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Classics Finals started before the end of qualifying for the Main tournament. But I was already comfortably above the threshold to qualify for Finals, and realized that all I could do was shift my seeding some. So what could I do? I put in some games for the Blind Squirrel League's September-October league and maybe some monthly games. The September monthly tournament would have otherwise had its final ... well, the next day, but AJH wasn't going to be so crazy as to expect people to trek all the way to Fremont two days in a row. While the September monthlies would end their qualification period in September, the finals would be held in October, along with the October monthly finals and finals for the September-October league.

For people looking to secure their IFPA rankings ... well, suddenly this bit of downtime between the end of Classics qualifying and the start of Main finals became a really juicy chance to secure one's position. We've said before, AJH is some kind of mad genius for organizing tournaments.

I had thought the main tournament was four-player PAPA-style scoring among the top twelve finishers. Looking at the results on the International Flipper Pinball Association site, though, that can't be right. There's a five-way tie for what would be 9th through 13th places, and then a 14th, 15th, and 16th place finisher. Maybe it was the top 16 players finishing and people knocked out with the same total number of PAPA points got tied.

In any case, the essential bit is: I didn't win. Nor get to the finals. I would be in that five-way tie starting at 9th place, in there with bunny_hugger and MWS and bunny_hugger's ``rival'' KEC. (For obscure reason that's counted as a tie for 11th place.)

The results make this sound disappointing. It's not about the results, though. The day was great. A little crowded, dramatic, some big moments. A lot of chances to watch AJH doing absolute magic on Mystic. And some chances to play Wild Fyre, a solid-state Stern game from that era we can't get enough of these days.

We also got finally to eat at the Blind Squirrel, discovering what their flatbread pizzas are like. They haven't got as robust a vegetarian menu as the restaurant that used to be the venue for these things; that place was a proper diner, though. Still is, and it would be in principle easy enough just to take a break and go down there for an omelette or whatnot. We just didn't make the time.

And Mystic and Tri Zone would remain in the Blind Squirrel tavern. They weren't in the Blind Squirrel League games for September or October, but apparently AJH found it worthwhile to have a couple older games in the mix. Mystic would be put into the rotation for December's league games and monthlies, replacing Game of Thrones, to bunny_hugger's frustration. We had just assumed Game of Thrones was on the sheet, and she put up one of her best-ever scores before learning it was completely pointless except, of course, for the fun of having a great score. Her Mystic that time wasn't nearly so good and boy did I feel for that. But I am looking forward to more Blind Squirrel League games with the older and more eccentric games in rotation.

That said the IFPA is changing its rule sets next year to discourage the kinds of leagues that Blind Squirrel is part of. It may not be the great points mine it was this year. Maybe. AJH is a genius at generating IFPA points, though. If there's a way to do it he will. Maybe we'll get there around Michigan's Adventure trips.

Trivia: From 1795 Royal Navy issue of grog included a dose of lemon or lime juice, providing needed vitamin C. Contemporaneously to this the French Navy replaced sailors' wine ration with eau-de-vie for long cruises, cutting the slight vitamin C supply. Source: A History of the World in Six Glasses, Tom Standage.

Currently Reading: After Apollo? Richard Nixon and the American Space Program, John M Logsdon.

PS: The End 2016 Mathematics A To Z: Voronoi Diagram.

The last weekend of September brought us to Fremont again. We'd likely have gone there even if we weren't using the Blind Squirrel League to shore up our state pinball championship rankings. It was the weekend of the Harvest Festival. Considering it's a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, literally unconnected to even Muskegon by any major or direct roads, Fremont has a lot going on. In early December we picked an arbitrary Friday to go and do some Blind Squirrel League points-mining and that day happened to be one that some kind of winter parade was held. (We didn't see it; I'm pretty sure it went down some other street or else we were incredibly oblivious even for us.)

This was also the event that kept us away from the pinball tournament in Flint. That one was a ``Classics'' tournament that we'd otherwise have absolutely gone to. All electromechanical and older solid-state games? Unusual or rare games with that old-fashioned charm that usually treats us so surprisingly well? Or at least levels the difference between our skill level and the really first-rate players? But that was set before, somehow, the Harvest Festival dates were known and the conflict was unavoidable and we went, with reluctance, to the event that the whole west side's pinball scene would visit.

In previous years this festival, like the Baby Food Festival, had its tournament held in the restaurant just down the street from the Blind Squirrel League, in the small function room. It was a pretty good space for that; private but easily accessible and with enough space to move in a half-dozen main tournament games, three classics-tournament games and two for-practice-only games. But this year PH passed some amount of the organizing of the tournaments on to his son, AJH; and AJH had also organized the Blind Squirrel League to secure his awesome lead in Michigan competitive pinball rankings. And so he changed the Harvest Festival Tournament's venue and its organization.

Some of this was surely practical. If there's a half-dozen machines already set up why take them down and move them just down the block to re-set them up in a different restaurant's open area? They're even both on the same street, the one that the festival sets up on. A bigger change: instead of buying tickets to play games set on free play, the games would be on normal, coin-drop play. Instead of all the ticket costs going to the charity (MS research and support) a share of the coin drop would.

The result would be friendlier to drop-ins, if people wanted to. It also meant that one of the rationalizing factors of this sort of tournament would be gone. Previous Harvest Festival and Baby Food Festivals divided the process of buying entries and playing those entries to qualify for finals. Now, all you'd need is another fifty cents in your pocket and time to play a game. It seemed like a small thing. It'd change the dynamics.

Trivia: The cloverleaf intersection for connecting highways was patented in 1916 by a Maryland engineer named Arthur Hale. Its first United States installation was in Woodbridge, New Jersey, in 1928, connectin the Lincoln Highway to Amboy Avenue. Source: The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers who Created the American Superhighways, Earl Swift.

Currently Reading: After Apollo? Richard Nixon and the American Space Program, John M Logsdon.

PS: The End 2016 Mathematics A To Z: Unlink, a fine little thing you might well have around the house, in the Scary Drawer.