Hey guys! Unfortunately I wasn’t able to do much cosmetic work on the scoreboard. And I may not be able to do much before next week either, since I’m racing towards a writing deadline that’s consuming me.

But I think what we’ve got in the Scoreboard below, paints a really nice picture as is.

We have a new pack leader. @BabsiS has pulled ahead by a half point for nailing both bonuses tonight. @raelee is right there behind her, followed by @LN84 and @MandyKerr.

@thayerf also nabbed a solid win with Asuka along with hitting both half point bonuses. Going from 7 to 28 is an impressive feat, my friend. We have our eye on you.

Also, I feel like I should clarify the bonuses some more, since a few people were confused. I actually had to call @seangunn and make sure I wasn’t confused.

So… every week there are two half point bonuses… 0.5 for the girl and 0.5 for the guy. Every player is eligible to get those bonuses. Even if you think the same person is going home as you already have picked, you can still tweet them as your bonus pick (although some might argue there’s a strategy in not doing so). And if you get it right, you not only get the full 11 points for your original pick, but you also get the bonus.

For example, @Chia_Wombat‘s original picks had Asuka and Vitolio going home this week. Then yesterday she tweeted her bonus picks. They were Asuka and Jonathan. So she got the 11 points for getting Asuka right with her original pick, and she got 0.5 bonus for tweeting Asuka and 0.5 bonus for tweeting Jonathan.

You also don’t lose anything by getting the bonus wrong, so there’s no reason not to just guess. But I do need those guesses in by 8pm EST, which means 5pm PST.

And the most important part of the bonus is that it has to include #SYTYCD-FDL, and you have to tweet it to me as an @reply. That means the tweet has to contain @johncabrera in it.

When I tally the bonuses, I first scan the search for #SYTYCD-FDL. However, some of you have protected profiles (@xina ) and your tweets don’t appear in the search. So then I look at my mentions and see if there are any protected tweets that are not accounted for. I add them from there.

And to those who do protect their tweets, it’s also safer to reply to me by clicking the reply button next to one of my tweets rather than typing my username. That’s just because of a bug that Twitter hasn’t totally fixed (and it goes for replying to anyone about anything, actually.)

Bonuses may not seem as important now, but aside from helping you boost your score by as much as 9 points during the game, I’m also using them as the tie breaker. If there’s a tie for first, it’ll go to the tying winner who had the most bonuses correct during the game.

Okay, enough babbling, sorry. Here’s the new Scoreboard.

The Scoreboard from my June 19th post, has also been updated with this new one. It will remain in my POPULAR category in the sidebar for quick access.