I'll also add that, from my experience, the vast majority players have a shot at Immortal if they keep at it and that hasn't really changed. Only a small fraction of players will make Immortal on their first full GC. Most will wind up somewhere in division 9 - some close to the goal, some near the lower reaches.

On their second and further goes, most players I have heard feedback from exhibit a relatively constant pace of improvement from round to round - for some this may be 15 or 20 percent of the Division 9 distance per round, for others, closer to 10 percent or below. But it is improvement.

For some perspective here, the fastest challenge was the one that ended in May 2016. That one included 1440 games and ended with 30 new immortals. The one that ended last month went 1518 games before there were 100 immortals. That means that players had 6.5 more days to make immortal this most recent run than they did 3 years ago. That seems to me to show that it is easier now than it was in the past rather than harder, even if fewer new players are doing it.

That is indeed food for thought, Andy. I'm assuming the 'slow-down factor' hasn't changed at all, and that the question pool is not significantly larger/more difficult.

That being the case, it distresses me that in a few short years my abilities, which were clearly superior then, have deteriorated to the point where many of my teamies are trouncing me daily, and they feel they haven't got much chance of getting through GC.

I slink from this conversation bloody, bowed, and thoroughly beaten.

Not trying to "beat" you or anything, just helping to explain things :-). The question pool did change about a year ago, but that should actually help the newer players and hurt the older ones to the extent that it makes it harder on the older players who have memorized a lot of the questions since they'll need to spend a little more time reading the question and choices rather than knowing them right away. This could also be what is leading to your perceived "deterioration" in abilities. You just don't recognize as many questions as you did in the past since the question pools have changed.

I didn't play the last challenge seriously, but I did make immortal in the previous one which used the new question set. What I discovered was that the questions were a little more difficult than previously on levels 1-7 but that there were certain categories which were easier than in the past on levels 8-9, so it pretty much balanced out since a little over 50% of the challenge is spent on levels 8-9.

I have not played Global seriously beyond level 3 or 4 since I achieved level 10 some years ago. So I haven't attempted to compare myself against the current batch of GC players. I am simply comparing my standing within the team, one of whom nearly reached immortal last time, but failed when the hundredth immortal slipped through.

For me the changed question pool makes little difference as my memory is shot anyway . I gather there have been no tweaks to the go slow factor in recent times?

I apologize if this had been discussed before but how is the Average score calculated on some of the rankings? If you go to the 'Most Games Played' tab many of the Normal mode players have an average over 1500 and the top player, jules44, has an average of 1726. We've discussed that bonus categories give an additional push but this seems massive if that's what it is. Hypothetically if this player averages 1426 (fanastic average if this is the case) without any bonuses then the bonuses contribute another 300 points to the average or more than +20% of the raw score. However, then when you go to the 'Top 125 Players - Normal' tab this player's average is 1286. Why are the 1726 and 1286 numbers not the same? If the 1286 is the true average then the true bonus is 440 points or over 34% of the raw score. So are bonus categories really pushing our averages up by over 1/3?

Are you talking about the ELO?

The Top 125 players list shows true average, using only the actual scores played.

The "Most Games" list uses an older (essentially faulty) formula which just divides the player's advancement by games played. Since the advancement includes all the bonuses and the Brain Twist, it can go significantly over 1500, especially in the early divisions.

Can you win an Immortal badge playing through the Hardcore section? I think I joined the wrong group because it sounded cooler. No way am I playing again!

Yes, you can get to Immortal while in Hardcore mode, there's even a special badge for it. However you have chosen the most difficult route - most people do Immortal in Normal mode first, then try Hardcore, and then try both.

It's still possible though so just keep going, and going, and... don't give up! That's one of the tricks to Hardcore - lots of people do give up, some at the very last moment so if you're still there and plugging away your chances will improve. Make sure you do the brainteaser every day, that's worth a lot of advancement points, and don't get too disheartened by the sessions when you get no points at all - it happens to everyone. Good luck!

k thanks flops, I started once before after spending bout 2 seconds perusing the rules, but got called away on work to dark foreign parts, and can't say I've added to my knowledge of those rules in any meaningful way since, and now 600 games in thought it might be time to see where I was. My team told me it wd go on forever but I thought they were joking. I see someone says 600 games is not even half way yet, bleuuugh.

The basic rules of Hardcore are simple: You must get at least ten answers right in 130 or less seconds in every game, apart from Brainteaser. Which is why anyone who has ever played that mode hates the numbers 9/10 and 131. But apart from that it's simple: it seems to get worse as the GC goes on. A lot of that is psychological - as the GC goes on, the number of games in each level increases so it takes longer to complete each one, a simple case of wearing you down.

Remember too that what you are looking for are advancement points. The ** categories get you more than * which in turn count for more than the regular unstarred games. Which means that at some point 12 correct answers in a ** game may be worth more than 15/15 in an unstarred topic but the ** topics can be quite specialised so if you don't know anything about, say, boxing or US football, this may not be the time to try them out. I'm sure someone will come along and provide you with more details of the scoring (although some of it is a mystery Terry keeps to himself) but it comes down to a judgement call which every player has to make when choosing which topics to play.

And if you don't make it this time, next time should be easier. I know you said you wouldn't do it again but we've all said that!

We are not quite halfway through this challenge. Normally it lasts about 1500 games. The players who haven't missed any games are at 714. The good news is that you are doing really well and are on pace to win 3 badges, Immortal, Hardcore Immortal, and Hardcore Champ. My guess is that the Global Challenge will end somewhere around December 8, give or take a few days.

Jacqui, good luck and I hope you make it. Making immortal the first time in hardcore mode is exceptionally rare and would be quite a feat. I wish I had tried it at least because I ended up feeling the same way as you as far as not wanting go through it full bore again aftee the first real attempt (I joined midstream the cycle before to get tye flavor of it). I tried again for hardcore after makng regular immortal but each time I would get about a week in every time before realizing I wasnt going all the way to the end.

You may find though that you go back on your words and do play it again. Plenty of people felt the same way at first but had it grow on them and became chronic repeat players, even before badge upgrades were available for repeat immortal runs.

In any case have fun.

I guess if I were doing this one (which I'm not), then I couldn't make it, since that will be just after my big day (no, not my birthday - that's later in December). Only two more months...and there's so much to do!

Good heavens, I've missed almost half the games, then.

Anybody else with last night's GC set, two hours into the new funtrivia day? My page says it is still 10 hours until the end of the GC set and all the categories I played are still crossed out. Any feedback? Thank you. (morning set, November 26).

Yes! I have the same thing.

It appears the game did not reset at midnight. It also has not recorded my results I played at 11pm FT Time

Same issue for me. Hopefully fixed before I have to go to bed in a couple of hours

Add me to the list of people who are having this problem. I am only 1.6% away from immortal and hoped to finish it this morning. Hope it can be fixed in the next 4 hours and 58 minutes before it will be too late to play.

This is probably linked to the issues players have been having with the second set not registering for Daily Challenges. It's something only Terry can fix.

In fairness to all players, he will most likely reset the game for the next set, so that nobody will have a chance to play the current one.

Same here have I have 0 points for today but already played 6 games in Global Challenges?

Me three (or eight, or whatever).

We are still 150 games short or so. nearly all GCs go for approximately 1500 games. Currently the maximum is 1350. Additionally:

Challenge Status
There are currently 36 players who have reached level 10 and become Immortals.
The global challenge comes to an end if this number hits 100.

There are currently 2 Immortals who have never won the Immortal badge before.
The global challenge comes to an end if this number hits 30.
There are currently 3184 players participating in this challenge.