Anyone tried the Immaculate Grid game?

[Frobby]

I just learned about a new daily gsme called the Immaculste Grid, www.immaculategrid.com.

Basically it’s a 3x3 grid that you need to fill in with baseball players who meet the criteria of both the column and the row.   The categories are sometimes the name of a team, sometimes an award or statistical achievement.  For example, on Wednesday one of the columns was the Orioles, and one of the rows was the Padres.  Manny Machado fits that box, but so do Deivi Cruz, Jorge Mateo and  other players.  Another row was 500 home run hitters.  Frank Robinson fits the box in the Orioles column, but so do Eddie Murray, Rafael Palmeiro, Reggie Jackson, Jim Thome and maybe some others.  

In addition to trying to fill in the 9 boxes correctly, you get a “rarity score” where, like golf, lower is better.  If 70% of the people who play put Manny in the Orioles/Padres box, you get 70 points for that box, but if you pick Cruz and only 2% picked him, you get only two points, which is better.  A wrong answer in a box gets you 100 points.  

I played the last two days and missed two boxes the first time and one the second time.  All my misses were players who played on a combination of teams, like Angels/Marlins, Twins/A’s and Twins/Padres.  

Anyway, it’s pretty fun so I thought I’d mention it here.  

 

 

Edited June 30, 2023 by Frobby

[backwardsk]

Yes, it’s now part of my morning routine. I typically get seven or eight, but haven’t hit on all nine yet.

I try to get as obscure as possible.

I don’t see the rarity score. I play on mobile. Maybe that’s why? 
 

EDIT: Nevermind. I see the rarity score now.

Edited June 30, 2023 by backwardsk

[SteveA]

10 hours ago, Frobby said:

I just learned about a new daily gsme called the Immaculste Grid, www.immaculategrid.com.

Basically it’s a 3x3 grid that you need to fill in with baseball players who meet the criteria of both the column and the row.   The categories are sometimes the name of a team, sometimes an award or statistical achievement.  For example, on Wednesday one of the columns was the Orioles, and one of the rows was the Padres.  Manny Machado fits that box, but so do Deivi Cruz, Jorge Mateo and  other players.  Another row was 500 home run hitters.  Frank Robinson fits the box in the Orioles column, but so do Eddie Murray, Rafael Palmeiro, Reggie Jackson, Jim Thome and maybe some others.  

In addition to trying to fill in the 9 boxes correctly, you get a “rarity score” where, like golf, lower is better.  If 70% of the people who play put Manny in the Orioles/Padres box, you get 70 points for that box, but if you pick Cruz and only 2% picked him, you get only two points, which is better.  A wrong answer in a box gets you 100 points.  

I played the last two days and missed two boxes the first time and one the second time.  All my misses were players who played on a combination of teams, like Angels/Marlins, Twins/A’s and Twins/Padres.  

Anyway, it’s pretty fun so I thought I’d mention it here.  

 

 

Way back in the pre-internet days, and when free agency was still less than 10 years old so there was a lot less player movement, a friend and I invented "The Grid".     We used to to pass the time on the 300 mile drives from Maryland where we lived to Virginia Tech where we went to college.

We never committed it to paper, it was all in our heads.   Sort of like those people who play chess without the board and pieces.

I think there were 26 MLB teams at the time, so it was a 26x26 grid where you had to name a guy who played with both teams.   And you couldn't re-use a guy, so if Reggie Jackson filled the Orioles/Yankees square, you couldn't use him for an A's/Angels square.

At the time, the Toronto and Seattle franchises were only about 10 years old so sometimes it was hard to find guys to fill the squares in their rows and columns.

I don't think we ever completed it, since we never put it down on paper, but we passed the time with it.   And we never patented the idea, so someone is now making money off our idea.

Since we were just in our 20s, we only really knew the players from about one and a half generations.   Sure, we knew baseball history so we knew stars, but I can probably tell you who the starting 2Bman is from 20 of the 26 teams in 1977 and maybe just from 2 of teams from 1967.   (And back then I would be be 26/26 on 1977, which was just 7 or 8 years in the rearview mirror at the time).

[Frobby]

I have to say, this game is definitely showing me that my memory is getting rusty.  On Wednesday, there was a square for a player who’d played for both the Marlins and the Cubs.  I knew there was such a guy, I could picture him in my head, a very good offensive and defensive 1B.   And, I remembered that the O’s had signed him to a one year deal the same year they signed Vlad, and then dumped him at the trade deadline.  But even with that, I couldn’t remember the guy’s name.  So I had a look at the 2011 Orioles on BB-ref and saw that Derrek Lee was the guy I was thinking of.

Now I ask you, was it cheating for me to look that up?  I didn’t do anything to verify that he’d played for the Marlins and the Cubs, I just got his name.  

Anyway, I’m having a lot of episodes like that where I can picture a guy and remember obscure details about his career but am drawing a blank on his name.  
 

[backwardsk]

26 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I have to say, this game is definitely showing me that my memory is getting rusty.  On Wednesday, there was a square for a player who’d played for both the Marlins and the Cubs.  I knew there was such a guy, I could picture him in my head, a very good offensive and defensive 1B.   And, I remembered that the O’s had signed him to a one year deal the same year they signed Vlad, and then dumped him at the trade deadline.  But even with that, I couldn’t remember the guy’s name.  So I had a look at the 2011 Orioles on BB-ref and saw that Derrek Lee was the guy I was thinking of.

Now I ask you, was it cheating for me to look that up?  I didn’t do anything to verify that he’d played for the Marlins and the Cubs, I just got his name.  

Anyway, I’m having a lot of episodes like that where I can picture a guy and remember obscure details about his career but am drawing a blank on his name.  
 

It’s not just you. Haha.

I’ve found that in January I could probably only name 30-35 guys on the roster and maybe 25 of the top 30 prospects. Then it comes back to me. Same with football rosters in the summer.

[glenn__davis]

33 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I have to say, this game is definitely showing me that my memory is getting rusty.  On Wednesday, there was a square for a player who’d played for both the Marlins and the Cubs.  I knew there was such a guy, I could picture him in my head, a very good offensive and defensive 1B.   And, I remembered that the O’s had signed him to a one year deal the same year they signed Vlad, and then dumped him at the trade deadline.  But even with that, I couldn’t remember the guy’s name.  So I had a look at the 2011 Orioles on BB-ref and saw that Derrek Lee was the guy I was thinking of.

Now I ask you, was it cheating for me to look that up?  I didn’t do anything to verify that he’d played for the Marlins and the Cubs, I just got his name.  

Anyway, I’m having a lot of episodes like that where I can picture a guy and remember obscure details about his career but am drawing a blank on his name.  
 

For the record, yes, that was cheating haha.

[Frobby]

1 minute ago, glenn__davis said:

For the record, yes, that was cheating haha.

Sigh…I was afraid you’d say that.  

[SteveA]

Took me to my 6th day to finally get 9 out of 9.   Guess it helped that the Orioles were involved.

[ArtVanDelay]

Anyone else use Chris Richard for Orioles/Cardinals a few days ago?

I don’t know why he was the first name that came to mind.

[SteveA]

1 hour ago, ArtVanDelay said:

Anyone else use Chris Richard for Orioles/Cardinals a few days ago?

I don’t know why he was the first name that came to mind.

I used Floyd Rayford.   I think that had been used by 0.01% of contestants!   I'm sure Richard was at least as low.

We traded Floyd for Tito Landrum during the '83 season and Landrum hit the huge HR in the playoffs.

By sometime the next year, Landrum was back in SL via a minor league trade and Floyd was back in Baltimore.   I always have assumed there was some sort of agreement between the teams to loan us Landrum for that pennant drive.

When I know an answer I try to put someone obscure in the box.   They give you that #, where lower is better, that is the sum of all the percentages of the guys you chose got picked.   Lower # is better.  So if you pick a guy  who was picked by 50% of contestants, like Lindor in the Mets/Indians square, you get 50 points.  Pick 9 guys like that and you get a score of 450.   Pick 9 Floyd Rayfords and you get a score of 9, or maybe 0!     I think my score was 154 today, will have to try to beat that.

Today for Baltimore/Cleveland, I used Boog, and I think that was < 1%.

[86this]

I did today's with a rarity score of 184.

[ArtVanDelay]

20 minutes ago, SteveA said:

I used Floyd Rayford.   I think that had been used by 0.01% of contestants!   I'm sure Richard was at least as low.

We traded Floyd for Tito Landrum during the '83 season and Landrum hit the huge HR in the playoffs.

By sometime the next year, Landrum was back in SL via a minor league trade and Floyd was back in Baltimore.   I always have assumed there was some sort of agreement between the teams to loan us Landrum for that pennant drive.

When I know an answer I try to put someone obscure in the box.   They give you that #, where lower is better, that is the sum of all the percentages of the guys you chose got picked.   Lower # is better.  So if you pick a guy  who was picked by 50% of contestants, like Lindor in the Mets/Indians square, you get 50 points.  Pick 9 guys like that and you get a score of 450.   Pick 9 Floyd Rayfords and you get a score of 9, or maybe 0!     I think my score was 154 today, will have to try to beat that.

Today for Baltimore/Cleveland, I used Boog, and I think that was < 1%.

You must’ve been the only person to use Rayford.  A handful of people used Richard because he was at 0.2%. 
 

My score was 272 today.  Using Lindor really hurt me.  I wanted to use Amed Rosario but of course I couldn’t think of his name until after I gave in and used Lindor.  And I couldn’t remember if Andres Gimenez had ever debuted as a Met.  I see now that he did. 
 

I used Brady Anderson for Orioles/Cleveland. 

Edited July 5, 2023 by ArtVanDelay

[ArtVanDelay]

Spoiler alerts in the posts above so don’t read them until after you’ve done today’s grid. 

[Moshagge3]

There was so much Ryan Theriot trade talk on this forum that I was convinced in my memory Theriot was actually an Oriole at some point. I lost the square.

[ArtVanDelay]

29 minutes ago, Moshagge3 said:

There was so much Ryan Theriot trade talk on this forum that I was convinced in my memory Theriot was actually an Oriole at some point. I lost the square.

I went with Scott Feldman.