[_alastair]

Thanks for the question, pervycreeper!

The concept is not new at all - Spot the Ball is a competition that ran in UK (and possible other) newspapers going back at least as far as the 70s. It was a cash prize competition and was pretty popular, though it's died out in recent years.

I wanted to bring it back to get people to interact a little more with a highlights photo gallery - it's a lot more fun that way. IMO, it's interesting because it's just the right level of infuriating.

[DanBC]

One thing that people don't realise about newspaper spot the ball competitions is that the winning position was not where the ball originally was in the photo, but where the competition organisers thought it should be.

That removed any actual element of skill ("where are the players looking?") and turned it into pure guesswork.

People could buy rubber stamps of a grid of crosses so they could make very many simultaneous guesses.

[pvg]

Here's a mention of it in the 40s in VS Naipaul's autobiographical fiction.

https://books.google.com/books?id=A2bTQbKZRf0C&lpg=PA110&ots...

[keithpeter]

Early 1960s: Grandad tried the intersecting eyelines approach, Dad did the grid of guesses approach (you got a number of guesses). Neither won much!

[pervycreeper]

Interesting, thanks. Definitely a tradition which is very well suited to revamping for the digital age.

[dminor]

MLSSoccer.com did this last year during the playoffs.

[untog]

Yep - after we did it for the World Cup last year! Great to see more people taking it up.