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 annual 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!)

Shortlist of Entrants, including my wc count:

1. kabelsalat (129)—wertperch
3. alanine transaminase (288)—weroland!⍼
4. homelab (300)—wertperch
5. People will find some reason to hate others (300)—C-Dawg!⍼
6. The Tower & The Apprentice. (188)—nuggets
7. Peace (15)—Peaceful Chicken
8. glowie (275)—wertperch
9. tmux (295)—wertperch
10. imaginary doomed romances (266) —milkfish
11. Donde esta la biblioteca? (184)—Glowing fish
12. The Kantian argument against excessive politeness (206) —Glowing Fish!⍼
13. notochord (159)—browncoat
14. neofetch (276)—wertperch
15. On Working in a School (245)—peaceful chicken
16. The Clockwork Quartet (286)—Zephronias!⍼
17. Ah (15)—peaceful Chicken
18. The Celts: Search for a Civilization (248)—passalidae!⍼
19. Strait of Magellan (150)—by wertperch
20. histotripsy (300)—by weroland
21. exemia (73)—by weroland
22. nesh (250)—by wertperch
23. Once upon a starry, (52)—by etouffee!⍼
24. hundred (226)—wertperch
25. Hepatitis D (243)—Tem42!⍼
26. Radio Taiso (228)—by C-Dawg!⍼
27. Trump and the Supreme Court (265)—Peacful Chicken
28. prompt response (278)—by Pandesim Fish
29. The one thing I wanted more than anything was for someone, just once, to tell me they don't know what they'd do without meby time thief (their first w-u!)
30. Hell's Half Acre (266)—by liha
31. The dehumanizing environment we call corporate (161) —by andycyca
32. heirloom tomato (206)—by Peaceful Chicken
33. 504 (17)—by Peaceful Chicken