Happy New Year everyone!
First thing's first, I want to apologize to everyone for my absence this past year. I was really excited for this "finale" to the Global Challenge, yet as the year progressed and I dove deeper into birding and mammal watching, I found my interest in the challenges waning. This is probably in part due to my not having done much zoo visiting last year as I was devoting that time to birding, and my big trip planned for the year shifting from another European zoo tour to a Kenyan field study and wildlife tour instead.
I also want to express my gratitude to
@TinoPup and
@ZooBinh for volunteering to step-up and assist in maintaining the game on my behalf. Their help made it possible to keep the game running as smoothly as possible while allowing me to keep a more distant eye. I'm happy to see that
@ZooBinh will be continuing the Challenge legacy on his own moving forward and wish him the best of luck in that endeavor!
Now on to the results!
We had 39 participants this year competing in 28 (29 with the bonus) individual challenges. 23/24 had set limits and 5 were open-ended, intended to see how many of select taxonomic groups one individual could see in one year!
In the end, two players succeeded in completing all winnable challenges:
@twilighter
@TeaLovingDave
Congratulations to you both, I know it took many months and a lot of zoo visits!
I also want to highlight our two runner-ups, both of whom managed to complete all but two winnable challenges in the end:
@Kudu21
@amur leopard
As for the winners of the open-ended challenges:
Penguimonium: See as many penguins as you can!
First place:
@Kudu21 with 11 species
Second place:
@twilighter with 10 species
Let That Ruminate: See as many Bovidae as you can!
First place:
@twilighter with 59 species
Second place:
@TeaLovingDave with 53 species
See, Don't Touch: See as many poison dart frogs as you can!
First place:
@Kudu21 with 22 species
Second place:
@twilighter AND
@TeaLovingDave both with 19 species
Let's Give This Another Go: See as many marsupials and monotremes as you can!
First place:
@Hix with 33 species
Second place:
@twilighter with 30 species
I'm Hot Blooded (For Cold Blood): See as many turtles/tortoises as you can!
First place:
@SusScrofa with 127 species
Second place:
@TeaLovingDave with 112 species
Now after what ended up being a
VERY close race between our two top champions,
the winner of the 10th Annual ZooChat Global Challenge is ..........
@twilighter !!
This determination comes from a combination of
@twilighter having completed ALL winnable challenges while also ranking in the top 2 for open-ended challenges 4/5 times, more than any other player!
In a very close second place is
@TeaLovingDave, who also completed ALL winnable challenges, but "only" ranking in the top of for open-ended challenges 3/5 times.
For the
See, Don't Touch challenge, both champions tied for 2nd place. Additionally,
@TeaLovingDave was only one species shy of tying with
@twilighter for 2nd place in
Let's Give This Another Go, proving that this was ultimately an extremely close game for first place! Had that occurred, however,
@twilighter's victory would have still been secure seeing as he came in first place for
Let That Ruminate while
@TeaLovingDave sits in 2nd place for all his open-ended entries.
Congratulations again to our only multi-year champion,
@twilighter ! And congratulations to
@TeaLovingDave, our other open-ended finalists, everyone who completed most or even any of the winnable challenge, and most importantly to everyone who played this year and who have played for multiple years now!
While my interests on the forum have shifted over the years, running this game for so long has truly been an honor and I hope everyone who's played year after year got as much enjoyment out of it as I have. Thank you all for playing, and cheers to the New Year!
~Thylo
all it would have taken is one fewer dart-frog no-show for me, or one more for Twilighter, and @SusScrofa not making it to Iguanaland (which pushed me into second for turtles) and I think it would have been a literal draw.... even with all the measures put in place to forestall such an outcome!
