Phish.net and the Mockingbird Foundation present:

The first annual Mockingbird Mystery Jam Madness Tournament!
The third round started today (Friday, March 31st), just before 3:30 PM PT / 6:30 PM ET.

RULES:
1) Each participant gets one guess per day, with the next day beginning at midnight ET (certain rounds may provide hints if needed, but regardless of hints posted, each participant gets one guess per calendar day). All answers must be submitted (along with your .net @username) to [email protected] – do not post guesses or hints, joking or serious, in the comments section of the Blog – guesses posted to the Blog will not be accepted and will be deleted (irrespective of correctness), the affected round may be voided and restarted, and the offending user(s) may have their accounts suspended and be banned from future (M)MJM competitions. No sharing or trading of answers is permitted. This is for fun and for charity, but we want the tournament to be eminently fair.

2) The first 4 participants to answer correctly advance to the next round – if 4 or fewer participants answer correctly, all will advance. The round ends when the number of participants needed for the next round have advanced – if a round drags on due to poor participation or lack of correct answers despite hints, I will give participants a 24-hour deadline to complete the round. The four users who advance will square off next week to see who will go head-to-head for the championship.

3) Our eleven Mystery Jam Monday Emeritus (7+ time) winners are permitted to participate. In fact, of the eight remaining players, three are MJM Emeriti (including @dbertsch who joined the club this week), alongside two six-time winners and two five-time winners. Talk about a minefield!

PRIZE:
The champion will win:
1) Two LivePhish codes, each good for the download of any show from LivePhish.com (courtesy of our friends at LivePhish.com and nugs.net);
2) A $100 donation to the Mockingbird Foundation in their name;
3) The staff of Phish.net will do a blog piece about / interview of the winner on their love of Phish and their MJM prowess.

NOTE:
Participants are encouraged (but not required) to make a donation to the Mockingbird Foundation – in the first two rounds, we have received exactly one donation (thank you!) to my knowledge, and it didn't even come from a tournament participant. You know what to do folks!

ROUND 3 CLIPS:
The first four people to email the correctly identified songs and dates of these four clips will advance to the third round. The theme of this round is "Four for Four." The first four seeds (#1-#4) received the clip around 6:30 PM ET; the other four seeds (#5-#8) received the clip around 7:30 PM ET. Good luck everyone, and those not in Round 3, please don't spoil any answers or I'll have to close the comments!

ROUND 3 SEEDING:

ROUND 3 HINT:

UPDATE: As of 5:17 PM ET on April 3rd, I have received four correct answers: three from MJM Emeriti and one from our only zero-time winner in the tournament (who has come damn close on multiple occasions). For those struggling with the hint, once you see it, it'll become blindingly obvious (this isn't a thought experiment or some clever trick – the information you need is sitting in plain sight). I've already stated the theme for this week's round, and in one of the three MMJM blog posts, there's some information that fits perfectly into this week's theme.

I will provide a more detailed update shortly, but our four finalists (in order) are: @ghostboogie, @bl002e, @dbertsch, and @ChalkDustTeacher. The four clips come from the 7/26/03 Piper, the 11/1/09 Light, the 11/28/92 Tweezer, and the 7/23/97 YEM. As far as the hint goes, the stated theme for this round was "four for four" – while that certainly meant "[a] four [clip MJM] for [determining the] four [finalists]," it had a second meaning: "four [clips] for four [regions represented in Round 2]." Without explanation or further reference, I named the four "Regions" in Round 2 (well, the four regions with numbered seeds in them) after Tweezer, Piper, Light, and YEM, and even italicized them at the time of the hint. Those who caught it first, sped to the finish line (all after the hint!). Congrats to all four finalists, and thanks to the four who didn't make it: you all put up a hell of a battle.

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