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		<title>About scoring</title>
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		<h1>About scoring</h1>
		
		<section>
			<h2>How we compute scores</h2>

			<p>
				The contest is made up of multiple categories.
				Each category is worth one point toward the total score;
				your team's score in a category is the fraction of the total points unlocked so far in that category.
			</p>
			
			<p>
				The team that has 30% of the points
				in each of five categories has 1.5 points, whereas the team that
				has 80% of the points in only one category has 0.8 points.	It is
				typically better to have a few points in many categories, than
				many points in a few categories.
			</p>
			
			<p>
				When points are unlocked in a category,
				every other team's score in that category goes down until they too score that point.
				Unlike previous years, however,
				unlocking points is the only way to reduce another team's score.
			</p>
	
			<p>
				There are two main ways to make points: <em>puzzles</em>
				and <em>tokens</em>.	Your contest may have other ways to make
				points: these will either be automatic, or explained elsewhere.
			</p>
		</section>
	
	
		<section>
			<h2>Puzzles</h2>
			<p>
				Many of the categories are in the form of
				multiple <em>puzzles</em>: for each puzzle presented, a
				case-sensitive answer must be found to receive the amount of
				points that puzzle is worth.	Any team may answer any puzzle
				question at any time.	A new puzzle is revealed when a team
				correctly answers the highest-valued puzzle in that category.
			</p>
		</section>
	
	
		<section>
			<h2 id="tokens">Tokens</h2>
			<p>
				Tokens are strings redeemable once for points. They take on
				two forms: a single or multipoint token. A single point
				token for the "example" category might look like this:
			</p>
	
			<pre>example:xylep-radar-nanox</pre>
	
			<p>
				A 42 point
				token for the "example" category might look like this:
			</p>
	
			<pre>example:42:xihyp-ropar-nanix</pre>
	
			<p>
				Tokens are typically associated with "live" categories, such as a
				network-based service or a treasure hunt.	Tokens can be submitted
				with the form on the <a href="index.html">welcome page</a>, or you
				can write your own script to automate token submission.
			</p>
	
			<p>
				Some tokens change periodically, typically once a minute.	If you
				find a token, it's worth looking in the same place again later to
				see if the token changes.
			</p>
		</section>
	
	
		<section>
			<h2>About time</h2>
			<p>
				Many Capture The Flag contests attempt to reward teams who answer
				quickly, by adding a "quick answer" bonus or by decaying point
				values over time.	Our contest doesn't work this way.
			</p>
			<p>
				We want to focus on rewarding technical proficiency, allowing
				skilled contestants to prove their worth independent of their
				ability to hit F5 quickly.	It is our hope that by providing
				enough things to work on, quick-moving teams will emerge with more
				points by solving lots of puzzles, while novice teams get a solid
				benchmark against which to judge their technical skill level: you
				don't have to make allowances for reaction time in comparing
				scores.	In addition, when the game infrastructure goes down—which
				seems to happen a lot in anybody's CTF—there's no losing points
				while the organizers struggle to get things back up.
			</p>
		</section>
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				<li><a href="register.html">Register</a></li>
				<li><a href="puzzles.html">Puzzles</a></li>
				<li><a href="scoreboard.html">Scoreboard</a></li>
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