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>>I have resolved to treat any complaints like a baseball umpire: don't explain and don't retract. <P> i wouldn't worry about this. when i did the 40-square contest, i received virtually no feedback - good, bad, or otherwise - about the job i did (except for the editors thanking me for being a judge). <P> judges may be interested in my 'thoughts on judging', which is part of the same page as the contest winners. i just reread it and it holds up pretty well (despite some inexplicable typos, including getting aronson's name wrong, which i regularly did for years until he corrected me on it). although i tossed in a few constructive criticisms, i tried to keep it as positive as possible. originally had considered putting comments for every single entry, until i read that one of the entries was from a 10-yr-old kid. since i didn't necessarily know anything about the rest of the people who entered, i didn't want to risk trashing some kid's game online, which would accomplish nothing other than possibly discouraging him from continuing with chess variants. (i haven't looked at most of the 84-square entries, but based on what i've seen, and the comments of others, it looks like the quality level is very high. in the 40-square contest, there was a lot of good games, but there were few great games and a lot of horrible games - some of which were unplayable - so any honest appraisal of all the games would have contained a lot of negative comments.) <P> i could come up with a list of advice for judges, but most of it is pretty obvious stuff. the one thing that i'll mention here: take notes as you go along. judging will takes months (i think i used a year and a half, since entries were being submitted long before the deadline), written notes will make things a lot easier when it comes time to pick your winners and summarize your thoughts.