In short, we want your writeups, 300 words or fewer.

"February is the shortest month."
— T. S. Eliot, probably

It's the shortest month of the year! Time for the tiny thing that is Brevity Quest. The rules are pretty basic, write something good in 300 words or less.

• The quest starts on Saturday, 1st February at 00:00:00 and ends on Friday the 28th February at 23:59:99 (E2 server time). Timestamps outside of February 2025 will not qualify!
• We're looking for well-crafted fact, fiction, poetry and prose, the usual suspects. New writeups only, no daylogs.
• Post as many submissions as you wish. It is okay to post hidden writeups if you prefer.
• Quest entries should be labelled as such, and please include your wordcount. A /msg to inform me is recommended.
• Bounty will be awarded at 10GP per writeup.

Check out the BQ submissions from previous Quests, for example 2020, 2021 and 2022. There's also still a list of stuff to be noded at wertperch's nodeshell challenge, so you've no excuses! Someone could, for example do a writeup on git the version control system or Docker sofware containers.

I am currently the sole judge. If you'd like to help out, please let me know.

N.B. Don't rely solely on the word count in the draft/writeup header (as it counts HTML and pipelinked text too). We do have the E2 Word Counter, but please also note the Brevity Quest Word Count Guidelines. For my part i use xclip on the displayed text and the Linux command wc, as demonstrated below.

Some Rules/FAQ

1. No daylogs, please.
2. Your wordcount must be displayed clearly
3. The Judge/s may check wordcount by their own accurate standards, and will reject any writeup outside the 300 words.
4. is there a minimum word count? Nope. But be reasonable.
5. Writeups must survive into the judging process, which will probably be a week into March.
6. you should message wertperch with your entries so he can update this.
7. Rewards of GP are at the discretion of the judge/s
8. The decision/s of the judge/s will be final.

xclip -o | wc -w
342 (so ironically this would not qualify!)

1. Shortlist of Entrants, including my wc count:

   1. kabelsalat (129)—wertperch
   2. alanine transaminase (288)—weroland
   3. homelab (300)—wertperch
   4. People will find some reason to hate others (300)—C-Dawg
   5. The Tower & The Apprentice. (188)—nuggets
   6. Peace (15)—Peaceful Chicken
   7. glowie (275)—wertperch
   8. tmux (295)—wertperch