READ ME FIRST : All About the UNO Team Challenge

[Perks Moderator, Know-it-all]

                                ~Perks UNO Team Challenge~

                                

                                 About this team challenge

◈ This is a 3 month team challenge starting 1 March 2016

◈ At the end of the challenge 31 May 2015 the team with the most points wins!

◈ At the start of each month each team is given a minimum 12 hands of 7 "UNO" cards

◈ The idea is to "play" each hand for points. It is up to the team how many "hands" they can get through in the month, but they must play one hand completely before being able to get points for the next

◈ The team can choose to skip an entire hand to get to the next one, but they are not given a replacement hand

UNO Cards
From Wikipedia
The deck consists of 108 cards, of which there are twenty-five of each color (red, green, blue, and yellow), each color having two of each rank except zero. The ranks in each color are zero to nine, "Skip", "Draw Two" and "Reverse" (the last three of these being classified as "action cards"). In addition, the deck contains four each of "Wild" and "Wild Draw Four" cards.

◈◈◈Perks UNO cards◈◈◈
O (Zero)
Read a book that:
- has a 0 or Zero in the title
- has a title starting with Z
- has an author first name or surname starts with Z
- has a character with a first name, surname or nickname starting with Z
- is set in a place name starting with Z
- is a "stand-alone" book (i.e. not part of a series)

1 (One)
Read a book that:
- has a 1 or One in the title
- has a title starting with O
- has an author first name or surname starts with O
- has a character with a first name, surname or nickname starting with O
- is set in a place name starting with O
- is book 1 in a series

2 (Two)
Read a book that:
- has a 2 or Two in the title
- has a title starting with T
- has an author first name or surname starts with T
- has a character with a first name, surname or nickname starting with T
- is set in a place name starting with T
- is book 2 in a series

3 (Three)
Read a book that:
- has a 3 or Three in the title
- has a title starting with H
- has an author first name or surname starts with H
- has a character with a first name, surname or nickname starting with H
- is set in a place name starting with H
- is book 3 in a series

4 (Four)
Read a book that:
- has a 4 or Four in the title
- has a title starting with F
- has an author first name or surname starts with F
- has a character with a first name, surname or nickname starting with F
- is set in a place name starting with F
- is book 4 in a series

5 (Five)
Read a book that:
- has a 5 or Five in the title
- has a title starting with I
- has an author first name or surname starts with I
- has a character with a first name, surname or nickname starting with I
- is set in a place name starting with I
- is book 5 in a series

6 (Six)
Read a book that:
- has a 6 or Six in the title
- has a title starting with S
- has an author first name or surname starts with S
- has a character with a first name, surname or nickname starting with S
- is set in a place name starting with S
- is book 6 in a series

7 (Seven)
Read a book that:
- has a 7 or Seven in the title
- has a title starting with V
- has an author first name or surname starts with V
- has a character with a first name, surname or nickname starting with V
- is set in a place name starting with V
- is book 7 in a series

8 (Eight)
Read a book that:
- has an 8 or Eight in the title
- has a title starting with E
- has an author first name or surname starts with E
- has a character with a first name, surname or nickname starting with E
- is set in a place name starting with E
- is book 8 in a series

9 (Nine)
Read a book that:
- has a 9 or Nine in the title
- has a title starting with N
- has an author first name or surname starts with N
- has a character with a first name, surname or nickname starting with N
- is set in a place name starting with N
- is book 9 in a series

Skip
Read a book that:
- has a title starting with K or P
- has an author first name or surname starts with K or P
- has a character with a first name, surname or nickname starting with K or P
- is set in a place name starting with K or P
OR you can choose to "skip" reading a book for this cards (and get no points for this card)

Draw 2
Use the same book for two cards in this hand (and get points for both cards)

Reverse
One member of your team must read a book another team member has already read

Wild
Read a book that can fit any of the requirements for cards 0-9

Wild draw four
Read any book!

◈◈◈Points◈◈◈
For each book read to match a 0-9 card, the team gets 20 points
For each book read to match a Skip or Reverse, the team gets 25 points
For each book read to match a wild or Wild draw four card the team gets 30 points
For each hand completed, the team gets a bonus 15 points

IMPORTANT
-Books must be more than 100 pages in length and Children's books and Graphic Novels can not be used unless by word count they can be verified as more than 25,000 words using arbookfind.com

-Only books STARTED after March 1 count for this challenge

Note
For book titles starting with an article (A/An/The), the article can be ignored or used. So The Hiding Place, for example, could be used as title starting with T or H

[Perks Moderator, Know-it-all]

                           
Example:
TEAM A is Karen, Kristie, Eric, Molly, Spot, Gemima, Tori, Isaac and Luke

Month 1
Using random.org , the mods assign the hands of:
1st hand
Reverse, 6, 4, 1, Skip, Wild, 1
2nd hand
9, 4, 2,Wild draw four, Draw Two, 3, 2
3rd hand
Wild draw four, 5, 0, Wild, 4, 9, Reverse
etc.
-----------

The team must read books to complete hand 1, before they can get points for completing books in other hands. (OR they can choose to skip hand 1 completely to move to hand 2, but they get no points for hand one and no replacement hand)

At the start of the month the team knows some of the books they intend to read and they decide to allocate these as follows:
Hand One:

Reverse : Karen reads Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children as it has been read before by Kristie
6 Kristie reads Hot Six (Six in the title)
4 Eric reads Divergent (Character with a nickname of "four")
1 Kristie reads On the Edge (Title starts with O)
Skip Karen reads Cop Town (author name Karin)
Wild Gemima reads The Forgotten Garden (author name Kate)
1 Tori reads Unwind (book set in Ohio)

Hand one would then be complete. These books count towards hand two

Wild Draw Four Isaac reads Life of Pi 
3 Luke reads The Hiding Place (title)
9 Molly reads Nowhere Ranch (title)
4 Spot reads The Gods of Gotham (author name Faye)

◈ Note: it is up to the teams how they divide up the cards to read across the team players. Just remember, you can only get points if a hand is completed, and in order.
So, if you complete all of hand 1, some of hand 2, and all of hand 3, you will only get points for hand 1 and the books read of hand 2.

[Perks Moderator, Know-it-all]

Interested in playing?
Teams have started to be assembled from 10th February, so sign-ups from here on in will be Reserve players. That means you won't be assigned to a team until we have some space on existing teams, or we get enough new players to form a new team.

Fill out this SIGN UP FORM

If you have problems with the form, please let us know.
You can see if your form responses worked, and check out who else has signed up here
***********************
Captain's Duties
◈ Every month when the team gets their monthly UNO hands the Captain will need to work with the team to create a plan for how to read the hands. We will provide you with a spreadsheet to complete.
◈ We would expect the captains to track the teams books
◈ At the end of each month the Captain will need to check their teams books are marked as "read" and meet the page counts and submit their team's info to the moderator to have points confirmed

[Perks Moderator, Know-it-all]

Only books STARTED after the challenge begins can count.

The challenge starts on Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 7pm AEDST (Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time). To see when this is in your time zone, use this countdown

Main cities, FYI:
Tokyo: 5pm, 1st March
London: 8am, 1st March
New York: 3am, 1st March
San Francisco: Midnight, 1st March

[Perks Moderator, Know-it-all]

Current Points Spreadsheet
Note: Current Points is only as up to date as the captains are at updating their spreadsheets
Some Captains update daily, others weekly, or somewhere in between!
Some only count points when hands are completed, others count points for all books as soon as read
So just use this as a guide as to where your team is up to :)

[Perks Moderator, Know-it-all]

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[Perks Moderator, Know-it-all]

Here is the countdown to the April hands for UNO. Books can count for April that are marked as read from April 1, 2016 at 7pm AEDST. (They can be started at anytime from the start of the challenge, i.e. March 1)

Click here for countdown

Main cities, FYI: (note this has changed for some cities from March as Australia , UK and the US are all on Daylight Savings time on April 1)

Tokyo: 5pm, 1st April
London: 9am, 1st April
New York: 4am, 1st April
San Francisco: 1am, 1st April

[Perks Moderator, Know-it-all]

With only 49 hours to go until the official end of March for the challenge it is time to organise your spreadsheets!
You may need to start swapping books around to ensure you cover as many hands as possible. Make sure you claim any bonus points from our mini challenges and get ready for April!

[Perks Moderator, Know-it-all]

Now that you all have the hang of the game and we have placed extra players into teams, we are ready to turn things up a notch in April!

For those that played last year you may remember that each month we increase the number of hands. So for April you have Fourteen hands.

We have also added in an extra element for April.
As UNO number cards are coloured Blue, Green, Red and Yellow, we have added seven new cards to each team that have a colour attached. So, for example, rather than receiving card "7", you may see it says " 7 Green". This means you need to find a book that not only matches the criteria for 7, but also has a colour cover of green (the cover should be more than 50% green).

As these are very special cards they are worth 30 points. You will find 4 of these cards scattered throughout your hands, and 3 more in your last hand. Think of it as an incentive to finish all those books! :)

The UNO Pixie will be updating your spreadsheets over the next day so you'll have them ready for the official start time for April.

Click here for a countdown to the start of April

Main cities, FYI: (note this has changed for some cities from March as Australia , UK and the US are all on Daylight Savings time on April 1)

Tokyo: 5pm, 1st April
London: 9am, 1st April
New York: 4am, 1st April
San Francisco: 1am, 1st April

[Karen ⊰✿, Avaricious Reader]

Click here for a countdown to the start of May

Main cities, FYI: (note this has changed for some cities from April as Australia , is no longer on Daylight Savings time)

Sydney: 6pm, 1st May
Tokyo: 5pm, 1st May
London: 9am, 1st May
New York: 4am, 1st May
San Francisco: 1am, 1st May

[Perks Moderator, Know-it-all]

The end of the challenge is close!

We have had a chat to the captains and voted to extend the end time by a few hours so that the US readers have the official end not happen in the wee hours of the morning.

End date/times are:

Sydney: 11.59pm, 1st June*
Tokyo: 11pm, 1st June
London: 3pm, 1st June
New York: 10am, 1st June
San Francisco: 7am, 1st June

*or midnight, but posted as 11.59pm to avoid confusion with the date!