Themis-Athena's Garden of Books

 

A big Thank You to everybody who joined the game and participated so actively: Collectively, we achieved the very respectable total score of

 

505 POINTS

 

Go us -- well done everybody!  Thank you so much from this year's hosts: Murder by Death, Moonlight Snow (Reader), TeaStitchRead (Mrs. Claus' Tea House), and me.  Once again, it's been great fun watching the truly amazing things that everybody came up with to complete to the various tasks and the creativity that went into everybody's posts.

 

And a special shout-out to Darth Pedant for stepping in and doing such an absolutely smashing job substituting for MbD as a host of the Melbourne Cup Day "pick your ponies" task!

 

Before moving on the stats of this year's game, I wanted to share, at least once, the gorgeous 2019 festive calendar image "as such" -- without being half hidden below all the calendar doors, open or closed.

 

 

Thank you once more to MbD for finding it -- as MbD told us, it's an illustration for Charles Dickens's Christmas Carol.

 

Thank you all, also, for playing along and reporting your completed tasks using the form that MbD created -- even though RL interference didn't let me get around to posting stats as frequently in 2019 as during the 2018 game, the form (and the Excel sheet it yielded) made tracking points just so much easier!

 

 

The Figures:

Number of active participants: 18
("Active" = completed at least one book or other task for the game)
Average number of points collected: 28.06
Number of card blackouts: 4
("Blackout" = completed at least one book or other task per square)

 

 

Results by Squares / Holidays:

 

With almost 28%, overall the book tasks were the most popular tasks of the game, followed by Task 1, with Tasks 2 and 3 almost on equal footing and Task 4 bringing in the rear (though not by a terribly wide margin).  (Well, this is a book site ... :) )

 

Almost 60% of all tasks completed were the second or further task completed for the square in question.

On a total of 8 squares, one or more participants completed all five tasks (book and other tasks):

* Día de los Muertos

* Japanese Culture Day

* Melbourne Cup Day

* International Day for Tolerance

* International Children's Day

* World Philosophy Day

* St. Nicholas' Day

* St. Lucia's Day

Biggest individual point-earning square: Día de los Muertos -- 46 points total
Runner-up: Melbourne Cup Day -- 42 points total
Third Place: Japanese Culture Day -- 40 points total

 

Seeing one of our newly-introduced holidays (Japanese Culture Day) scoring so well makes me very happy -- and hattip to our new co-host TeaStitchRead / Mrs. Claus' Tea House, who whipped out all four tasks for this square in absolutely zero time as one of her first hosting contributions.

Least point-earning square: Festivus -- 9 points total

 

Average points per square (including bonus points): 21.04

Average points per square (excluding bonus points): 20.88

 

 

Breakdown of Books and Tasks per Square

 

 

The Books

Squares for which the highest number of participants read a book: Día de los Muertos and Japanese Culture Day -- 10 participants

Runner-up: Guy Fawkes Night - 9 participants

Shared Third Place: Winter Solstice, Hanukkah, and Christmas -- 8 participants each

Fewest books read for: World Philosophy Day and St. Andrew's Day -- 2 participants each

Average number of book points accrued per square: 5.67

 

 The Tasks

 

Square with the overall highest number of points collected for all non-book tasks: Melbourne Cup Day -- 37 points (including 2 bonus points)

Runner-up: Día de los Muertos -- 36 points

Third place: Japanese Culture Day -- 30 points

 

Excluding bonus points, Día de los Muertos and Melbourne Cup Day switch places; Japanese Culture Day remains third.

 

Least number of non-book points: International Human Rights Day -- 4 points

Most popular individual task: Día de los Muertos, Task 3 (epitaph for the year's most disliked book) --  14 points

Runner-up, by points: Melbourne Cup Day, Task 1 ("Pick your ponies") -- 12 points (including 2 bonus points)

Runner-ups, by participants (= excluding bonus points): Japanese Culture Day, Task 4 (Japanese food), and Melbourne Cup Day, Tasks 1 and 3 ("Pick your ponies" and picture of favorite cup / mug)   -- 10 points each

Third place: Melbourne Cup Day, Task 2 (“Roses are Red, Violets are Blue” poem) -- 9 points

Least popular: Thanksgiving, Task 4 (postcard to a friend), International Human Rights Day, Task 4 (reconstitute a body of the UN), Hanukkah, Task 4 (food donation), Festivus, Tasks 3 and 4 (going "pole'mic on a book character, and "Festivus miracle" dialogue), Kwanzaa, Task 3 (corn dish), New Year's Eve, Task 4 (holiday dinner with famous person as guest), and Epiphany, Task 2 (personal "epihany" experience) -- all 0 points (sniff).  With one exception, these are all in the final weeks of the game ... seems most of us just ran out of steam towards the end!

 

Average number of points accrued for non-book tasks per square, including bonus points: 15.3

Average number of points accrued for non-book tasks per square, excluding bonus points: 15.1

 

Average number of points accrued for individual non-book tasks, including bonus points: 3.9

Average number of points accrued for individual non-book tasks, excluding bonus points: 3.67

 

 

Congratulations, everybody, and thank you all so much again for making this such a fun and successful game!