[HN Gopher] Hacker News Headlines (game)
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Hacker News Headlines (game)
Author : greenwallnorway
Score : 26 points
Date : 2025-11-10 17:47 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (projects.peercy.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (projects.peercy.net)
| greenwallnorway wrote:
| I average a score in the range 1500-2000 (out of 2500).
|
| I imagine those who spend more time on hn will ace it.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| I got 2000ish, but I remember seeing 3/5 headlines. Perhaps I
| should spend less time there...
| tptacek wrote:
| It helps a lot just to have an intuition for what a big article
| is here. The slider starts at ~1500 votes, which is an insanely
| successful story. You can get a strong score just by guessing
| 400 for everything, nudging up +100 for things you remember
| being popular and down -100 for things that seem obscure.
| greenwallnorway wrote:
| Yea - I didn't think too long on how to calculate points
| well. Is there a more balanced strategy?
|
| Identifying some of the truly high-scoring articles (>1000)
| should be rewarding, and 200 vs 400 points is a pretty big
| difference on hn
| tptacek wrote:
| A "replacement-level" front page story is ~200 votes, +/-
| 50. If you're drawing just from the front page, and not
| from a deliberately weighted set of successful vs. marginal
| posts, most stories should be below 400.
|
| (It's weird to say this but I'm not nerdy enough to have
| actually worked this out with data; it's just intuition
| from spending time here.)
| codechicago277 wrote:
| Could split the stories into buckets and then randomly
| sample from each bucket. Most stories are small, so they're
| currently overrepresented in the sampling.
| codechicago277 wrote:
| I think you need to adjust the variation of scores, I got 1650
| actually guessing, then realized most of the scores were low and
| got 1800 by just always guessing 239
| greenwallnorway wrote:
| Ah! Good idea. Hurts replayability though, since we probably
| get not more than one 1000 pointer each week.
| tptacek wrote:
| Just change the range of scores. If you're not going to
| deliberately weight the set of stories to include outliers,
| then the whole game is really played in the 150-400 range
| anyways, so make that the slider.
| Yizahi wrote:
| Include some 0 to 4 score posts with interesting headlines.
| Should be pretty funny I think :)
|
| For example:
|
| Rubin Observatory Discovers Surprise 'Tail' on Iconic Galaxy
| - 2
|
| Vera Rubin's primary mirror gets its first reflective coating
| - 157
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| I got 2038 by just going with the default 373 for all 5
| jtrn wrote:
| Anchoring!!! If the range has nothing to do with the items in
| question, just have simple number input. Tested multiple times
| and all items were below default / midpoint.
| greenwallnorway wrote:
| ui idea: show the distribution over the slider
| BrenBarn wrote:
| Why is the score range 239-1000?
| anonymousiam wrote:
| First try:
|
| Hacker News Headlines
|
| Score: 2,003 / 2,500 pts
|
| R1: 684 (guessed 429) - 0.63x - 333 pts
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45722639
|
| R2: 298 (guessed 239) - 0.80x - 413 pts
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45783074
|
| R3: 273 (guessed 239) - 0.88x - 445 pts
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736461
|
| R4: 288 (guessed 479) - 1.66x - 321 pts
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45589715
|
| R5: 244 (guessed 249) - 1.02x - 491 pts
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45602124
|
| Play at: https://nbanmp.github.io/claude-web/projects/hn-oracle/
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(page generated 2025-11-10 23:02 UTC)