together In Electric Dreams 33 Queen - I Want to Break Free -6 31 Madonna - Like a Virgin +4 27 Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill 20 Tina Turner - We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome) 

Norma Padgett Upshaw, a White woman who falsely accused four Black men of rape in the Jim Crow-era South in 1949, has died. She was 92. The group came to be called the “Groveland Four”. In 2019, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued full posthumous pardons to the four. https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/31/us/groveland-four-jim-crow-exonerated/index.html

I read here that Leon Gautier, who died last year at 100 was the last surviving French participant of the Normandy Landings Jacques Lewis (Wiki), French resistance fighter and veteran of Normandy Landings, older than him, dead at 105

Thanks. Yeah, last time I checked (yesterday) I was VERY curious about him not having tweeted for 5 days. Well. I think that pretty much settles it? The game was between "acute cases" (wannamaker) and "in hospice for months" people (max_bossetti). It does look like the acute case of Dave Cokin now decides the championship. Cokin was a Las Vegas radio host and legend of the betting community. He also occasionally wrote articles for the Las Vegas newspapers, which means that he might get a Yahoo obit, and would QO for the DDP. He had his own website, too, and by all accounts was a respected member of this shadowy industry. Maybe Nate Silver will tweet something about him? Cokin had been battling cancer for over a year and just retired in June correctly expecting to not live much longer. Max_bossetti now only has Joanna Paul-Robie as a one-hit-winner. And there's no Fergie time here.... wannamaker 8-4 max_bossetti

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/news-gazette/name/pauline-cochrane-obituary?id=55732687

A special birthday announcement is incoming:

"Mama" Cass Elliot died on this day 50 years ago, aged 32. - Elliot's real name was Ellen Cohen, and took her stage name in high school. She would drop out in order to pursue her dreams of becoming an entertainer. - Elliot would act in productions of The Music Man before turning to music, and formed a band called The Triumvirate in 1963, which soon was renamed to 'The Big 3'. Elliot would then form The Mugwumps in 1964, which also included John Sebastian (who co-founded The Lovin' Spoonful after The Mugwumps broke up). - Elliot and fellow Mugwumps member Denny Doherty would then join the band The New Journeymen, which was then renamed to The Mamas and the Papas- most notable for the songs "Monday, Monday" and "California Dreamin'": Cass would soon become the standout vocalist of the group, and by 1968 she got top billing on their songs- with the band being referred to 'Mama Cass with the Mamas and the Papas' by this time: The band would break up in 1971. - Elliot made her solo debut in October 1968, but her first show became an infamous disaster when she developed a fever backstage and delivered a subpar performance. It is believed she had taken heroin shortly before the show started. - In the 1970s, Elliot would often appear on talk shows and variety shows, notably guest hosting on Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show once. She was also a co-host of The Music Scene, and would voice an animated version of herself in an episode of The New Scooby-Doo Movies. - Elliot died from a heart attack (likely due to her history of obesity), although it was once rumored she died from choking on a ham sandwich. She was residing in Harry Nilsson's apartment- where four years later, The Who's Keith Moon would die in the same bedroom as her also at 32 years old.

Yes, it doesn't count. It seems mostly copy/pasted from the legacy obit, i.e. it's a paid obituary. "Please join us in celebrating..." Btw, the Silvio Luiz obit seems a bit flimsy but I couldn't yet find any conclusive evidence that it's a simple google translate from something else, or that it's AI-generated. So for now, I assume that it's just poorly done but it counts. Still, that site seems to be the only one providing something english - and so far, not auto-translated. But I am open to objections. On the other hand.... while it was very strange that an influencer with +500.000 followers (That's not just Cup-qualifying but DDP-qualifying!) didn't receive an obit, the person behind the account, i.e. Tyler Powell, did receive a QO: https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2024/05/man-dies-of-injuries-after-fall-in-giraffe-enclosure-at-deer-tracks-junction.html The obit doesn't mention the social media account - but for this game it still counts, so the arghton vs. wannamaker game is basically a competition of suboptimal obits: Perhaps 0-4 GuyFromFuture arghton 4-4 wannamaker Banana 0-0 msc DevonDeathTrip 0-4 max_bossetti

Yes, I would say so. Big turnaround in your game. No detailed obits until I'm back from Milan. wannamaker 11-7 MariNisia

Ditto. Fantastic work.

Was just trawling obits for the man - he's hit the woefully low standards of Deathrace q/o and helped one team cash in a joker, seen nowt of DDP worthiness yet.

here is a photo of Jimmy Carter from late November https://www.reuters.com/world/us/jimmy-carter-makes-rare-public-appearance-his-wifes-memorial-2023-11-28/