By Cory Faniel,
Quidditch scorekeeping suffers a small but fatal flaw: there’s no clear way to indicate that a game went to overtime. The score 110*-100 could mean two things under existing convention: a team trailed 80-100 and then caught the snitch, or the two teams were tied at the end of regulation and neither team caught the snitch in overtime. Fortunately there is an easy solution that would improve upon existing scorekeeping. While the implementation of standard scorecards has been a big step forward already, these still rely on a convention that has rarely been questioned and never been set in stone. A consistent, universal scorekeeping notation that is applicable in all situations represents a further necessary improvement.
Indicating snitch catch: why and how?
Indicating which team caught the snitch at the end of the game is key information for quidditch analysts, captains researching future opponents, and fans. Recording it one way or another provides data about the worth of seekers and allows written scores to tell a more complete story than in the absence of such notation.
Being able to write the score down in a specific manner also helps to disseminate the information: the first time I “watched” a game of quidditch was during World Cup V and the only way to follow the competition was over Twitter. It was the best livetweet I ever saw in the history of the sport, as it was uninterrupted and covered (almost) every field, and it would have been different and incomplete if this essential aspect of the game had not been represented somehow. We should not forget that, even today, many players still rely on Twitter to follow competitions they are not able to attend. The platform also provides visibility to the sport and the more information we cram into these 140 characters, the better it is for us.
Since my first encounter with quidditch, I have always known the system that uses an asterisk (*) to indicate a catch. I do not know when and where this originated, nor if anything was used before, and this is not relevant to this article anyway. What I do know is that this has been an unwritten rule for years. Other systems could be used, inspired for example by association football and the way scores are indicated after penalty shoot-out, with “(30)” signifying the catch. We would then have scores looking like “100 (30) – 80”. This could, however, create confusion; was the score 100-80 before or after the catch?
I like the use of the asterisk; with this example, I just wanted to remind everyone that our notation is a convention that could and should be changed if we felt there was a better system available. And I believe there is.
The issue with our current system
The asterisk works perfectly well, until a game reaches overtime. Things could become even worse if a game ended with a catch during sudden death. Overall, this was noticed and addressed to try to fix the problem of multiple snitch catches by adding the use of the caret (^) when it comes to overtime. Scores such as 180^*-140 or 80^-50* remain easy to read and input into databases. The issue arises when there is no catch in overtime or sudden death.
In an overtime situation with no snitch catch, the current convention dictates the score should be indicated as XXX*-YYY. Remember our poor follower on Twitter? If we want to give them a full picture, we now need to add the indication “OT” so they know what actually happened. Similarly, the indication “SD” often becomes necessary in case of sudden death. This makes our recording system incoherent, as some overtime scores are simply written down as XXX*-YYY^, while others require the mention of “OT.” It also adds non-numerical information to databases and results boards, including files made in Google Docs; a mixture of letters and numbers that is not always as straightforward to process.
It works, but it is far from optimal. If one were to summarise and establish the rules for the current notation system, they would look like this:
- A asterisk (*) indicates regulation time snitch catch
- A caret (^) indicates overtime snitch catch
- A degree (°) indicates sudden death snitch catch. (This case is actually so rare that there is no commonly accepted symbol for the situation. I use the degree symbol as it has a similar positioning to the aforementioned two. The official Quidditch UK scorecard uses a dollar sign [$] as a symbol.)
- OT indicates overtime in the absence of a caret
- SD indicates sudden death in the absence of a degree
Changing the system
By slightly tweaking this convention, however, we could render the use of OT and SD obsolete. There is a way to convey all the information needed with three simple “rules” instead of five and that would guarantee every score to adopt the same shape.
The outline would be
- An asterisk (*) indicates snitch catch in the last period of gameplay
- A caret (^) indicates snitch catch in the penultimate period of gameplay
- A degree (°) indicates snitch catch in the ante-penultimate period of gameplay
As a result the above mentioned “XXX*-YYY OT” score would be communicated as “XXX^-YYY”: there would be no confusion as to when the snitch was caught and in which circumstances the game ended.
This works with every single scenario possible. Look at the following list of scores, using only symbols and numerical indications based on this notation.The scores are arranged with team A first and team B second:
a) 60*-110
b) 60^-110
c) 60^-110*
d) 80°-110*
e) 100°-110^
f) 100-110°
They perfectly condense the following information and simplify its transmission under written form whatever the support.
a) Game with no overtime, team A caught the snitch during regulation time.
b) Game with overtime, team A caught the snitch during regulation time, no catch during overtime.
c) Snitch catch in both regulation time and overtime. Team A caught the snitch during regulation time and team B caught it during overtime.
d) Overtime and sudden death. Team A caught the snitch during regulation time, no catch during overtime, catch during sudden death by team B.
e) Overtime and sudden death. Team A caught the snitch during regulation time and team B caught it during overtime.
f) Overtime and sudden death. Team B caught the snitch during regulation time.
Note that further improvements could be devised if we wanted to indicate whether the game was within range as the snitch entered the pitch or not. This system does not convey more information than the current existing convention but rather builds upon it to establish a clear standard.
The power of apathy
Sadly, many would argue they are used to the current system and that changing score notation conventions is a pain. Every time I suggest this system should be established, I have been met by this excuse or the argument that “it is not up to us to decide.”
But we adapt to new procedures every season. We have created an entirely new structure for quidditch in the world as National Leagues came into existence. When we needed to fix unwritten conventions, such as jersey numbers, we turned them into rules (Rulebook 8: 2.5.2.C.ii ). The entire USQ World Cup 8 changed to the Swiss format this year! All it requires is someone to take responsibilities and write it down; whether in the rulebook or a commonly accepted scorekeeping guide, and our notation system could be unified, coherent, standardised and more efficient than it currently is.
What are we waiting for? It consists of three simple lines:
- An asterisk (*) indicates snitch catch in the last period of gameplay
- A caret (^) indicates snitch catch in the penultimate period of gameplay
- A degree (°) indicates snitch catch in the ante-penultimate period of gameplay
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