by _alastair on 6/19/15, 8:02 PM
I'm one of the people that made this interactive - funny to see it on Hacker News! If anyone has any questions about it, let me know.
by usaphp on 6/20/15, 1:29 AM
If you notice the outline of the ball has different size for each photo, this allows to identify a relative distance where the ball is compared to height of players
by smackfu on 6/19/15, 8:43 PM
Neat idea, but is this something you can actually be skilled at? Even if you know the game, and can figure out what trajectory the ball was on, it seems very hard to figure out exactly where on that trajectory it was when the photo was taken, given the high speed of the ball.
by 8_hours_ago on 6/19/15, 8:26 PM
by tabrischen on 6/19/15, 11:06 PM
This is very fun for me, even as someone who's not a sports fan. Great way to engage this other segment of readers.
by hackuser on 6/19/15, 8:48 PM
It's odd to see a casual game, with no other significance or meaning, in the NY Times. It would be great to see them using interactive tools to tell news stories more often.
by DLWormwood on 6/20/15, 12:03 AM
I remember seeing an arcade redemption machine that worked on the same principle. It had a database of hundreds of screenshots from soccer/footy games and the player had to guess where the ball should be. The more accurate the guess; the more tickets the machine dispensed.
by jmhobbs on 6/19/15, 8:15 PM
This is infuriating. I tried using where players were looking and it got me squat. Very cool though.
by _puk on 6/20/15, 2:42 AM
Good fun!
My understanding of the UK version of this was that the ball was actually placed by a group of pundits[0], rather than being in the original location, so even if you found a freeze frame of the original match you'd still not be able to cheat the system.
Would be fun to crowd source a position taken from wrong guesses to provide some variance.
0: http://www.theguardian.com/football/shortcuts/2015/jan/14/ho...
by namuol on 6/20/15, 8:43 AM
For me this quickly became "spot the photoshop artifact". I only noticed it clearly for one photo and did marginally better than average (58% -- some guesses were way off) Still very fun.
by Rexxar on 6/20/15, 2:21 PM
The second time, after removing the cookie, is much more easy (~46% to 99.67%). The conclusion is that there are, for the moment, few cheaters.
by bherms on 6/19/15, 8:19 PM
reminds me of bestofthebest's car raffle... since you can't really gamble in the UK, they do a skill based game that is exactly this... you buy guesses and then click where you think the ball is... the person each week with the closest guess to where a group of judges says the ball is wins the car of their choice
by mholt on 6/19/15, 11:43 PM
Did anyone actually read the article?
by ChrisArchitect on 6/22/15, 4:13 PM
as a footy fan I enjoy this a lot - tho this time around I scored terribly compared to world cup a year ago
thanks _alastair for getting involved here - tons of great little insights