26 ms·

Spot the Ball

282 points by mrbird 11y ago

bherms 11y ago
reminds me of bestofthebest's car raffle... since you can't really gamble in the UK, they do a skill based game that is exactly this... you buy guesses and then click where you think the ball is... the person each week with the closest guess to where a group of judges says the ball is wins the car of their choice
- knodi123 11y ago
  a group of judges? but... isn't there one objective correct answer?
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    What fun is that?
  - bherms 11y ago
    Yeah, I'm confused as to why they need judges as well, but it's how they do it...
- phaemon 11y ago
  > since you can't really gamble in the UK Of course you can really gamble in the UK - that's what the bookies are for. However, the regulations are a lot tighter for gambling, so it's easier to make it a "skill based game" which has much looser rules. Bingo and raffles have their own rules which, again, are a lot easier to comply with.
  - Zenst 11y ago
    Indeed I recall Spot the Ball compititions in the national papers in my youth and nicely covered here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spot_the_ball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spot_the_ball in much better detail than I. So somewhat nostalgic seeing the new edition. Though recall it's demise in newspapers was down to the worry of technology enabling analysis of the picture reducing the human level of skill involved and with it being money related prizes then they moved on.
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
  Of course we have gambling in the UK. It's just that skill-based games are less tightly regulated than purely chance-based games. Hence those premium rate TV phone-in competitions where the player has a choice between one obvious answer and two stupid ones.
_alastair 11y ago
I'm one of the people that made this interactive - funny to see it on Hacker News! If anyone has any questions about it, let me know.
- corbinpage 11y ago
  How do you construct the background image that replaces the ball?
  - rwc 11y ago
    Suspect they used Photoshop Content Aware Fill. http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing/content-aware-fill-cs5/ http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing/content-awa...
  - _alastair 11y ago
    That's the work of Sam Manchester, deputy editor on the Sports desk and chief Photoshop wizard. I believe most of it is just cloning different parts of the photo to cover up the ball, though it can get more complex. For example, on the 4th photo of this previous round: http://projects.nytimes.com/interactive/sports/worldcup/spot-the-ball/2014/06/17 http://projects.nytimes.com/interactive/sports/worldcup/spot... he actually cloned a players face from a different photo and pasted it in to cover up the ball. I have no idea how he does it so well.
    - taternuts 11y ago
      I was wondering how he did that one!!! Part of my thinking was that you'd choose pictures that had the ball in an easy to photoshop location, and that threw me off
      - _alastair 11y ago
        I think he enjoys a challenge. Case in point, the last photo in this set: http://projects.nytimes.com/interactive/sports/worldcup/spot-the-ball/2014/06/19 http://projects.nytimes.com/interactive/sports/worldcup/spot...
jmhobbs 11y ago
This is infuriating. I tried using where players were looking and it got me squat. Very cool though.
- jpreiland 11y ago
  Yeah I found that the players' eyes were mostly useless but often times the composition of the photo is helpful. For example, if players are gathered on the right edge of the frame and there's a bunch of blank space to the left, the ball is likely over in the open area
- ars 11y ago
  I used where the fans were looking instead. It worked sometimes. I assume the players look where they are going, and at other people instead of the ball (since they can predict the trajectory they probably look where it will interact with something, not where it is.).
8_hours_ago 11y ago
John Graham-Cumming wrote an article about trying to hack a contest similar to this. I wonder if a similar technique could be used to find the ball on these images? http://blog.jgc.org/2008/02/tonight-im-going-to-write-myself-aston.html http://blog.jgc.org/2008/02/tonight-im-going-to-write-myself...
- danso 11y ago
  I started to roll my eyes when I saw your comment because I thought, "the NYT made a fun web interactive with no-stakes and someone is pointlessly wondering if the answers are in the source code"...so now I realize what a reflection this is on how lame and limited my own thinking is :). This was a great link...I've been casually brainstorming heuristics for detecting possible Photoshopping and John writes about exactly that. I'm going to walk through his algorithm using Python and PIL.
smackfu 11y ago
Neat idea, but is this something you can actually be skilled at? Even if you know the game, and can figure out what trajectory the ball was on, it seems very hard to figure out exactly where on that trajectory it was when the photo was taken, given the high speed of the ball.
- emodendroket 11y ago
  Couldn't you? It seems like if you were skilled enough you could figure it out by the reactions of various players in the photos with more than one or two people in them.
  - jdrock 11y ago
    Trying to triangulate based on where players' eyes are looking rarely works. In many cases, the goalie is looking in a completely different direction than where the ball is. I guess that's why they're getting scored on.
    - blazingfrog2 11y ago
      Don't forget that the ball can come very fast and the keeper will need a split second to adjust. In other cases, the kicker can be masked by another player preventing the keeper to see the ball until very late.
    - emodendroket 11y ago
      I'd guess that a pro soccer player is generally looking where he expects the ball to go and not necessarily where it is.
- blazingfrog2 11y ago
  After logging many thousand of hours of dutifully watching soccer (over 30 years of full-on love for the game), I was able to match the given situations to similar ones I'd seen before and get close enough most of the time. It's still all probabilities at the end of the day. Following the direction players are looking is just one parameter and can be wildly inaccurate without any information on the angle and velocity of the ball at the time of the shot. One of the trickiest situations is when 2 players jump for the ball, usually coming from a goalkeeper's clearance, so high and fairly fast, and collide in the air (often closing their eyes): the ball could literally be anywhere.
hackuser 11y ago
It's odd to see a casual game, with no other significance or meaning, in the NY Times. It would be great to see them using interactive tools to tell news stories more often.
- emodendroket 11y ago
  They do that too. Like the story they did about the Philippine Coast Guard in the South China Sea.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Klinky 11y ago
  Next they'll be putting crossword puzzles in the New York Times! Of all places!
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tabrischen 11y ago
This is very fun for me, even as someone who's not a sports fan. Great way to engage this other segment of readers.
mholt 11y ago
Did anyone actually read the article?
DLWormwood 11y ago
I remember seeing an arcade redemption machine that worked on the same principle. It had a database of hundreds of screenshots from soccer/footy games and the player had to guess where the ball should be. The more accurate the guess; the more tickets the machine dispensed.
usaphp 11y ago
If you notice the outline of the ball has different size for each photo, this allows to identify a relative distance where the ball is compared to height of players
- _alastair 11y ago
  Glad you noticed that! It's proof of the difference a great designer (in this case, Rumsey Taylor of our News Design team) can make. As a developer it can be quite humbling to realise how many seemingly tiny yet actually really important touches exist in a project you think you know inside out.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
_puk 11y ago
Good fun! My understanding of the UK version of this was that the ball was actually placed by a group of pundits[0], rather than being in the original location, so even if you found a freeze frame of the original match you'd still not be able to cheat the system. Would be fun to crowd source a position taken from wrong guesses to provide some variance. 0: http://www.theguardian.com/football/shortcuts/2015/jan/14/how-to-spot-the-ball-in-spot-the-ball http://www.theguardian.com/football/shortcuts/2015/jan/14/ho...
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
  I like that - a "most popular guess" vs "actual position" would be really interesting. As we seem to have at least one of the developers in this thread, maybe we can make that happen (or at least a post-mortem blog post analysing the data?)
namuol 11y ago
For me this quickly became "spot the photoshop artifact". I only noticed it clearly for one photo and did marginally better than average (58% -- some guesses were way off) Still very fun.
reamworks 11y ago
This is _much_ more fun that drawing graphs about poor people and college.
Rexxar 11y ago
The second time, after removing the cookie, is much more easy (~46% to 99.67%). The conclusion is that there are, for the moment, few cheaters.
ChrisArchitect 11y ago
as a footy fan I enjoy this a lot - tho this time around I scored terribly compared to world cup a year ago thanks _alastair for getting involved here - tons of great little insights

282 points by mrbird 11y ago

reminds me of bestofthebest's car raffle... since you can't really gamble in the UK, they do a skill based game that is exactly this... you buy guesses and then click where you think the ball is... the person each week with the closest guess to where a group of judges says the ball is wins the car of their choice

knodi123 11y ago
a group of judges? but... isn't there one objective correct answer?
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  What fun is that?
- bherms 11y ago
  Yeah, I'm confused as to why they need judges as well, but it's how they do it...
phaemon 11y ago
> since you can't really gamble in the UK Of course you can really gamble in the UK - that's what the bookies are for. However, the regulations are a lot tighter for gambling, so it's easier to make it a "skill based game" which has much looser rules. Bingo and raffles have their own rules which, again, are a lot easier to comply with.
- Zenst 11y ago
  Indeed I recall Spot the Ball compititions in the national papers in my youth and nicely covered here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spot_the_ball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spot_the_ball in much better detail than I. So somewhat nostalgic seeing the new edition. Though recall it's demise in newspapers was down to the worry of technology enabling analysis of the picture reducing the human level of skill involved and with it being money related prizes then they moved on.
SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
Of course we have gambling in the UK. It's just that skill-based games are less tightly regulated than purely chance-based games. Hence those premium rate TV phone-in competitions where the player has a choice between one obvious answer and two stupid ones.

_alastair 11y ago

I'm one of the people that made this interactive - funny to see it on Hacker News! If anyone has any questions about it, let me know.

corbinpage 11y ago
How do you construct the background image that replaces the ball?
- rwc 11y ago
  Suspect they used Photoshop Content Aware Fill. http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing/content-aware-fill-cs5/ http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing/content-awa...
- _alastair 11y ago
  That's the work of Sam Manchester, deputy editor on the Sports desk and chief Photoshop wizard. I believe most of it is just cloning different parts of the photo to cover up the ball, though it can get more complex. For example, on the 4th photo of this previous round: http://projects.nytimes.com/interactive/sports/worldcup/spot-the-ball/2014/06/17 http://projects.nytimes.com/interactive/sports/worldcup/spot... he actually cloned a players face from a different photo and pasted it in to cover up the ball. I have no idea how he does it so well.
  - taternuts 11y ago
    I was wondering how he did that one!!! Part of my thinking was that you'd choose pictures that had the ball in an easy to photoshop location, and that threw me off
    - _alastair 11y ago
      I think he enjoys a challenge. Case in point, the last photo in this set: http://projects.nytimes.com/interactive/sports/worldcup/spot-the-ball/2014/06/19 http://projects.nytimes.com/interactive/sports/worldcup/spot...

jmhobbs 11y ago

This is infuriating. I tried using where players were looking and it got me squat. Very cool though.

jpreiland 11y ago
Yeah I found that the players' eyes were mostly useless but often times the composition of the photo is helpful. For example, if players are gathered on the right edge of the frame and there's a bunch of blank space to the left, the ball is likely over in the open area
ars 11y ago
I used where the fans were looking instead. It worked sometimes. I assume the players look where they are going, and at other people instead of the ball (since they can predict the trajectory they probably look where it will interact with something, not where it is.).

8_hours_ago 11y ago

John Graham-Cumming wrote an article about trying to hack a contest similar to this. I wonder if a similar technique could be used to find the ball on these images? http://blog.jgc.org/2008/02/tonight-im-going-to-write-myself-aston.html http://blog.jgc.org/2008/02/tonight-im-going-to-write-myself...

danso 11y ago
I started to roll my eyes when I saw your comment because I thought, "the NYT made a fun web interactive with no-stakes and someone is pointlessly wondering if the answers are in the source code"...so now I realize what a reflection this is on how lame and limited my own thinking is :). This was a great link...I've been casually brainstorming heuristics for detecting possible Photoshopping and John writes about exactly that. I'm going to walk through his algorithm using Python and PIL.

smackfu 11y ago

Neat idea, but is this something you can actually be skilled at? Even if you know the game, and can figure out what trajectory the ball was on, it seems very hard to figure out exactly where on that trajectory it was when the photo was taken, given the high speed of the ball.

emodendroket 11y ago
Couldn't you? It seems like if you were skilled enough you could figure it out by the reactions of various players in the photos with more than one or two people in them.
- jdrock 11y ago
  Trying to triangulate based on where players' eyes are looking rarely works. In many cases, the goalie is looking in a completely different direction than where the ball is. I guess that's why they're getting scored on.
  - blazingfrog2 11y ago
    Don't forget that the ball can come very fast and the keeper will need a split second to adjust. In other cases, the kicker can be masked by another player preventing the keeper to see the ball until very late.
  - emodendroket 11y ago
    I'd guess that a pro soccer player is generally looking where he expects the ball to go and not necessarily where it is.
blazingfrog2 11y ago
After logging many thousand of hours of dutifully watching soccer (over 30 years of full-on love for the game), I was able to match the given situations to similar ones I'd seen before and get close enough most of the time. It's still all probabilities at the end of the day. Following the direction players are looking is just one parameter and can be wildly inaccurate without any information on the angle and velocity of the ball at the time of the shot. One of the trickiest situations is when 2 players jump for the ball, usually coming from a goalkeeper's clearance, so high and fairly fast, and collide in the air (often closing their eyes): the ball could literally be anywhere.

hackuser 11y ago

It's odd to see a casual game, with no other significance or meaning, in the NY Times. It would be great to see them using interactive tools to tell news stories more often.

emodendroket 11y ago
They do that too. Like the story they did about the Philippine Coast Guard in the South China Sea.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Klinky 11y ago
Next they'll be putting crossword puzzles in the New York Times! Of all places!

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tabrischen 11y ago

This is very fun for me, even as someone who's not a sports fan. Great way to engage this other segment of readers.

mholt 11y ago

Did anyone actually read the article?

DLWormwood 11y ago

I remember seeing an arcade redemption machine that worked on the same principle. It had a database of hundreds of screenshots from soccer/footy games and the player had to guess where the ball should be. The more accurate the guess; the more tickets the machine dispensed.

usaphp 11y ago

If you notice the outline of the ball has different size for each photo, this allows to identify a relative distance where the ball is compared to height of players

_alastair 11y ago
Glad you noticed that! It's proof of the difference a great designer (in this case, Rumsey Taylor of our News Design team) can make. As a developer it can be quite humbling to realise how many seemingly tiny yet actually really important touches exist in a project you think you know inside out.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

_puk 11y ago

Good fun! My understanding of the UK version of this was that the ball was actually placed by a group of pundits[0], rather than being in the original location, so even if you found a freeze frame of the original match you'd still not be able to cheat the system. Would be fun to crowd source a position taken from wrong guesses to provide some variance. 0: http://www.theguardian.com/football/shortcuts/2015/jan/14/how-to-spot-the-ball-in-spot-the-ball http://www.theguardian.com/football/shortcuts/2015/jan/14/ho...

SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
I like that - a "most popular guess" vs "actual position" would be really interesting. As we seem to have at least one of the developers in this thread, maybe we can make that happen (or at least a post-mortem blog post analysing the data?)

namuol 11y ago

For me this quickly became "spot the photoshop artifact". I only noticed it clearly for one photo and did marginally better than average (58% -- some guesses were way off) Still very fun.

reamworks 11y ago

This is _much_ more fun that drawing graphs about poor people and college.

Rexxar 11y ago

The second time, after removing the cookie, is much more easy (~46% to 99.67%). The conclusion is that there are, for the moment, few cheaters.

ChrisArchitect 11y ago

as a footy fan I enjoy this a lot - tho this time around I scored terribly compared to world cup a year ago thanks _alastair for getting involved here - tons of great little insights