Curiosities week 5 - 2026

World Team Carcassonne Online Championship
2026

Greetings mighty meepleonians,

With the group stage completed, the next phase of WTCOC 2026 begins. While some are cheering about their progression to the next round, the rest of us will be cheering from the stands for our favorite teams.

Week in review

• Number of games played: 203. (season record - with more games going to the 3rd match - indicating the intensity of the fight for qualification)
• Number of duels played: 79.
• 34 duels had 2 games played (68 games total).
• 45 duels had 3 games played (135 games total).

*This is the first round this season where we have more duels with 3 games played than 2 games.

• 3 games ended in a draw.
• 1 duel was lost due to no-show.
• 0 games were lost on time.
• 8 tiles were discarded across 8 different games (CCCC ×5 and FFFF ×3).

Weekly records

• The highest winning scores in a game:
  • 148 viv- (Fra)
  • 139 viv- (Fra)
  • 138 Mashinele (Ltu)
• The game with the highest combined score:
  • 272 viv- (Fra) vs Ervin_G (Rom) at table #853177668
• The lowest winning score:
  • 64 HappyTim7 (Ger) at table #852554207
• The game with the lowest combined score:
  • 123 HappyTim7 (Ger) vs pMika (Tha) at table #852554207
• The highest losing score:
  • 131 Ervin_G (Rom) at table #853166119
• The longest (incomplete) road:
  • 16 manarori (Mex) at table #853069099.
• The largest city:
  • 36 Gladki_Alex (Blr) at table #853074490
• The largest ruin:
  • 25 vegaorion (Cro) and -Nari- (Per) shared this ruin at #852581307
• The largest field:
  • 36 Xing1007 (Chn) and robill (Hun) shared this field at table #853020205 (new season record)
• Monastery points:
  • 40 webbi (Arg) (1 completed and 4 incomplete) at table #852613197.
• Latest first point scoring:
  • 24th tile berna_uy (Uru) in their match vs jonben9603 (Swe) at table #853096493
• Most meeples placed:
  • Larpaattori (Fin) placed meeples 23 times on table #853088087

Tile Carcanopoly achievements

This week saw a few more Carcanopoly shenanigans:

• vegaorion (Cro) acquired the “Straight [road] to Hell” achievement by drawing all straight roads at tables #852580222
• kimrhyme (Mal) unlocked the “Megot Allcurves” achievement by drawing all curves at table #852970171
• All crossroad tiles - 3 players: robill (Hun), Buha44 (Cro), DrGalifardeuGalindoi (Cat).
• All 6 monasteries - 4 players: Someone_you_know (RCP), crocodilefundy (USA), Wolf Ren (Vnm), DrGalifardeuGalindoi (Cat).
• All 8 “big city” tiles - 3 players: riddle771 (Chn), Salva3xz (Col), Lambe (Ita)

Weekly facts & figures

Salva3xz (Col), perhaps not knowing that their team has already won 3 duels (and the match), pushed the timer to its limit in the 3rd game of the duel game 3 match as they tried unsuccessfully to find a win vs Zedson (Bra), ending their final turn at 14 minutes 59 seconds.

danisvh (Cat), took little time to overcome their opponent in a quick 2-0, using a total of 4 minutes 45 seconds in the 11 minutes 35 seconds match.

Rookies of the Week

Ruadhh and mart1nator (Ned) : What a way to record your first duel wins in WTCOC 2026 - The rookie duo from the Netherlands stepped up with determined (and decisive) victories in their duels against the United States, helping to secure progression for the Netherlands.

Honorable mentions:

Bangla (Bel) : Potentially the oldest rookie to debut in recent WTCOC history, the Belgian secured a 2-0 win in their duel vs Vietnam. They showed that age is never a factor to becoming Rookie of the Week.

Bestwall (RCP): The RCP rookie is currently 3-0 in duels won (and 6-1 in games won-loss) and is a key reason for RCP’s journey to the next round. How else would one make an impression

Team Fun Stuff

A “notice” from a Finnish streamer

It was a happy start to the weekend for HappyTim7 (Ger) who, while watching football with some close friends who were visiting, was reminded—with only minutes to spare—that they had to play in a match vs Thailand! The reminder came from an unlikely source: a mobile phone notification that Nallerheim (Fin) had started streaming the Germany - Thailand match. This was doubly fortunate because Nallerheim coincidentally chose to start his stream with HappyTim7’s games.

“I lost the game because I didn't get a clean… culo (?)”

Mr Curiossonne got to know a bit more about Team Italy this week. According to our Italian correspondent, a city cap tile is called a “culo” (which means ass in Italian) because the city caps—in a way—resemble not only a round butt, but also the round end of a salami (which is commonly referred to as “the ass of the salami”). This term flexibly accommodates a variety of endcaps: the ass with a road, the ass with a t-junction, and a clean ass. We’ll let you guess what the final one refers to. 😂

First WTCOC Carcassonne Family

This week’s match between Hungary and China saw the first Hungarian Carcassonne father-mother-son trio—kissemo, valics and kissduska—participating in a WTCOC match together. While the result may not have gone the way they hoped, it surely provided some memorable family time together.

Score big with the Romanians?

That must have been viv-’s (Fra) mantra this week as he faced Ervin_G (Rom), tallying himself a total score of 378 points in 3 games - That is 126 points per game on average.

Mr Curiossonne presents…

Curious Facts

The origins of Elo

• While doing a bit of research on the origins of Elo, Mr Curiossone stumbled upon this fun fact. Did you know that the term Elo was initially used in chess and was named after the person who developed it, a Hungarian-American by the name of Arpad Elo.

This week Mr. Curiossonne noticed a few time anomalies in the game logs:

• The first startling realization was that two week-5 games both lasted more than 2 minutes longer than the sum of the thinking time recorded for the two players. Huh? It turns out that those games were played with the standard BGA “incremental clock” instead of the 15 minute fixed-time “tournament clock”. The incremental clock doesn’t account for, on average, about a second of time per action, but that isn’t really an issue for non-tournament game-play on BGA. Fortunately, the fixed-time tournament clocks only leave a few seconds unaccounted for during a game, which is reassuring. It’s nothing compared to the time used for animations or the time it takes to make a screen refresh seconds

Captains’ Predictions (Part II)

Back in Week 1, we had shared some of the captains’ predictions for this year’s tournament, including who they thought would be potential champions and more. But, we didn’t share everything we collected. Now that we have finished the group stage, it’s time to unveil the rest of the captains’ prediction.

Which three teams from each group do you think would qualify to the next stage?

(% indicates the % of captains selecting the team to progress)

Group A

Captains’ prediction: China (97%), Croatia (78%), Hungary (61%)

Qualified teams: China, Greece, Peru

Both Greece and Peru have defied the captains expectations to qualify to the next round. Greece’s victories over Hungary and Croatia secured their progression. More impressive are the South Americans who progressed despite only 17% of the captains predicting their progression. Their 3-2 and 4-1 victories over Greece and Hungary placed them ahead of Croatia, and confirmed their spot at the preliminary playoffs. Well done Peru.

Group B

Captains’ prediction: Japan (100%), Portugal (89%), Argentina (89%)

Qualified teams: Japan, Portugal, Argentina

The captains were spot on for this one as all three predicted teams qualified for the next round. It seems that having the highest Elo average by group did not sway the predictions nor the teams’ performance.

Group C

Captains’ prediction: Czech Republic (94%), Thailand (92%), Germany (89%)

Qualified teams: Germany, Czech Republic, Lithuania

The captains were almost correct in predicting the three teams. It was not unexpected to favor Thailand as one of the teams to progress to the next round given their past performances. But no one predicted how the Lithuanian powerhouse would emerge from this group. Besting the Czech Republic 3-2 and narrowly losing 2-3 to both Thailand and Germany, the Baltic state (which only had 8% of the captains rooting for them) could have topped the group should the results favor them ever more slightly.

Group D

Captains’ prediction: France (97%), Taiwan (83%), Romania (81%)

Qualified teams: France, Romania, Taiwan

The captains were once again correct in their predictions for Group D. The Catalans (39%) did put up a good fight in the group, however, only missing out on a qualification spot to Taiwan by the finest of margins: a tie-breaker.

Group E

Captains’ prediction: Poland (94%), Italy (81%), United States (78%)

Qualified teams: Italy, Poland and Netherlands

The captains’ predictions were slightly off for this group as Netherlands (33%) squeezed into the qualification spot by besting the 4-1 Americans on the last day of the group stage. The Italians however, outperformed the Poles to top the group but not by a wide margin.

Group F

Captains’ prediction: RCP (100%), Hong Kong (86%), Finland (58%)

Qualified teams: Hong Kong, Mexico, RCP

Group F was voted by the captains to be the toughest group of the tournament and it certainly looked the part. Despite being the only other team that received a 100% vote of confidence, RCP was put to the test and survived the elimination scare, defeating Finland in a narrow 3-2 victory on the final day of the group stage and breaking the hearts of all Finnish Carcassonne fans. Hong Kong emerged as group leaders while a strong showing from the Mexicans (50%) secured their ticket to the preliminary playoffs.

Group G

Captains’ prediction: Chile (89%), Belgium (81%), Colombia (67%)

Qualified teams: Brazil, Colombia, Belgium

The Brazilians (58%) defied the captains’ predictions this tournament by topping the group and qualifying in place of Chile. It was a tough couple of weeks for the Chileans as they lost narrowly to both Belgium and Colombia, with their fates sealed as the trio of Brazil, Colombia and Belgium shared wins (and losses) with each other, making qualification an impossible endeavor.

Group H

Captains’ prediction: Ukraine (97%), United Kingdom (72%), Latvia (72%)

Qualified teams: Ukraine, Latvia, Spain

The captains correctly predicted that Ukraine and Latvia would both progress to the next round. However, the Spaniards (53%) have different plans. Building off a promising start to the tournament, going 4-1 against both Latvia and Ecuador, they withheld a late resurgence from the United Kingdom, booking their spot in the playoffs despite losing to the UK 1-4 on the final day of the group stage, with only a single duel win deciding the fate of both teams.

Now that we have seen the predictions, we would like to congratulate the Brazilian team captain Besson00 for accurately predicting the most number of teams progressing to the next round (21/24). That is 2 predictions(!!) ahead of the next closest captain.

Here’s another fun fact about the captains’ predictions. It would seem like the captains were having the hardest time accurately predicting who would progress from Group A, C and G, as only a handful (<4) of captains accurately did so.

Group A: Besson00 (Bra) and Ext4ur (Col)

Group C: maticarrizoc (Arg) and Bekse (Ned)

Group G: Besson00 (Bra), Helic (HK), zaharik (Ukr)

Were you playing the prediction game as well? Want to let us know how your predictions went? We appreciate having a few more readers contacting us with juicy curiosities, so do continue to share with us anything which is funny, intriguing, insightful or even borderline mysterious about your team and your journey with Carcassonne.

Thank you for reading, sharing & caring,
szigfrid, JinaJina, Mingo, kaika87, posij118  😘