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Round winners – September 2024 (Round #171)

Congratulations to the winners of round September 2024: grock from Norrbotten turfed home his first Gold, AJHB from Greater London added another Silver to his medal row and Ni_ki_ta from Norrbotten turfed home her first Bronze. Well done mates!

This was a record round with 13 turfers scoring more than one million points.

Upcoming events

If you are organizing an open event, don't forget to write to insider@turfgame.com couple of months in advance to get the information about your event into the newsletter :)

Halloween Classic 24 in Umeå, October 24^th

Read more about it HERE (only in Swedish).

LusseTurf in Västerås will be held again this year the weekend before Lucia (13^th of December). More information will come!

Bonanza 2024 took place on the 14^th of September in Enköping and over 400 turfers took at least one zone in either of the two Events on this sunny day. It was the last Bonanza with Cissiliana as Event General and she passed on the duty of this office to MiniHolger during the Bonanza banquet. Here are some words from her:

”Two years ago I took over the prestigious assignment from MasterOfTurf, Event General. I am grateful that it was already decided then that the next Bonanza would be held in Umeå (2023). Many thanks to everyone who arranged the 2023 Bonanza, you did it exemplary and independently. I suspect that my successor MiniHolger, like me, will have an easy job with his first Bonanza. Edinburgh has shown to put their best foot forward with many of its own events already.

The solution this year (2024) had to be that Västmanland was given the task supported by Uppsala. Despite some setbacks and thanks to a lot of hard work, it can only be said that it was a success.

Thank you to all of you who participated and enabled the "233 Crowdy medal".

Crowdy-233

HERE are photos and videos from the day and HERE you can dig the playlist.

MiniHolger, I am sure that your enthusiasm and good will will take the event administration to new heights, best of luck!

I would recommend all of you to organize a closed event, it is easy to manage and very much appreciated. Contact events@turfgame.com to get an account and guidance. For open events, like the Bonanza, comes some obligations, everyone shall be invited, there should be facilities such as WC and showers and there must be some kind of prizes.

There are many schools that use Turf in gymnastics, please spread this possibility further: skolevent@turfgame.com. The scouts also have their own event mail: scoutevent@turfgame.com.”

The Bonanza was organised by turfers from Uturf (Västmanland) with lots of help on the actual day from turfers from Uppsala. Optimus from Västmanland was the head co-ordinator, but a lot was left to the other and everything fell into place on the Bonanza Day.

Here are reflections from Optimus:

”The World Championship in Turf, the so-called Bonanza, was organized for the 13th year (there was an extra winter round in 2012 so this was the 14th Bonanza overall). The Bonanza this year was in the city of Enköping in Sweden (all Bonanzas have so far been in Sweden) and the organizers were for the 3rd time Turfare from Västerås/Västmanland (previously in 2012 and 2018) with support from Turfare from Uppsala/Enköping (which organized a Bonanza in 2013).

The attendance of competitive players was good! Not everyone had pre-registered (zones are set based on the number of pre-registered participants), but the number of zones were enough for everyone. The previous record for Bonanza Foot (where you can only move between zones by your feet) was from Stockholm 2019 with 249 participants. Now Enköping 2024 is the new record holder with a whopping 270 participants in the Bonanza Foot Event!

Västerås 2018 keeps the record in Bonanza Bike (where you take zones by non-motorized bike) with 217 participants, Enköping had 135 cyclists, and also the total number of participants which was 441 in Västerås 2018 against almost as many in Enköping this year - 405 tufers.

The overall wins in both classes, which receive Bonanza medals in Gold/Silver/Bronze, were:

1st in Foot: Skogshjort, took 89 zones of which 81 were unique and scored 1,839 points.
2nd in Foot: rabbit_rail, took 86 zones of which 34 were unique and scored 1,558 points.
3rd in Foot: Raudonvirsis, captured 83 zones of which 48 were unique and scored 1,541 points.

1st in Bike: recycling, took 89 zones of which 72 were unique and scored 1,727 points.
2nd in Bike: mrcoolwhat, took 89 zones of which 59 were unique and scored 1,584 points.
3rd in Bike: MrJokerit, took 94 zones of which 55 were unique and also got 1,584 points (but behind 2nd).

When the competitions were over there was a banquet in the evening attended by about 125 turfers. Food, good company and some entertainment were offered. It was also presented where and when Bonanza 2025 will take place. And it will be for the first time outside of Sweden - in Scotland and more exactly in Edinburgh! The Bonanza itself is on June 7th, but there are extra events on both June 6th and June 8th/9th, including a 24Hr Event! More info about this will come from the organizers in Edinburgh later! To pre-register interest, complete this FORM, which will also help give an idea of expected numbers. See you in Edinburgh!

The organizing group wishes to thank all the turfers who showed up at the event, great that so many came!

And we, the turfers, would of course like to thank everyone who was involved in organizing and put in the time and commitment to make this happen! A superb and nice arrangement!”

During the Bonanza banquet, the Turf Awards for 2023 were handed out. Big congratulations to all the winners of the Turf Award, you are awesome!

Best Turf performance 2023 - Tempest - Round winner by taking only New unique zones (6548). Visited 82 municipalities, cycling around 10 mil a day for 29 days and sleeping in his car.

Turf Star of the year 2023 - Akeman - Turf motivated this wheelchair-bound guy to get outdoors.

Turfer of the Year 2023 - DasHuhn - 10 years old boy from Berlin went to Silver and reached rank 51 after a bit more than a year.

Most spectacular takeover 2023 - simmalugnt - Only takes aqua zones.

The Turf Award winners are nominated by the Turf Community and the winner is voted by the Turf Community. Soon it will be time to nominate for Turf Awards 2024!

Turf Ultimate Region Fight 2024

The Turf Ultimate Region Fight took place during September and is likely the reason behind the many turfers scoring 1 million points or more this round. It was a battle over five weeks and nothing was decided until the last week. Norrbotten and Västmanland (last year's winner) were fighting hard for first place. Norrbotten held a firm grip over points and takes, whereas Västmanland scored better in round uniques, until the last week. It was an equally exciting battle over third place between Skåne and Scotland, which Skåne in the end won.

Here are a few words from Kygni, the team leader for Norrbotten:

”We started the region fight by inviting as many participants as possible to our team, which resulted in 26 participants from several cities in our region. In the beginning of the first week, we realized that we were quite good, so we tried to get in a good place on the scoreboard from week one. At the end of week one, we were one point behind Västmanland on the scoreboard, and from thereon out, we tried to beat them in points and takes every week, but we were lacking in round uniques. However, since we came in second place in round unique week 2, 3 & 4, we caught up by one point to them all of the aforementioned weeks. In the end, a lot of turfers on Team Norrbotten set personal records in all three categories, and the Gold and Bronze this round went to Luleå and Piteå, which is very impressive.

Almost everyone above the red line took personal record in points and several also took personal record in round unique zones. We had a very good coordinated team effort with great participants pushing themselves to the limit and also traveling a lot in search of round unique zones. Three of us went to the Bonanza and the furthest one of us Traveled was to Berlin. I am very proud of my team, we did a really great job and now we are planning how to celebrate our victory.”

Skåne has written about the Region battle from their point of view HERE.

Apart from all the competitions that took place during September, turfers joined together and went on adventures together. In Stockholm, a group of 12 turfers (both from Stockholm and other places) got together and rented a water taxi to go to that mystical place called Märket, where two countries and three regions meet. Rymprak was part of this adventure and here is her recap of that day:

”The journey to Märket

In the middle of the Åland Sea between Sweden and Åland lies the world's smallest island shared by two nations, Sweden and Finland. The Swedish part is in turn divided between Stockholm County and Uppsala County. There are therefore three turf regions on this small island.

We were 12 excited turfers who took a specially ordered taxi boat there on a Sunday in September 2024. It was the second attempt as the weekend before it was windy and foggy, but this time it was sunny and calm on the sea.

Once there, we had an hour to take over the three zones. We split into groups and in the end, everybody managed to take all the zones despite poor mobile coverage. Thanks to those who shared their connection!

The Finnish volunteers who are working on the restoration of the lighthouse at Märket probably wondered what we were doing as we wandered around shouting "turn off" and "I'm in" to each other. 426e844d-b986-4229-80bd-33da1926fada

The volunteers were happy when we bought tote bags and t-shirts as souvenirs and some went on a guided tour of the lighthouse.

Everyone was satisfied and happy and ready for the one-hour boat ride home in a more rough sea. Some turfers were starstruck by the fact that our skipper was the multiple speedway world champion, Anders Michanek, 81 years old.

//Rymprak together with anitem, Emlomaliv, Anniña, HaileGåBraSel, albee, grufgran, Lillatanten, Lill-Johan, TenorenJohan, embeoo, mowog”

Three German turfers made an Explorer trip to Denmark during September and here is JoasK story:

”After completing the Netherlands Explorer at Easter, the Denmark Explorer was on our agenda in early October. This time, there were three of us: DXP2K, Sven_R, and me, JoasK. We didn’t just visit the five regions to earn the coveted Explorer Medal, but also captured a few Monument Zones and many Uniques.

Aalborg and Copenhagen stood out in particular, presenting themselves as Smart Cities – super clean, perfectly organized, and, above all, extremely bike-friendly. Why can’t Germany achieve that? With the fantastic weather, it was especially fun. Beyond the challenge of the game, it once again showed how much of a wonderful eye-opener Turf can be.”

As many of you noticed, a new medal serie was released on Bonanza Day: the Monument-series with a 4 levels. So far no one has recieved the highest level, Mondo (named after the Swedish pole vaulter that is currently the world's best pole vaulter).

Since the introduction of the new Medal serie, many issues regarding missing Monument attribute are reported. A reminder what a Monument zone is:

"A zone placed in the direct vicinity to or directly on a monument. A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become important to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage. The zone name should normally reflect the monument name. Only one zone per monument can have this attribute."

So, any old statue is not by default a Monument, any old building is not by default a Monument. It will take a little more than it being old, to make it a Monument. We understand you want more Monuments, but at the same time, Monuments are rare and should be so.

If you do come across a zone with an amazing Monument in it, and it does not have the attribute, write an issue. Most likely the zone is either from before the Monument attribute was introduced or the zone maker who made the zone, was not aware that there was a Monument in the zone.

Turf Picture of the Month

This months Turf Picture is of the zone CribGoch taken by Cruachan:

#CribGoch #turfgame

If you have a Zone picture you want featured as Turf Picture of the Month, send it to insider@turfgame.com Please include your Turf nick for recognition!

Turfa lugnt/Safe turfing!

//Munin

...if you want to contribute to future Turf Insiders, send your story to insider@turfgame.com :) C'mon and share your big and small stories with the Turf world.

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Round winners – August 2024 (Round #170)

Congratulations to the winners of round August 2024: Marcus_P from Hamburg biked home a Gold to complement his two Bronzes, Veit from Hamburg added a Silver to his medal row and Nybegynner from Østlandet turfed home the first Bronze for Norway. Well done mates!

Upcoming events

If you are organizing an open event, don't forget to write to insider@turfgame.com couple of months in advance to get the information about your event into the newsletter :)

Bonanza 2024 on the 14^th of September in Enköping

Over 200 turfers are signed up for the two Bonanza heats this year. Are you one of them? It is not too late to sign up for the Events.

Don't forget that the Turf Awards for 2023 will be handed out during the banquet.

Turf Ultimate Region Fight 2024

The Ultimate Region Fight will go for five weeks this year. If you are not participating yourself, you can keep an eye on the competition HERE. There are several teams from Sweden, UK and Germany competing this year.

Let's talk about raising issues a bit.

The most common issue is a zone issue and this category can be divided into:

- The zone is missing an attribute or has the wrong attribute. This is usually very straight forward to correct.

- The placement of the zone has become unsuitable over time, like a public space has become private or changes in the environment has made the zone dangerous to take. A zone issue of this type, is often also easy to correct and neccessary in order to keep zones active in the game and safe to take. Keep 'em coming!

- The zone name has a spelling mistake or doesn’t make sense to the player or feels unsuitable for that zone.

For zone names, be aware that a name CAN be misspelled deliberatly, eg Ssslinget in Uppsala. Local slang can be used, and is often encouraged thus making the zone name more fitting for that area.

Capital letters are used for each distinct word in a zone name (no spaces) – BigGreenCar would be correct, BiggreenCar or BigGREENcar would not. This is not always easy if you are not native to the language. And sometimes, zonemakers like little jokes, like SandaVägen is a better zone name than Sandavägen where the first is more fun since it means to "put sand on the road" (to make it less slippery during winter) whereas the second is just the street name close to where the zone is located.

Issues regarding Name change can be tricky, and generally if the zone is old, the old name stays UNLESS something has changed in the area close to the zone, like FillItUp next to a gas station becomes NoMoreGaz when the gas station is torn down. One thing to remember is we have people with Swedish as their first language setting UK zones and people with English as their first language setting Swedish zones – we try our best but you might see zone names in your country not in the native language and we are all human and make mistakes, especially in a foreign language! And sometimes a second language "mistake" can make for a fun zone name :)

Despite what some people think, it is quite ok with ”Zone” in the zone name, an English name for Swedish zone is also ok and a mixture of different languages in a zone name can be quite fun! Turf wasn't created with linguistic correctness in the zone names in mind. Quite the opposite really; whimsical Swenglish names, puns and odd names has been encouraged, even though many names are dry ones with no other inspiration than the street names near-by. The developers and Turf crew haven't decided to change this, and will from now on be more strict when it comes to changes in zone names.

So remember that the issue system is for issues affecting the game, not improvement suggestions. Turf Crew welcomes comments on zone names, especially creative zone names, but each one is dealt with manually by a human, so unless there is a spelling mistake or something has changed in the zone to warrant a name change, think twice (or thrice) before writing an issue about a name change especially on old zones. Old zone names are part of Turf history, eg in the beginning zone names could not contain special characters such as the Swedish letters "å ä ö". Today they can, but you will still come across zone names without them. I find those kinda cute and hope you do to! And as always, be kind!

More about zone making can be found HERE on the Turf Wiki. It gives you some idea what is ok and what is not. I especially encourage you to re (and maybe re-read) Maqqans excellent blog post about making zones, link can be found at the end of the Zone Guidelines Wiki page.

Recently a post in Turf Stockholm Facebook group had turfers talking about embarrassing moments when out turfing. I think we all can recognize ourselves in at least one of the following: 1. Dog owner holding the dog on a tight leech IN the zone and expecting to bike by, but instead you stop, take the zone and turn around the way you came. 2. Dragging the bike out on a beach between sunbathing people. 3. Leaving the bike on a forest path to walk 50-200 m to a zone with your bike helmet still on. 4. Biking past the same jogger on a track 4 or 5 times. 5. Intruding on people in romantic situations, like on an out of the way bench next to a pond. 6. By biking real SLOOOW through a zone to prevent from having to put down your feet and doing a full stop. 7. When meeting non-turfers and not wanting to explain what you are doing, side-stepping the other person in order to take the zone when your GPS is acting up. 8. Taking zones at nudist beaches fully clothed. 9. Taking church zones when either a wedding or a funeral is happening. 10. When you take a water zone on the fly, removing all your clothes thinking you are alone, but when you emerge from the water, you are not alone any longer...

Do YOU have an embarrassing moment not covered above or with a twist? Please write to insider@turfgame.com and share with the Turf community :)

Turf Picture of the Month

This months Turf Picture is of the zone Hubertus taken by DasHuhn, "A zone at the end of the world. Crazy":

If you have a Zone picture you want featured as Turf Picture of the Month, send it to insider@turfgame.com Please include your Turf nick for recognition!

Turfa lugnt/Safe turfing!

//Munin

...if you want to contribute to future Turf Insiders, send your story to insider@turfgame.com :) C'mon and share your big and small stories with the Turf world.

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Round winners – July 2024 (Round #169)

Congratulations to the winners of round July 2024: IndoorsyHermit from Skåne took Gold, Tempest from Stockholm added a Silver to his Gold from last year and Aicar from Stockholm biked home a Bronze. Well done mates!

Upcoming events

If you are organizing an open event, don't forget to write to insider@turfgame.com a couple of months in advance to get the information about your event into Turf Insider :)

SåsTurf, Alingsås, 10th of August

For the first time there will be an Open Turf event in Alingsås, Sweden. There will be a foot, bike and a water heat followed by an outdoor BBQ (everyone brings their own food and drink). Full details HERE (only in Swedish). The meeting place for the event will be near Mjörnvallen in Alingsås between the zones Mjörn and KongoBridge.

Skåne Open, 24^th of August

Participation will give you the event medal. You can read more about it HERE.

Bonanza 2024 on the 14^th of September in Enköping

Finally it is possible to sign up for this year's Bonanza.

Don't forget that the Turf Awards for 2023 will be handed out during the banquet.

Turf Ultimate Region Fight 2024

MaXi is once again organising the annual multi-region fight in September 2024. Same procedure as last year. Read more about it here:

https://turfportalen.se/event/pre/ultimateregionfight2024

https://turfportalen.se/event/ultimateregionfight2024/rules/en

https://turfportalen.se/event/ultimateregionfight2024/rules/sv

I hope you have had a good summer so far and that you all have managed to see new zones, turn old zones purple, meet old Turf friends and make new Turf friends.

In summer travelling turfers is a common thing. And meeting travelling turfers is nice when you can't travel yourself. In July I had the joy of both meeting travelling turfers in my home town, and meeting great turfers when travelling myself. One morning in the middle of June, I took an Assist with magnefikdoja on my morning bike ride. magnefikdoja with non-turfing partner were on a morning walk, visiting Uppsala for a few days. They were enjoying the flat nature of Uppsala as well as being able to take the zones close to the hotel several times, since the activity in Uppsala is much higher than where they were from.

Then I went travelling with a fellow turfer to Nyköping for a few days. After lunch one day, we met up with K.Rune, one of the first turfers in Nyköping. We assisted in a zone, realized we were going in the same direction, so asked if K.Rune could guide us. K.Rune did, giving us the best route to the next six zones and along the way, K.Rune was awarded the medal Assist-25. Win-win for everyone.

Another Crew member, kjtindall, had a nice meeting with the newish turfer Munchinpants. kjtindall waited in a zone so Munchinpants could Assist. kjtindall had seen the turfer on the map, but never met up. Now kjtindall had the chance to find out the origin of Munchinpants nick. 'Cuz some nicks are just that much more interesting than others and you just WANT to know the story behind!

Let's hope the rest of the summer (and yes, August is a summer month!), will be filled with interesting meetings, new zones and old zones.

Turfing alone can be fun when you need a bit of peace or just want to pursue your own goals! But turfing with other people can also be fun (and often a way to get everyone more points overall) and that is one of the reason we have Assist. Assist is where one turfer takes the zone and one (or maybe many many more) assists - the person that fills up their 'take bar' first gets the zone and the pph, the assister(s) gets the take points but no pph.....but the assister can of course then take the zone immediately after the block has expired.

Turf encourages Assists, so much so there is a nice serie of medals for assisting zone take overs (starts with Assist-5) and a medal serie with increasing number of assisters (Crowdy medals - which go up in fibonacci order number). Bear in mind that the taker of the zone doesn't get the medals though!

Do you have to assist if someone is coming? You don't and you might have a good reason for that (you are in a hurry or you are in competition with them in a league or you just want to be on your own!). Often people will ask in the chat for an Assist - which you might want to respond to or not! It is up to you. Sometimes Crew get complaints about 'blocking' where Assist opportunities are ignored or not seen and people get quite upset about this. Now we encourage, courteous behaviour on both sides - it is often nice to wait a few seconds to help out a fellow turfer or sometimes to meet and have a chat with a new turfer! But also, be understanding if a turfer doesn't want to wait - they may have other challenges to deal with that you don't know about. As with all things turf, being nice goes a long way and it is never OK to get angry or abuse someone for not assisting - it is up to them really, they were in the zone first And it is also never OK to abuse a turfer for taking your zones, that is the game after all!

Turf Picture of the Month

This month Turf Insider had more than 10 entries for Turf Picture of the Month, thank you for all the lovely pictures. Only one can be featured here and this months Turf Picture is of the zone AnsileSea taken by Fashven:

If you have a Zone picture you want featured as Turf Picture of the Month, send it to insider@turfgame.com Please include your Turf nick for recognition!

Turfa lugnt/Safe turfing!

//Munin

...if you want to contribute to future Turf Insiders, send your story to insider@turfgame.com :) C'mon and share your big and small stories with the Turf world.

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