Sheep V: The Unraveling (2024)

Full Season Results!

Season V of Sheep is in the books!

Congratulations to our season-long champion, KBOB, better known as Katherine Blakeslee! Katherine is a former Broadie, in her time working with Anna Greka on the Kidney Disease Initiative, who transitioned over to biotech a few years ago. For the past year and a half, she’s been learning Italian, and after 4 trips to Italy is confident to declare that she’s “practically fluent” (ignoring some creative grammar). In her spare time, she plays ultimate frisbee, hits the running trails, tries to quench her insatiable wanderlust, and rounds it all out with a very cute dog named Cosmo. Congrats, Katherine, on a season-long job well done!

Mercurio83 made a last-minute charge for the top spot, and came up just short but had an impressive run nonetheless. Going by Lee Tarlin in the real world, Lee was introduced to Sheep by long-time friend and former GPPer, Ruth Hanna. Lee turned 29 yesterday, also plays ultimate frisbee, and once sat in front of Carly Rae Jepsen at Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Broadway. 

Our third place finisher, Lbastian, cleverly hiding his real identity of Luke Bastian, has both a BA and MEng from MIT, and currently works as a structural engineer out in Seattle, which is a good place for it, since apparently the whole Pacific NW is going to be annihilated one of these days by an earthquake. But you’re probably better off worrying about Near Earth Objects anyway, as discussed in the documentary film Armageddon. As far as I know, Luke does not routinely play ultimate frisbee, but is one of those people who is obnoxiously good at pretty much everything he tries, so he’d pick it up super quick no doubt!

Rounding out the Top 10 are: 

4) Lane: short for Lane Marder, who can often be found leading educational tours in the Broad Discovery Center.

5) Wooly Mammoth: the clean-shaven Chris Gerry, a former Broadie who is now at Kisbee Therapeutics – does that rhyme with “frisbee”?

6) Marissa F: aka Marissa Feeley, a former RA in GPP who is now a graduate student at Johns Hopkins. 

7) Not Your HR Partner: who is, in fact, my HR partner, Kayleigh Johansson. 

8) Alexandra Van Hall: the pseudonym for Alexandra Van Hall, a Broadie specializing in cellular assays and protein engineering.

9) avm: Abby McGee, former Broadie, now PhD student at U Washington, and the lead creator of Fragmid, the most satisfying tool I’ve made in my career.   

10) Gorm the Old: who is better known to me as the mastermind behind one of my favorite pieces of research software, PoolQ, the great Mark Tomko.

All scores can be found in the 'Totals' tab here.

Thanks all for playing, we hope to see you again in early 2025! 

Baa bye,

The Sheepmaster

Week 8. The Kitchen. Results!

Final week of Sheep V: The Unraveling, and we took a journey into the Kitchen (which is where Col. Mustard used the Knife, in my first-ever game of Clue, circa 1983). We had a tie for first-place this week, but I guess two cooks in the kitchen can be okay, especially if one of them is Mary Berry, who turned 89 this year (her mother lived to 105). Our first winner is Meghan O'Keefe, who is playing from South Euclid, Ohio, which reminds me of a good joke: Rick Blaine is sitting in his bar in Casablanca, enjoying the sublime beauty of geometry, then raises his glass and says, "Here's looking at Euclid." Anyway, Meghan is a former Broadie, having worked as an RA from 2017 - 2018, and has since ventured out to get her MD-PhD. And yes, she is not the only O’Keefe at Broad, many of you are of course familiar with Rhonda, or as Meghan calls her, “mom.” Our second winner is Laura Gauthier, who has been a Broadie since 2014; she joined Sheep during the pandemic at the invitation of the “Best Manager in the World” whomever that may be. Laura’s title – which apparently used to officially be “Cat Herder” – is Associate Director of Germline Computational Methods which, for the non-scientists on this email, is not as nefarious as it may sound! Rather, methods that Laura and her team develop are critical for identifying causal mutations in genome sequencing data for rare diseases – which are, paradoxically, quite common as a class, with over 7,000 rare diseases affecting ~5% of the population. Unfortunately, ~95% of rare diseases currently have no treatment option, so we’ve got a ways to go. I’ll juxtapose static funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to this nugget: “According to the Tax Policy Center, in 2019, private equity funds managed $4.1 trillion, with carried interest acting as the primary source of income for partners. Although such earnings may put them in high tax brackets, carried interest is typically treated as long-term capital gains, meaning it is taxed at 20 percent as opposed to ordinary income, which would be subject to a top rate of 37 percent.” I guess public policy, and thus elections, matter. 

Individual scores can be found here. 

Question-by-questions results can be found here.

Week 7. Potpourri. Results!

Lotta reports of good things happening in the Sheepiverse. People are excited about the weather in New England right now, about the Celtics, about the long weekend. Someone ran a half marathon in under 2 hours, someone finished a report on scorpions, and someone is excited about cheese. 

Someone finished their MCAS exams, someone handed in their dissertation, someone just landed their dream job. Someone just got engaged, someone just booked their wedding venue, someone just bought wedding bands with their fiance, and someone just got married. 

Sheepshters… saw their baby (nearly) finally sleep through the night … heard their 10 month old say their first word … had their toddler start saying “I did that!” … saw their twins turn 12 … watched their daughter graduate from high school … celebrated their grandkids’ birthdays. 

The world needs work, no doubt, but there’s a lot of light out there too. 

So in the spirit of “we’re all in this together,” let’s all clap our hooves together for Broadie Alex Werley! Alex is the Finance and Operations lead in the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research. Congrats Alex! And a special shoutout to the GPP Software Engineers, a team of six who nonetheless managed to land 3 people in the top 9 this week! Their on-target specificity was top notch, and clearly they avoided any answers with high CFD scores. Well done!

And in the season-long race, we’ve had three going at it neck-and-neck since the halfway point, with Lbastian in the lead, KBOB keeping pace in second, and Not Your HR Partner stalking in third. But as they come down the stretch, KBOB has moved into the lead by a nose, so it’ll really all come down to this final week!

Full question-by-question results can be found here.

Individual scores can be found here. 

Week 6. Fill in the ___. Results!

A Sheep first this week, I believe, with a mother - daughter pair each having earned Best in Flock honors, as this week’s winner is Elise Jolley, daughter of week 1 winner, Kirsten Jolley. No word yet on whether Dad Jolley responded to this news by subscribing to Harrison Butker’s podcast. Elise is an undergraduate at Purdue University, where she is majoring in Industrial Engineering, which is “concerned with the design, improvement and installation of integrated systems of people, materials, information, equipment and energy” – sounds exhausting! The Sheep t-shirt headed Elise’s way will be the envy of the whole campus next semester, no doubt.

In the season long standings, things have continued to tighten up at the top, now with two weeks to go! 

Full question-by-question results can be found here.

Individual scores can be found here. 

Week 5. Rhyme Time. Results!

How appropriate that, today being Mother's Day, we have a new mom taking home Best in Sheep honors. As a two-time winner of Sheep in her younger days, it is quite apparent that Laurie Doe, née Holmes, has not lost a step! Laurie is a Broadie of 16 years in the Genomics Platform. She becomes just the second three-time champion, joining Chris Podracky, formerly of the Liu lab and now of Prime Medicine, where they are using evolution-based methods to make 13 divisible by 7 (it's working great in HEK293 cells!) 

Also a bit of a "ooh, that's gotta hurt" award to Sheep's version of Alydar, Kates, who has finished in second for the second week in a row. If you find yourself in Austin, TX and happen to have an extra frog, it would certainly be a gesture of goodwill to give it to Kates, would make her day. Ribbit.

In the Season-long standings, no change at the top, but the leader gave ground to most of the rest of the top ten. In any given week, the difference between the maximum score and the median score is ~350 points, and there are 3 weeks to go. So I'd say the dozen or so people within ~500 points of the top are still very much in contention, and those within 1,000 points (n = 65) could make it happen with a real hot streak plus some luck. 

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!

Full question-by-question results can be found here.

Individual scores can be found here. 

Week 4. Groceries. Results!

A hearty congratulations to this week’s winner, playing in thier first season of Sheep, Alex Statley! Alex’s pseudonym, A. Valley, comes from their love of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, a group from the great – or should we just come out and say it, the greatest? – musical state that is New Jersey. Even a casual and/or young music fan will know December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night), but that’s hardly their only hit. 

This is Alex’s first year of playing Sheep, they were let into the fun by colleagues in the Bay Area, where they are a “chromatography connoisseur.” Dunno what the chain-of-connection that links their company back to the Broad Institute, but that’s kinda the fun, right? Regardless, Alex is, of course, looking forward to broadcasting their victory with an exclusive Sheep Victory t-shirt, which the USPS will get out ASAP. 

Full question-by-question results can be found here.

Individual scores can be found here. I also added a "Totals" tab so you can see how you're doing overall this season. Here at the halfway point our Top Ten are Lbastian, KBOB, Not Your HR Partner, avm, Kirsten Jolley, Wooly Mammoth, Marissa F, Iam Smith, Lane, and Mercurio83. There's still plenty of Sheep left, still anyone's game! FYI, If there's an (n/a) for one of your weeks but you're pretty sure you played, it may be because you used a different username. As I believe I have things set up to send you an email when you submit answers, you can presumably figure out what username you did use that week, so let me know and I can get things totaled up appropriately. But please try to stick one consistently for the duration, as the fix is rather manual. Merci!

Week 3. Wordle-ish. Results!

I got Wordle in 3 today, and got it in 2 earlier this week. So things are going pretty well for the Sheepmaster. 

Hello all and welcome to the results of Week 3! No ties this week, we have a unique champion, so please clap your hooves together for Michael Chaney of Vienna (no not that one, the one in Virginia). Michael, proud papa of 9 year old Keira, is a long-time Sheep player, and is still incensed that David Ortiz was selected as an all-time-great Red Sox player in Sheep III. While Michael is welcome to continue to be wrong about that 😅 he will not be in the wrong sporting a fancy Sheep T-shirt. Congrats Michael!

Full question-by-question results can be found here.

Individual scores can be found here.

Week 2. Either / or. Results!

Greetings all Sheep enthusiasts! Perhaps given the limited number of choices this week it shouldn't be a surprise that there's a tie atop the leaderboard, with FOUR people getting perfect scores. The only thing shared in common amongst the winners, as far as I can tell, is that they are all pretty closely connected to the Broad, as three are current Broadies and one is the offspring of not one but two former Broadies! So, congratulations are in order first to Sophie Brown, daughter of Adam Brown and Serena Silver, some names longtime Broadies will certainly remember. Joining Sophie at the podium we have Stephen Fleming, who is making is second trip to the winner's circle, having won in Week 3 of 2022. Stephen works in DSP (Data Sciences Platform for those not in the know). Next up, Lois Dolittle, who, in fact, Doesmuch in her role in administration. And last but not least we have Kathryn Flowers, a former GPer who is now a project manager in the Stanley Center. Congrats to all winners!  A fresh Sheep t-shirt will soon be arriving for you to broadcast your superiority to all in the know and draw quizzical glances from those not!

Full question-by-question results can be found here.

Individual scores can be found here.

Week 1. New York City. Results!

We have blown away all previous records with 315 people participating in Sheep this week! I'll admit, with so many Sheepies in the pasture, I was worried about a tie in week 1 -- who would want that? But that was clearly foolish of me, as I overlooked the fact that Kirsten Jolley was playing, and she left everyone else in the dust, besting the runner-up by 78 points. Congrats Kirsten! Kirsten works in the US Patent Office, so her children are able to weasel out of trouble if they can convince her that the source of mischief is both novel and non-obvious. Quite the loophole.

Full question-by-question results can be found here.

Individual scores can be found here.

Welcome & Housekeeping

Hello out there, and welcome to Sheep V: The Unraveling! If you've not played before, or have played before and want to point people to your past triumphs, prior seasons can be found here. 

Here's how timing will work this season. A new Sheep will be released each week no later than Monday at 9am, and the answers will be due by Friday at 5pm Eastern. I'll then collate / tally over the weekend and send out results along with the next week's Sheep. If you're on the Sheep Google Group, all you need do is keep an eye on your email (go here to sign-up, and if you don't see the invite within a couple days, check your spam folder, search for 'Sheep'). 

As we did in Season 4, I'll keep track of how you're doing cumulatively and announce an overall winner. If you're interested in vying for the top spot you must remember your username and keep it consistent throughout! This, of course, also means picking a unique username -- and no mucking about with usernames that attempt to impersonate someone else.

The winner each week wins a Sheep t-shirt, and thanks to Aimee Serralde for coming up with the design. Having one of these is quite exclusive indeed!

Finally, please assume that nearly everything I write is done so with tongue firmly planted in cheek, and I don't aim to offend. There's a lot of internet out there if this isn't for you. 

Welcome to the flock!