Hacker News Headlines (game)

Postedabout 2 months agoActiveabout 2 months ago

greenwallnorway

27 points

15 comments

projects.peercy.netOtherstory

calmmixed

Debate

60/100

Hacker NewsGameScoring System

Key topics

Hacker News

Game

Scoring System

A game testing users' ability to guess Hacker News headline scores was shared, sparking discussion on the scoring system and strategies for achieving high scores.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Active discussion

First comment

13m

Peak period

0-1h

Avg / period

3.8

Comment distribution15 data points

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Based on 15 loaded comments

Key moments

01Story posted
Nov 10, 2025 at 12:47 PM EST
about 2 months ago
Step 01
02First comment
Nov 10, 2025 at 1:00 PM EST
13m after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
11 comments in 0-1h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
Nov 10, 2025 at 4:34 PM EST
about 2 months ago
Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (15 comments)

Showing 15 comments

greenwallnorwayAuthor

about 2 months ago

2 replies

I average a score in the range 1500-2000 (out of 2500).

I imagine those who spend more time on hn will ace it.

tptacek

about 2 months ago

1 reply

It helps a lot just to have an intuition for what a big article is here. The slider starts at ~1500 votes, which is an insanely successful story. You can get a strong score just by guessing 400 for everything, nudging up +100 for things you remember being popular and down -100 for things that seem obscure.

greenwallnorwayAuthor

about 2 months ago

2 replies

Yea - I didn't think too long on how to calculate points well. Is there a more balanced strategy?

Identifying some of the truly high-scoring articles (>1000) should be rewarding, and 200 vs 400 points is a pretty big difference on hn

tptacek

about 2 months ago

A "replacement-level" front page story is ~200 votes, +/- 50. If you're drawing just from the front page, and not from a deliberately weighted set of successful vs. marginal posts, most stories should be below 400.

(It's weird to say this but I'm not nerdy enough to have actually worked this out with data; it's just intuition from spending time here.)

codechicago277

about 2 months ago

Could split the stories into buckets and then randomly sample from each bucket. Most stories are small, so they’re currently overrepresented in the sampling.

ivanjermakov

about 2 months ago

I got 2000ish, but I remember seeing 3/5 headlines. Perhaps I should spend less time there...

codechicago277

about 2 months ago

2 replies

I think you need to adjust the variation of scores, I got 1650 actually guessing, then realized most of the scores were low and got 1800 by just always guessing 239

greenwallnorwayAuthor

about 2 months ago

2 replies

Ah! Good idea. Hurts replayability though, since we probably get not more than one 1000 pointer each week.

Yizahi

about 2 months ago

Include some 0 to 4 score posts with interesting headlines. Should be pretty funny I think :)

For example:

Rubin Observatory Discovers Surprise 'Tail' on Iconic Galaxy - 2

Vera Rubin's primary mirror gets its first reflective coating - 157

tptacek

about 2 months ago

Just change the range of scores. If you're not going to deliberately weight the set of stories to include outliers, then the whole game is really played in the 150-400 range anyways, so make that the slider.

unsnap_biceps

about 2 months ago

I got 2038 by just going with the default 373 for all 5

jtrn

about 2 months ago

1 reply

Anchoring!!! If the range has nothing to do with the items in question, just have simple number input. Tested multiple times and all items were below default / midpoint.

greenwallnorwayAuthor

about 2 months ago

ui idea: show the distribution over the slider

BrenBarn

about 2 months ago

Why is the score range 239-1000?

anonymousiam

about 2 months ago

First try:

Hacker News Headlines

Score: 2,003 / 2,500 pts

R1: 684 (guessed 429) - 0.63x - 333 pts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45722639

R2: 298 (guessed 239) - 0.80x - 413 pts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45783074

R3: 273 (guessed 239) - 0.88x - 445 pts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736461

R4: 288 (guessed 479) - 1.66x - 321 pts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45589715

R5: 244 (guessed 249) - 1.02x - 491 pts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45602124

Play at: https://nbanmp.github.io/claude-web/projects/hn-oracle/

View full discussion on Hacker News

ID: 45878545Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 12:44:40 PM

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