Instructions for Readers - Season 1
You can volunteer to be a reader for any game scheduled for a game-week by simply typing in your name (or dropping it from the drop-down list) in the respective row for the specific game in Scheduled Games/Sign Up to Read [Link will be added here] sheet. You can only sign up to read games after your own game has been scheduled, and the games you sign up to read must be at least 65 minutes after the scheduled start time for your own game (accounting for any delays in the starting of, and during your own game)
Once you have signed up, you will automatically receive access to a folder containing the tsv and pdf files containing the questions and answers, for the current game-week, in a Google Drive folder, one hour before the game starts, or at the time of sign up, whichever is closest to scheduled match time. We ask you to check if you are using the most current version of the set if you are reading multiple games in a week (the version will be visible as v1, v2 etc.).
Reading one game a season is mandatory for every player who chose that option, after which every game read will earn the player an equivalent one-fifth of the registration fee in the currency used for transaction (eg: Rs 200 if the player paid Rs 1000 in Indian Rupee) as League Credits to be used for the next season, or 15% of the registration fee in the currency used for transaction as cash at the end of the season (eg: £1.8 if the player paid £12 in British pound sterling). This means that you can play the next season without paying any fee if you have read 6 games in total during the current season.
Any player who doesn’t read the one mandatory game will have to pay an additional one-fifth of the registration fee (base-price) at the end of the season. Alternatively, if you are sure that you will not be reading, you can pay this amount along with the registration fee in the beginning to avoid any hassles at the end.
If none of the players have indicated that they have a paid Zoom account and you don’t have a premium Zoom account, we will send a premium Zoom meeting link from our account, but if we are unavailable, you can create the zoom link from a free account for the game, and send it out to the players at least 10 minutes before the game (in the same thread the players have added you to; players are required to add the reader to the email thread where they have done their scheduling).
If you are using a free Zoom account, make sure you have the meeting scheduled for the maximum available time for free meeting. You will be able to leave and rejoin the same link immediately. If you starting a Zoom meeting without scheduling it, Zoom will prohibit you from creating another meeting within 10 minutes after the first free meeting has ended. So, please schedule the meeting.
You are supposed to wait for 5 minutes if someone is late, and then an additional 5 minutes, if the person who is late has informed everyone of the delay during those initial 5 minutes or prior to that. If there is no information within 5 minutes, you may start the game. So, if you are reading a game, keep yourself available for 65 minutes (although the game will likely finish 10-15 minutes before this time period).
You will be using a number of online web applications/extensions for the gameplay. It is mandatory to use all of them for a uniform experience for the players (if you have difficulty installing or using these, contact us). These are:
Wiki Quiz Scorer app
This will be the tool used to automatically keep track of the scores without much effort on the reader’s part. For each game, a specific link with pre-filled information like the one given below (screenshot displaying its content), will be added to the respective game under the column titled ‘scorer app link’ in this [Link will be added] google sheet. Thank you Will Jones for this wonderful app.
FLQL Display Questions
This is a tool for displaying the questions directly in the quiz scorer app. Just upload the tsv file we will send you, in the extension as instructed here and start the game. Note that you can only use this extension in Google Chrome using a Windows OS or Mac OS (The extension doesn’t work when using Google Chrome in a Linux-based OS). A shout out to Harish Krishna who made this very useful extension, before which we had to painfully copy-paste each and every question from a pdf to the zoom chat during every mimir game.
See the MIMIR format details for information regarding the gameplay here so that you can read the game with ease. Always display the answers using the button for answers (in this tool) rather than just dictating after every question is done, as all of the players might not have heard the answer properly and are too shy to ask.
Mimir Question Timer extension
This is yet another useful tool for automatically keeping the time (30 seconds on direct, and 5 seconds each on pass) in the wiki quiz scorer app. A shout out to Arnold D’Souza for this helpful tool, which reduces the stress on the reader’s as well as participants’ side, since they can keep track of the time in the same screen as the questions. Read the instructions given here for learning how to use it along with the quiz scorer app.
Before starting any game, remind everyone to keep both their hands on the screen at all times. Anyone failing/forgetting to comply with this rule should be reminded. If they continue to keep their hands away from the screen, despite many repeated instructions, you should inform us at the end the game. This can be grounds for their expulsion from the league.
When reading a game, only share one window (Google chrome browser with the scoresheet) and keep the tsv/pdf open somewhere else (either in the same device or another) so that you can quickly toggle/move back and forth to see the answers and prompts (exhaustive list of prompts will be provided). Prompts indicate that the player is close to the answer, but not quite right. Say “prompt” or “I will prompt you” in such cases. But do not say things like “please give the correct initials of the person”. You can also “anti-prompt” people if they have given too specific an answer but the answer is a general one (eg: They have given the answer as Black Kite instead of Kite).
Always keep checking the prompts and answers for the next questions so that you don’t miss any prompts and don’t forget the answers. Since there are several grey areas when it comes to prompts, and since we have realised that leniency in prompting leads to more chances of readers messing up, we have restricted the prompts to those that are given in our answer keys. BUT, we will also let the readers choose to prompt if they believe that we have missed adding any crucial prompts on our answer keys.
After you prompt a player, give 5 seconds (use the timer for measuring, or silently but accurately count till 5 seconds) and then pass. They will not receive any leftover time after the prompt, from their normal time for answering (for example 10 seconds out of their 30 seconds on directs, or 3 seconds out of their 5 seconds on pass), if they choose to answer early.
Here are some general rules on prompting (prompts not given in the sheet):
If the answer given by the participant sounds very close to the actual answer, but the spelling sounds wrong, prompt them.
You can prompt if some key words are present but it doesn’t contain all the words Eg: Crane instead of Sarus Crane. These prompts should already be in the answer column in the tsv/pdf.
If the required answers are proper nouns like names of people, locations and things, and it’s only partially correct, don’t prompt, because they can be completely wrong. Eg: Molar mass is not the same as Atomic mass, even though both of them have mass as part of their name.
You can prompt on terms which are functionally similar/same. For example, you can prompt on ‘bending light’ instead of ‘refracting light’.
All these prompting guidelines depend on the context of the questions. So, practice caution when prompting.
Readers should not engage in belittling the players if they don’t know the answers to questions, or gives wrong answers. Such behaviour can be grounds for the removal of the readers from the league. We also do not recommend correcting wrong answers of the players by explaining why they are wrong. This may not be taken in the right spirit by the players, and they may feel personally insulted/targeted, and will discourage them from taking guesses (which they should be able to do without judgement).
Note that we have discontinued the use of tiebreakers after week 2 of season 1 since we have shifted to the Adjusted Differential Score system for ranking, which doesn’t require position for breaking ties. And also, tiebreakers add to the time taken for a game-play, and it is not streamlined for playing since questions have to be copy-posted in the chat. There will be 4 spare questions of each difficulty level in the tsv/pdf file. As a reader, you are required to read the extra questions too, if one hour has not elapsed since the scheduled begin time for the match.
After reading the game, immediately submit the scoresheet url using the Scoresheet Submission Form. PLEASE DON’T FORGET THIS STEP!