Game Rules

A celebrity goo is a distorted photograph of a famous person. The objective of Celebrity Goo Game is to guess the identities of the celebrities correctly and consistently. A new goo is published each night at midnight, and expires 7 days later, so that 7 goos are active at any time.

The game is scored with a tower-based system. Each time that you activate a goo to begin playing it, you declare which of your five towers the goo will be placed upon. If you guess correctly, you'll extend that tower by 1 goo. If you guess incorrectly, you'll topple that tower and have to begin building it again. The first player to complete five towers of 10 goos each will win the round and a prize. After a brief break, the game will start over with a new round and all towers reset.

Each time that you complete one of your towers, you'll gain a reward of your choosing: You can wipe out another player's incomplete tower, or use a "free pass" to cancel an activated goo without penalty, or extend another player's incomplete tower by 1 goo, or make one of your towers invisible to other players, or reveal information about other players' remaining options. No matter which of these rewards you choose, the reward is one-time-use only, and it lasts until you use it or someone wins. (After you guess a goo, you will be unable to place another goo in that same tower for 12 hours, to prevent players from building complete towers overnight without the chance for other players to topple them.)

As soon as one player completes all five towers, no new goos will be published. If any other player can complete their five towers with the goos already published, they are given the chance to do so, which could result in a single tiebreaker goo. If it is not possible for another player to complete five towers with the remaining goos, then the winner will be declared immediately. Whoever wins the round will receive a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate and the title of Goo Champion, giving them bragging rights as the top player in the game. Any player who competed against the winner in a tiebreaker goo will receive a $10 Amazon.com gift certificate. In addition to these prizes, the game includes a Hall of Fame that honors the best players of all time; each inductee receives a trophy in the mail.

This web site is programmed to check the guesses against the correct answers stored in a database. If a guess matches, it is automatically declared correct and the player's score is updated. If the guess does not match, it is saved as a pending guess and Scott himself must declare it either correct or incorrect. Players may request their favorite celebrities to become goos in the game, but the requestor cannot guess at a goo.

Scott reserves the right to suspend players for cheating, sharing answers with each other, exposing answers online (or inviting exposure by asking for help in a web forum), or using unfair advantages such as improper system access. On certain occasions, Scott might eliminate correct guesses from a player's score instead of suspending that player. Scott's actions in response to such incidents of improper behavior are not to punish the cheater, but to restore fairness in the game for all players.

Some goos are fictional characters. Guesses for the actor portraying the character will be valid as long as the actor is shown in the source photo. Similarly, when the goo is an actor and the photograph shows the actor in character, a guess for that character will be considered valid.
Goos are grouped according to the following categories:

Accidents & Disasters: This category includes celebrities who became famous because of their involvement in disasters both natural and man-made, whether as famous survivors or as victims.

Activism & Society: This category includes celebrities who are known as socialities (prominent, non-royal members of society), or those who work to change society, such as activists, lobbyists, public advocates, and social observers.

Advertising: This category includes people who create advertising, or star in commercials or print ads.

Animals: This category includes real life animals, as well as people who work with animals, such as television veterinarians and stage magicians who use animal in their acts. It also includes fictional characters who happen to be animals.

Architecture: This category includes famous designers of buildings, cities, bridges, and other structures.

Art & Photography: This category includes artists and photographers (of course).

Aviation & Space Travel: This category includes pilots, as well as airline executives and other people involved in aviation in general. It also includes people made famous for traveling in space.

Business & Economics: This category includes the founders, owners, CEOs, and other tycoons of the business world, as well as prominent figures in the worlds of economics and finances.

Cartoons & Comics: This category includes drawn characters from all media: cartoon shows, comic books, comic strips, even Japanese anime. It also includes the artists, animators, voice actors, and other real people involved in the dual industries.

Comedy: This category includes comedians, humorists, funny mascots, comedic fictional characters (such as funny-pages characters), and other figures known for making people laugh. It does not include celebrities who are the butt of jokes for other reasons, such as fallible world leaders and Hollywood stars who have had run-ins with the law.

Contests & Records: This category includes people who became famous for winning a contest, earning an award, or setting a record (or famously coming close to any of the above).

Controversy & Scandal: This category includes celebrities who became famous (or more famous) because of public transgressions. Run-ins with the law, posing nude in a magazine, having an affair, making outrageous statements in the press, and other scandalous behavior will get a celebrity into this category.

Crime: This category includes all people famous for committing crimes, even if they were famous for something else. Remember that some famous lawbreakers, such as Nelson Mandela and Rosa Parks, are respected highly for their acts of civil disobedience and are not typically considered criminals, but still get listed here. This category also includes famous victims of crime.

Cuisine: This category includes chefs, nutritionists, restauranteurs, industry mascots, and other figures associated with food.

Dance & Theater: This category includes professional dancers, as well as celebrities who dance as part of their job, such as figure skaters and pop singers. It also includes those associated with professional theater, like thespians and playwrights, and stars of well-known stage acts.

Diseases & Health: This category includes famous doctors, medical scientists, and health experts. Much more often, however, it includes celebrities who famously suffer from a disease or injury.

Education: This category includes famous teachers, professors, and advocates of education in general, as well as celebrities who famously mentored other celebrities.

Exploration: This category includes historical figures who set out to explore unknown territory, for knowledge or profit.

Fads & Trends: This category includes celebrities who have inspired or famously participated in temporary trends in fashion, speech, public taste, or pop culture in general.

Family: This category includes all celebrities whose fame comes, in whole or in part, from being related to another celebrity. Note that this does not apply when the related celebrity is only famous for being related to the goo. (This means that a president wouldn't be classified here just for being married to the first lady, if the only source of her own fame was being the president's wife.) This category also applies even after the family tie is severed, by divorce, death, or other means.

Fashion & Modeling: This category includes fashion designers and models, as well as celebrities who are strongly associated with a unique fashion style or a single article of clothing.

Government & Politics: This category includes all elected and appointed government officials, and anyone who is associated with politics. Not limited to politicians themselves, it can also include political analysts and other people related to government.

Hoaxes & Lies: This category includes people who became famous for participating in hoaxes or significant falsehoods, or those celebrities who have made up significant portions of their personal history.

Internet: This category includes people who are famous for their web sites, as well as fictional characters from web sites. It also includes celebrities who have worked with Internet technology in general.

Invention & Technology: This category includes people who are credited with inventing devices or systems, or with adapting existing devices or systems to work better. It also includes software programmers, and people who famously worked with technology in general. Note that the invention does not have to be a physical object, it might have been a game, an art form, or something else more conceptual in nature.

Journalism & Opinion: This category includes famous newspeople, regardless of the medium in which they work and whether or not they are considered credible. It also included noted essayists, editorialists, social observers, and influential thinkers, whose opinions have been published (or broadcast).

Law & Order: This category includes judges, lawyers, prosecutors, legislators, and other members of the legal profession, as well as police officers and other agents of law enforcement.

Legends & Mythology: This category includes historical figures who have attained legendary status in modern culture (often because of a lack of accurate historical records about them), and celebrities of essentially folklorish origin, both real and fictional.

Literature: This category includes authors of novels, short stories, poems, plays, screenplays, magazine articles, comic books, and other written works of art. It also includes miscellaneous figures from the world of literature, such as publishers and fictional characters.

Magic & Paranormal: This category includes famous stage magicians and illusionists, as well as people who claim to have genuine magical or psychic abilities, and the scholars who debunk paranormal phenomena.

Military & War: This category includes military officers, soldiers, and leaders, as well as persons famous for participating in armed conflicts even if not in an organized military.

Movies: This category includes actors, actresses, directors, producers, screenwriters, studio executives, and even movie critics. It also includes fictional characters from movies.

Music: This category includes musicians, singers, rappers, DJs, and people peripherally related to music, like critics and executives.

Mysteries: This category includes the people at the center of famous mysteries, such as disappearances and unexplained events, and the people who solve them.

Philosophy & Religion: This category includes philosophists and teachers of philosophy, as well as religious figures such as deities, evangelists, and historical figures.

Radio: This category includes celebrities who gained fame for their radio appearances, especially talk show hosts. Music stars who merely get their songs played on the radio, no matter how often, do not qualify.

Royalty: This category includes all members of royal families, and all people who are otherwise associated with royalty. (Since royals often don't have actual power in this modern age, this is a separate category from Government & Politics.)

Science: This category includes all scientists, as well as proponents and opponents of science. It does include medical researchers, but not doctors, who better fit into Diseases & Health.

Sexuality: This category includes celebrities who built their reputation or careers on being sexy (such as beautiful models or actors), on having sex (such as having an affair with another celebrity), or on being homosexual or otherwise sexually abnormal.

Sports: This category includes all athletes, as well as people who are peripherally related to sports, such as commentators, team owners, and referees.

Television: This category includes stars, producers, executives, news anchors, talk show hosts, and other people involved in the television industry. It also includes fictional characters from tv shows.

Video Games: This category includes people who work in the video game (and computer game) industry, such as executives, designers, directors, composers, and voice actors. It also includes famous players of video games (such as high-score record holders), fictional characters from video games, and celebrities from other fields who lent their likeness to a famous video game.