Topic: Best Practices: Number range guessing games & rounds (Read 617 times)

Best practices are practices that anyone with basic knowledge can do. That would require expert level data query knowledge to sync the Google Sheet with all replies in a BCT topic, but only the original version, no edits.

You could set up a Google Form to fill the Google Sheet, but that would take the game almost entirely off BCT, and would lower the barrier to one person submitting every number in the range with a separate BTC address via the form, versus switching through 100 accounts on BCT. There is an option on GF for "Only allow one response per person (requires login)" but you'll make it overly burdensome for many people to have to create a Google account when all they should have needed was a BCT account.


I've found the amount of characters in any signed message that has to be copy-pasted is proportional to the chance the first attempt at verification will fail due to there being an added character, a deleted character, or an extra space. A message of just digits without a space is the hardest to fuck up.


About as likely as guessing someone's funded private key that wasn't generated with a broken PRNG.


BtcCrazy1's guessing game that started on 9-3 proved no spreadsheet means

+1 on that.

That would guarantee that someone will not guess the address and brute force it. (The address could be possibly linked with the signed one which could still allow brute forcing)

Also I think hashing it after salting it with a one way hashing function is also a reliable solution?

To counter this, you could add some kind of salt to the signed message, so instead of signing a message with "59" if 59 was the winning number, you could sign a message with:
Then you could post the entire signed message that can be verified, and in the above case it should be very clear that "59" was the correct number to guess.

Although a spreadsheet could be used, I don't think it would be necessary, as someone could simply read through the thread with the various guesses.

Is it possible to auto-update the spreadsheet as posts are made?

Set the upper end of the range no more than 100 whole numbers from the lower end to hopefully keep it from running ridiculously long (>36 hours).

Put the prize amount on a previously unfunded private key, and save that with the corresponding address. Sign a message containing just the random number that everyone's guessing at with that private key, then put ONLY the signature of the message in the OP (if the address is posted with the signature, people can flip through each number in the range to see which one verifies, and win the contest easily).
^ When the winner is declared, anyone can put the address, the signature of the message, and the winning number message (all provided in the declaration) into https://insight.bitpay.com/messages/verify or their BTC client, to verify the random number choice didn't change (assuming the OP timestamp doesn't show it was edited, suspiciously, since that's where the signature was first provided).

Link in the OP and frequently update a Google Sheet that only you/consensus-trusted person can edit but everyone with the URL can view with columns: Number guessed, First to guess, Second to guess, Third to guess, etc.
^ Use the PAGES: [ALL] link when the topic goes over 1 page, to accurately put everyone's guesses in chronological order. And watch their timestamps for edit indication.

Set rules:
Each player must read the entire topic ([ALL] link) and the Google Sheet (linked in your OP), THEN reply to the topic with one number nobody else guessed already (a valid guess).

But if they are dyslexic, and their original guess was a second, third, etc. duplicate of someone else's and therefore invalid...
Players may post a reply with a valid guess below a quote of their original invalid guess.

After a player is the first to reply to the topic with one number nobody else guessed already (a valid guess), they cannot edit or delete their reply to guess a new one - the Google Sheet will lock in the first valid guesser's username for each number.