Not unusual at all. It's very much the way I play too. Don't think either of us could be mistaken for newbies

As someone who has little time to plan play, and ducks in for the odd moment, I usually start with the game that is about to end, so I catch it in my brief visit. But since I am a pretty slow player, I probably don't win much, and my "sniping" might not cause any ire. But I dislike the repeated statement from serious players that anyone who plays at the very end is engaging in some kind of malicious action. Some of us are just playing when we can.

I've been around for a few years, and I play that way, too. Sometimes I'm around for quite a lot of the day, and other days I'm not, and don't play so many games. I'm certainly not trying to "steal" a win from somebody else. It just depends on the luck of the draw with the questions.

I'm a lot closer to Agony than to Brian. Especially during the week when I'm working, if I get a short break I'll play a couple of games, trying to make sure I hit anything necessary for team games and/or daily challenges regardless of where we are in the hour. Of course, if it's a topic I like (especially for Expert and Hard) and it is near the end of the hour, I'm going to play it to try to put up a good score for my team or challenge rather than wait for it to roll over and possibly switch to a topic where I'm likely to score lower.

And yesterday I managed to win a new Champions division expert (Mixed USA) playing in the first half of the hour and winning by 3 seconds, so no one was able to snipe me. Playing early still gives the advantage in case of a tie.

I'm quite sure there are people on FT who engage in "sniping", as there are people who purposely rate quizzes down. I also believe these people to be in a minority, though of course they are an annoyance to anyone who crosses their path.

On a personal level, it's happened to me quite a few times to play an Expert game when there were just a few minutes left, and end up on top. The reverse has also happened - i.e. I was displaced from the top slot by someone else who played near the end of the game. In the former case, while I did feel bad for the person whose top slot I had taken, I knew I hadn't done it on purpose - it's just that the topic was a good one for me, and for some reason I needed a high score. In the latter case, I may feel annoyed at first, but then shrug it off and think, "better luck next time".

I think LadyNym’s final sentence sums it up. Surely any rational person would agree with your sentiment LadyNym. To suggest anything further is simply sour grapes. Those who complain about ‘sniping’ simply have sour grapes about not coming top. It’s as simple as that. We have an hour to play each hourly game. We can play it whenever we want to during that hour. The person with the best score in the best time that hour wins. It doesn’t need to be any more complicated and we don’t need to listen to those that want pee and moan about getting ‘sniped’.

I bet Triviaballer wishes he’d never typed in that word now!!! Hahaha! It’s not a bad idea by the way triviaballer, I just don’t feel it’s an extra that’s needed. My view anyway, others may differ!

Hahaha, yeah I do regret using that s-word now. Well I still like the idea about a wire to wire win. Terry asked for feedback so I'm coming up with stuff I think would be fun and challenging. Sorry to bring up a sore subject, happy trivia-ing everyone.

I'd see the "wire to wire" as a fun one-off but not really that much for a badgelet you'd want to do 300 times, because it becomes a lot about clock-watching instead of just playing well.

For a tiered one, we could make it across games - "Be the first to play in your division and win the round" (no time cutoff, you actually need to post the first score to truly make it "wire to wire"), using Mixed, Expert, Fifty, Piece of Cake, Smartest, Word and FMI (7 games) and you need to win each game once to max it. Maybe even not divisions but overall - kind of a "Smartest of the Smart" / "Biggest Slice" setup - as to prevent awards based on 3-player rounds.

I have another idea of badge for you trivaballer, the badge
of the best team player.
Sum of the 8 scores of the 8 games in league A of one day.
For you trivaballer you have scored yesterday :
Heroes :114 pts
Madness :120 pts
Easy :105 pts
Mixed:80 pts
Daily game:81 pts
Expert :0 pt
Wizard:102 pts
Smartest :42 pts
Total 644 pts you have scored one of the best scores yesterday
But the best I don't know.
I want a badge for the best total score team player and
A award for the 10 best scores of the month as in other games.

Something like that is already on my agenda, although I wanted to rather give it for total points, not for placings (team leagues should not have individual winner awards).

Tier 1: 300 points
Tier 2: 360 points
Tier 3: 420 points
...
Tier 7: 660 points.

Note that the highest ranks can only be achieved in League C and above (the maximum in D would be 600, 5x 120) which reflects that it's harder to be among the top in the higher Leagues.

Triviaballer's 644 from yesterday would have been a tier 6.

I like this idea but unfortunately it excludes all players outside League A. A similar badge and upgrades would be the Everything Challenge that encompasses all of the games. It is different though as those are raw scores whereas the team points awarded are based on League rankings. If your idea could be expanded across the divisions it may work.

In theory a player in League A could contribute 960 points to their team (8 first place finishes of 120 team points each). I'm sure some top tier players have gotten 920+ but I'd be surprised if someone has ever ran all of the League A games in a day for 960. Thanks for picking the day when I did so bad on Expert to reference, hahaha.

I'd be for a full month participation mini (Team Mainstay) in that a player plays in all League A games every day and has a qualifying top 8 score for their team. It'd be a measure of both skill (top 8 of team every day) and dedication. Unfortunately this also restricts to League A and would have to be cleverly expanded to other Leagues.

"Be among the top x for your team" is a bad criterion as it strongly biases against players from large teams and goes against team play (a player could even get mad at their team for ruining a run for them).

The variant based on points works for all leagues (except, at the highest tiers, D) - even a C player could make 720 which is good enough for T7.

We could make a similar one for monthly scores, but I would not want one that requires perfect attendance. Players shouldn't be forced to bend a month's real life around being able to fit significant play every day.

Maybe for a monthly badge make it just for Team Heroes. Require a certain number of total points in your division for the month, although it would need to be a different number depending on the number of days in the month similar to the badge for a certain percentage of duel wins.

How about considering an up-gradable badge for the fantasy Knockout? Lots of dedicated players of the game and once you reach only 3000, there is nothing more to strive for.