It's that time of year again! The time when we separate the hard from the soft. The myths from the legends. The tin...from the IRON.
Presenting, the 10th annual edition of...
THE IRON NODER CHALLENGE
Many hundreds have tried. Mere tens have succeeded. Do you think you have what it takes to enter the hallowed HALL OF THE IRON?
Actually, when you think about it, it's not even that hard. All you have to do is...
Write 30 things worth reading in 30 days.
In honor of our 10th year, our goal is to have at least TEN noders go ferrous. Should we achieve this goal together, all participants reaching IRON NODER status will receive a bonus reward of 1000 GP, and all participants with at least one writeup will receive a bonus of 100 GP.
This is all in addition to the usual individual rewards, which are as follows:
- WET PAPER NAPKIN NODERS who sign up for the quest but never get around to writing a writeup will still receive a 10 GP bonus for (arguably) good intentions.
- TIN NODERS who write between 1 and 4 writeups will receive 5 GP per writeup plus a bonus of 50 GP for their participation.
- ALUMIN(I)UM NODERS who write between 5 and 9 writeups will receive 10 GP per writeup plus a bonus of 100 GP for their participation.
- BRASS NODERS who who write between 10 and 19 writeups will receive 15 GP per writeup plus a bonus of 150 GP for their participation.
- BRONZE NODERS who who write between 20 and 29 writeups will receive 20 GP per writeup plus a bonus of 200 GP for their participation.
- IRON NODERS who who write between 30 and 39 writeups will receive 30 GP per writeup, plus a bonus of 300 GP for their participation, plus a bonus of 3000 GP for achieving IRON NODER status, plus will have their names inscribed in THE HALL OF THE IRON.
- STEEL NODERS who who write between 40 and 49 writeups will receive 40 GP per writeup, plus a bonus of 400 GP for their participation, plus a bonus of 3000 GP for achieving IRON NODER status, plus will have their names inscribed in THE HALL OF THE IRON.
- STAINLESS STEEL NODERS who who write between 50 and 99 writeups will receive 50 GP per writeup, plus a bonus of 500 GP for their participation, plus a bonus of 3000 GP for achieving IRON NODER status, plus will have their names inscribed in THE HALL OF THE IRON.
- TITANIUM NODERS who who write between 100 and 199 writeups will receive 100 GP per writeup, plus a bonus of 1000 GP for their participation, plus a bonus of 3000 GP for achieving IRON NODER status, plus will have their names inscribed in THE HALL OF THE IRON.
- ORICHALCUM NODERS who who write between 200 and 299 writeups will receive 200 GP per writeup, plus a bonus of 2000 GP for their participation, plus a bonus of 3000 GP for achieving IRON NODER status, plus will have their names inscribed in THE HALL OF THE IRON.
- MITHRIL NODERS who who write between 300 and 399 writeups will receive 300 GP per writeup, plus a bonus of 3000 GP for their participation, plus a bonus of 3000 GP for achieving IRON NODER status, plus will have their names inscribed in THE HALL OF THE IRON.
- VIBRANIUM NODERS who who write between 400 and 499 writeups will receive 400 GP per writeup, plus a bonus of 4000 GP for their participation, plus a bonus of 3000 GP for achieving IRON NODER status, plus will have their names inscribed in THE HALL OF THE IRON.
- ADAMANTIUM NODERS who who write more than 500 writeups will receive 500 GP per writeup, plus a bonus of 5000 GP for their participation, plus a bonus of 3000 GP for achieving IRON NODER status, plus will have their names inscribed in THE HALL OF THE IRON.
- If anyone wishes to sponsor any additional rewards or prizes, just /msg mauler!
But lest ye be tempted to count your gold before the IRON is forged, be sure to heed...
The Rules
- The Iron Noder Challenge begins at 00:00 (server time) on November 1, 2017, and ends at 00:00 (server time) on December 1, 2017. Writeups submitted outside that timeframe will not be considered part of the quest.
- To join the hallowed ranks of the IRON, you must submit 30 new writeups in 30 days. The IRON NODER IDEAL is 1
per day, but we must be flexible about that to allow for normal life
circumstances, days away, illness, etc. Flooding New Writeups with 30
writeups in 1 day, while legal, would be frowned upon, and the E2
userbase would probably not react well.
- Any topic, any form, anything goes.
- There is no minimum or maximum length for writeups. They must simply
survive. Nuked nodes will not count towards your total. For this
reason, final rewards will not be dispensed until a couple of days after
the December 1 deadline, to allow last-minute writeups to be voted on
and pass muster with the editors.
- Thou mayest write a maximum of 5 daylogs.
- Thou mayest prepare material in advance. However if this stops you
noding for the remainder of October, this would also go against
the IRON NODER IDEAL.
If you would like to join, let me know via /msg, and I'll add you to
the roster. There is nothing wrong with joining late; just don't forget
to let me know!
We'll be utilizing the ironnoders usergroup for any major
communications; if you're in the group now and are not on my confirmed
IRON NODER list as of November 1st, you'll automatically be dropped from
the group.
If you'd like to see more accurate updates than I have posted here, check out iron noder progress. It even shows which ones
you've voted on!
Whether or not you're attempting the challenge, you may volunteer to read and vote on every write-up submitted in the quest. This year's panel of IRON VOTERS will consist of mauler, NanceMuse, lizardinlaw, moeyz, and anyone else who wants to join! Just /msg me and I'll add your name here (this is a great way to contribute to the quest if you don't have time to write actual writeups).
Need inspiration? Try Everything's Most Wanted, Random Nodeshells, the nodeshells on jessicapierce's scratch pad, The Custodian's Nodeshells I'd Like Filled, and wertperch's nodeshell challenge.
Good luck and remember, becoming IRON will echo through the ages, but rust never sleeps! Time to show us what you're made of!
The Iron Noders
Number of participants:
21
Number of writeups:
717
Average number of writeups:
34.14
Number of IRON NODERS:
12
Below are this year's participants. For up-to-the-minute standings, check out Iron Noder Progress!
- ARYLISA (30)
- Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?
- Happily ever after, without the happily, only the after
- Glass House
- Two roads diverged in a hazy city
- breakfast
- Transcending Structure
- Breathing Contradiction
- Delicate horticulture
- scholar
- Cruelty
- 8-bit lullaby
- Gentrification of Generations
- Icarus by Winter
- When I play hide and seek, I always win
- The antithesis to practicality
- Missing Christmas
- Winding spiral
- The cheat under the storm
- How does a tree's drooping branch feel?
- Watching the photographer
- Neo's new world
- outcast
- Freeway by Night
- Selection
- epileptic
- Composure
- entrepreneur
- bird's-eye view
- The casino's best customer
- geese
- CHORD (30)
- For Gods Sake roll up the windows
- Gold Digging does not pan out
- How far can we get on one tank of fuel
- Tolkien did not like magic
- Of all the species on earth, we have the ability to tell the long march of evolution to go fuck itself
- The Garbage Man
- It's fall and you know what that means
- The Road to Washerville
- Patterns in Tolkien's legendarium
- Washerville
- Fly to the Setting Sun
- I want my Forest of Eriador back please
- Empty night
- I have missed the rain
- Racism as it developed within North America: Perhaps arising from different circumstances of colonization
- Trespassers William
- Lord help you if you own an Aston Martin Lagonda
- Things that are better than sex
- On the brief Victorian surge in the popularity of Anglo-Saxon names
- On the potential of anti-colonialism to become nationalism
- Accidental recipe
- Sword Lesbian, or: Give me a marker and a blank space and I shall move a bit of the world
- No hinges and no doors in this city
- On a clear day you can see more than you want to
- Knock knock who's there oh it's you
- You're always welcome at our house
- It looks like a tourism brochure photo from up here
- Down by the fish, where the Grape Men sing
- Maybe ROMANCE is cruel...
- I'm fine no really
- DUSTYBLUE (30)
- Pact
- The Lego Movie
- A Rickle in Time
- Mortynight Run
- Auto Erotic Assimilation
- Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition
- Dice, Camera, Action
- D&D abilities
- November 10, 2017
- Cocky
- Numberphile
- Total Rickall
- November 16, 2017
- voting booth
- Obliterate Everything 2
- November 18, 2017
- 3Blue1Brown
- Twig
- The Ricks Must Be Crazy
- Peter Watts
- November 25, 2017
- contrarian
- A thousand years from now, we should have coffee and tell stories while the world disintegrates
- Steam Sales
- We won't ditch Earth
- The Machine Stops
- Diabolus ex Machina
- The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
- UNSONG
- November 30, 2017
- ESTELORE (30)
- let the memories be good for those who stay
- Shelgon
- Double Translation
- Oelle como espiritu adolescente
- stravidium
- Monomorpheme
- mezzo forte
- paucal
- ambisyllabicity
- The slow hills of this music are smooth.
- fixed is not the same as new
- The choreography of us
- Artemis
- La Belle Sauvage
- morphophone
- hard science-fiction
- vero nihil verius
- gibus
- retrofuture
- How to Eat a Sandwich
- mamma-jamma
- I want, my insides are saying. I want. I want.
- I'm no saviour. I'm just a nut with a baseball bat.
- Heartstrings
- Meta-Etymology
- Estel
- abstract unit of measure
- badelynge
- Red Mage
- Humanity, Fuck Yeah!
- GLOWING FISH (33)
- In His Image
- The Awakening
- John Egbert
- Present perfect
- have
- Dave Strider
- Marxism
- The Inoculation of the Zine Years
- Woke
- wage slavery
- The Strange Shifting of Time and Space in Outdoor Areas
- Pre-war and Post-war Architecture, at a Glance
- Classic Rock, Out of Context
- Rose LaLonde
- Bitter Root Town
- November 14, 2017
- modal verb
- The Price is Right Rules of Courtship
- Onett
- colander
- November 20, 2017
- The Green Thing
- Anglosphere
- Stranger Things
- Jade Harley
- Chuck Tingle
- Reader's Digest Condensed Books
- Milkshake Duck
- The Ship From Outside
- goomba
- exurb
- Can Mountains Bend Raindrops?
- November 30, 2017
- gnarl (4)
- The Letters of Utrecht
- November 1, 2017
- The princess who climbed up a tree and came down a Queen
- A Lot of Sorrow
- Hazelnut (5)
- Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-rama
- Shadilay
- organic food
- Poverty Porn
- Ed Sheeran
- jmpz (0)
- LIZARDINLAW (30)
- November 1, 2017
- Too long without touch
- November 4, 2017
- Glass House
- atrial fibrillation
- payment
- cancer pen
- November 11, 2017
- diabetes mellitus update 2017
- The Uninhabitable Spaces Between Us
- November 13, 2017
- teens high risk for addiction
- a good relationship
- gender bender gets dressed
- the introverted thinker rounds
- I can't
- Bringing up baby
- November 20, 2017
- hypertension: The 2017 Clinical Guidelines
- compass
- containment in ceremony
- Initial Public Offering
- Unfurl
- Dream Girl
- Hiding in plain sight
- The Introverted Thinker and insomnia
- The Unfeathered Bird
- The Introverted Thinker bands birds
- Maybe ROMANCE is cruel...
- the ability to fly above storms
- mauler (9)
- Keijo
- triple
- 20-20-20 Club
- Too Perfect Theory
- Slydini
- Miser's Dream
- Bessho
- cadet branch
- shugo
- MOEYZ (40)
- Pear-Apple Crisp
- November 2, 2017
- I went up a different person, came down somebody else
- We do what we do because of who we are. If we did otherwise, we would not be ourselves.
- the flecks of smoke and sparks don't conjure you back from the ground or heaven
- MUSHROOM KEEPER
- drawers
- November 10, 2017
- list of things
- GOTHAM SHIELD
- Veterans Day Ceremony and Celebration at Assisted Living
- if tables could express gratitude, this one did
- WomenHeart
- come to think of it, phone calls are excruciating too.
- The loud tissue box
- Toshiko Takaezu
- no more, no less
- Chemical World
- As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
- how to put vertical space MOM
- Nuns and Surfers
- He asked for more flesh
- black magic again
- There's more of gravy than of grave about you
- dame un cuchillo
- because death is just so full, and man so small
- Boston fern
- Alone in the night, I erase my thoughts a hundred times
- For tactical reasons, we do not currently advocate the use of violence or sorcery against private individuals.
- bringing me back to when less was worth more
- All ne'er-do-wells call diamonds apples.
- Gaily they went down in the lush field a treasure of valuables or specie or bullion lodged with a crust of bread into her coat of arms weaving currying the embroidering of silk in summer.
- titles for another love gone wrong story
- My Scarlet Life
- November 30, 2017
- Keep a room somewhere for me, I'll find it on my way back.
- City of Caterpillar
- Don't clap too loudly; it's a very old world.
- there is a special kind of loneliness when you are not where your mind is
- to fly is for those with feathers
- Nemosyn (10)
- undiagnosed pregnancy
- Manuka
- November 16, 2017
- Messing with your own head
- Modern Cloth Nappies
- The Black Moth
- Devil's Cub
- November 28, 2017
- The Corinthian
- Australian Aborigines
- Pandeism Fish (11)
- Messing with your own head
- Remembering Michael Jackson
- Trumpianity
- Keystone Pipeline oil spill
- Alabama Senate seat write-in possibilities
- Fanning on Putin
- The Internet as a domain of Pandeism
- Charles Manson, White Supremacist
- If Jesus rose....
- Trump versus Tobacco
- Raphael Lataster
- PERICLES MCGEE (30)
- Uncle O'Grimacey
- Thing that happened
- B/W
- Lucille
- A List of Titles This Poem Could've Had
- Faint Pyre, Canto 1, Stanza 1
- snowclone
- Social control theory
- Keep Off the Grass
- ...
- The purpose of Cashiers
- lyrical collage
- An Incomplete List of Untrue Facts
- August 31, 2016
- September 12, 2016
- crash blossoms
- Earthgasm
- beer cartilage
- drink carrier
- dokusan
- How Not to Write a Novel; or, How to Not Write a Novel
- Stop Spinning
- Jenny's constant
- baiku
- Step on a Bug
- "Solid Action" b/w "Dig It a Hole"
- U-Men (EP)
- IPOwulf, lines 1-11
- A menstruation machine in every home: against gallery-bound critical design
- Ikean mereology
- raincomplex (4)
- George Washington Sits Behind The Wheel Of His Brand New 1967 Skylark
- the words on the map and the birds in the trees ought not to have to agree.
- a place which you can only see for a moment before waking
- more or less
- RANCID_PICKLE (294)
- Rocky Mountains
- shojo
- Said Bookism
- Tautog
- The Secret Chamber
- From the Dead
- The Walnut-Tree House
- Ford F-150
- from scratch
- FireCuda
- handlebar moustache
- November 4, 2017
- FearCon
- Cabela's
- danger noodle
- Bubble Yum
- runaway truck ramp
- How far can we get on one tank of fuel
- yōkai
- hypnotoad
- Marie Corelli
- Cashew Veggie Blended Soup
- holy water
- Greaser
- David Tennant
- death grip
- Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs
- paperchasing
- quagi
- November 5, 2017
- Quick, put your shirt back on before the cop gets here
- unbalanced line
- pumpkin cookies
- gimmick
- Gold Bond
- Blasty
- E2 node tracker
- ♠
- Veterans of Foreign Wars
- Eric Flint
- i know you are but what am i
- boundary layer
- Mindgames to play while your roommates are having sex in the next room
- Writing Short Articles
- How to kill a mouse
- tank locomotive
- pegging
- November 6, 2017
- Glass House
- Belinda Carlisle
- single-stroke roll
- Doors
- graduation
- The Purloined Letter II
- Delenn
- Stephen Furst
- From the Hip
- Christmas Island
- Imitation Crab Meat
- Mangalore
- Chris Tucker
- The Metamorphosis 6
- vegan bacon
- Bruce Boxleitner
- Jeffrey Sinclair
- Cimabuè
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Rembrandt van Rijn
- Casper Van Dien
- Viktor Krum
- Alohomora
- accio
- Azkaban
- Arthur Weasley
- Saturn Devouring His Children
- Fred Weasley
- tinfoil hat
- November 7, 2017
- Tylenol PM
- The Yellow Wallpaper
- Writer's block
- QUILTBAG
- bumper cars
- Imagining my younger self
- over my dead body
- go bag
- Fenrir Greyback
- Like a Virgin
- I killed a man with his own stomach
- Palm Pilot
- Hoover Horror
- party puker
- Somebody else's sky
- 555-1212
- Majel Barrett
- Mundungus Fletcher
- craigslist
- tall girls
- Fungus that eats Compact Discs
- Serial Mom
- my loneliness is neither the artistic nor musical kind
- Recycled Articles
- Superstars Writing Seminars
- █
- Tube top
- Spin-cycle cracks
- Guy Lombardo
- Skuld
- Belldandy
- USS Cushing
- Mule deer
- Creeper
- picklevator
- Shows from which I save the stubs
- On spending Thanksgiving alone
- shadow box
- SAAS
- Mr. Silver and Mr. Grey
- How to make a USPS standard mailbox vandal-proof, if not snow-plough proof
- RDA
- Lockpick Pornography
- How do you love your ass?
- big and tall
- beefaroni
- I am not a crook
- Dani Kollin
- Blooper
- We don't dig our graves, anymore.
- Reptilicus
- Larry Storch
- I'm being eaten by a boa constrictor
- Antifragile
- I could tell by all of her dead house plants
- TRS-80 Character Graphics
- Chesty Morgan
- November 15, 2017
- Space Seed
- ROTFLMFAO
- Cotter pin
- cut-and-paste
- Reverse cowgirl
- glove compartment
- dirt road
- Ovaltine
- Fixing warped records
- MVP
- captain's log
- wet paint
- swallowing gum
- .td
- declassified
- sugar cube
- Daughters of Triton
- Shoo Fly Don't Bother Me
- winterize
- anode rod
- floor wax
- valet parking
- trade magazine
- tap water
- 300 Baud Modem
- chess set
- White Hot Chocolate
- Dick-and-ditch
- CentOS
- lockbox
- How to Deal
- .ye
- .UY
- .cx
- .BT
- .AC
- A Wedding Chest
- The Hall Bedroom
- .yu
- .GL
- .VU
- brain food
- Meat-hooks
- Bedrock
- GTFO
- Rebooting Your Roku with the Remote
- foghorn
- tie the knot
- circuit court
- LSO
- Pull my finger
- multi boot
- one-eyed trouser snake
- Evil Dwarf
- Missouri Writers Guild
- Deunan Knute
- network administrator
- The Hands
- Peephole
- The Eyes
- The Painter of Dead Women
- Quik
- Villainous Press
- 2012 Bram Stoker Award Nominees & Winners
- pepper mill
- Access Mask
- Fox News
- baby carrots
- Thankee
- propane torch
- Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
- Hobbiton
- LaCroix
- Scotch Pine
- Tree farm
- Norway Spruce
- bird's-eye view
- Cornelius Fudge
- boy toy
- Town Bus Station
- ear candle
- Fraser Fir
- When the Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed on re-entry, I felt a deep sorrow that Cowboy Bebop was now implausible
- Espresso Book Machine
- espresso machine
- Honda Valkyrie
- safety glasses
- safety goggles
- Magical Negro
- Kids and Store Brand Cereal
- .YT
- .ws
- .WF
- magnaflux
- DXpedition
- Dubois, Wyoming
- Fess Parker
- Van Hagar
- snoo-snoo
- acetylsalicyclic acid
- prickly heat
- Astro
- three-on-the-tree
- Chocolate Brownie Pie
- English Bob
- Mount Massive
- Frontier Pan Rolls
- roll for initiative
- .FO
- Timex
- .GD
- Registrar
- Sprung Monkey
- Bob Geldof
- technophobia
- Peter Criss
- Sweet mango chutney
- .FK
- 60 cycle hum
- Fictorians
- Nanbansu
- Five-O
- .GI
- USS Ingersoll
- inert gas
- Chicken, Pork, and Brussels Sprouts
- debrief
- Primary Care Physician
- Ultimatums are the devil's Terms of Service
- .IS
- temp job
- Medicine Bow National Forest
- The Canadians are smuggling toxic waste back into America
- baked ziti
- Otterbox
- .LK
- soft SF
- Emergency Repair Disk
- Today the sun set. It burned my eyes.
- Suzuki GZ250
- Or he'll just kick me in the face and scream abstract noises and dance around outside in his underwear and have sex with the neighbor's dog and try to fly by jumping off the toilet
- Walking through the ruins of a fallen civilization
- We have come to the first bump in the road
- Quonset Hut
- Janitor on Planet Analingus
- To Market, To Market (Steampunk Edition)
- Jack and Jill
- Facebook for Authors
- Computer Spring Cleaning
- .AO
- .AD
- .DZ
- .BW
- .CM
- .ER
- .ET
- .LY
- .EG
- REALPLAYER (30)
- Kiefer and the Naked People
- Iconic Things Born Out of Disorientation
- The Woman at the Stairs
- 260: lcm(2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29,31,37,41,43,47,53,59,61,67,71,73,79,83)
- rubberband AI
- 2011 Madison, Wisconsin Protests
- Sensously SINthesized
- Your Diary is a Limelight Hog
- diving
- Diver
- I Work Here
- Conservapedia Statistics, 2009
- Cherry 2000
- Honky Tonk Amnesia
- Chancentod
- Pre-heating
- My Dog Thinks I'm Unpatriotic
- Gruscheln
- Single Line Clear
- Euro '96: Uri Geller's Short Heyday as a Ball Whisperer
- Central Bank Currency Swap
- Allahu Akbar
- Schönwetterdemokratie
- The Tyson Zone
- Town Bus Station
- happily ever after
- Kids and Store Brand Cereal
- American Vandal
- The Rhythm of the Trees
- European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR)
- RedOmega (1)
- Clancy's Fancy
- SILVERAI_ME (50)
- hair tinsel
- shorts
- I don't think that there's anything worse than being ordinary.
- Mr Whippy
- Elephant in the room
- My Highland Goat
- The Witches
- durry
- soldering iron
- nuns eating breakfast
- Bedlam Boys (Tom of Bedlam)
- Restless Legs Syndrome
- The nightmare of multiplying spiders
- liquid bread
- Potoooooooo: the horse called Pot8os
- Saint Lawrence of Rome
- Zoot Suit Riot
- fast asleep
- Shore leave
- What's this? - A dead one of these.
- Unchained Melody
- empty promise
- Carol of the Birds
- On the Unforeseen Complexities of a Chicken Salad
- All Summer in a Day
- don't wear your heart on the soles of your feet
- Yellow
- Four eyes
- The DJ's Got A Gun
- november rain
- Postmodern Jukebox
- November 21, 2017
- One of the dangers of necromancy is you don't really know who's on the other side or what they're going to give you in return.
- cartwheel
- bang on
- Grim
- guitar
- under earth and over moon
- selfie
- selfie stick
- Polly, Put the Kettle On
- A Boy Named Sue
- Sandgroper
- pie in the sky
- Thumbelina
- Minnie the Moocher
- Sink or swim
- ruckus
- Gates McFadden
- If at all possible read this book with your eyes shut.
- TEM42 (33)
- Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
- Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur
- dysplasia
- Deformation
- Kettling
- After the Ball
- The Tick
- herald
- Bellum Romanum
- Oil bag
- duck pond
- Ascension: Return of the Fallen
- Ascension: Storm of Souls
- Abuelita
- Cocky
- Horry Patter and the Philologer's Stone
- Gee
- Ascension: Rat King Pack
- ‘Oumuamua
- Roemello
- 25143 Itokawa
- 4K notch
- Petit's moon
- apothanein thelo
- stir fry
- Ao dai
- Ascension: Apprentice Edition
- Apache tears
- Onion skin fracture
- Coarse woody debris
- Makura gaeshi
- Silent alphabet
- Cotton-picking
- Zephronias (13)
- November 1, 2017
- Old Harry's Game
- Disney Limited Edition Dolls
- Merle's Magic Mug Shop
- Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders
- The Bird in the Woods
- The trees in winter
- Ludonarrative Dissonance
- Zone of Proximal Development
- California English Language Development Test
- Dreams in the Wasteland
- Youths
- Arthur Christmas