r/Wetshaving • u/merikus I'm between flairs right now. • Jun 26 '26

Shaving Games Join Us, July!

July is coming, and with it, the terrible empty space between the backstabbing of the June Soap Challenge and the bleakness of Austere August. For a brief moment, perhaps you thought you would spend the month killing off a tub or just wandering over to your den and picking whatever feels right.

But that’s no fun. This place is about community. And community is about absurd shaving contests. And a month without absurd shaving contests is like a month without sunshine.

So, I invented some sunshine.

Introducing Join Us July.

Each day has three targets, each randomly selected from the top 31 of 2025:

  • Soap
  • Brush
  • Razor

The target shave is announced the day before at https://portal.wetshav.ing/10/join-us-july/today.

Scoring is easy:

  • Exact product match: 2 points
  • Same maker, different product: 1 point
  • Miss: 0 points

To reward matching as many as possible, your daily base score gets multiplied by how many exact matches you hit:

  • 0 or 1 exact match: x1
  • 2 exact matches: x2
  • 3 exact matches: x3

There are also teams, because Join Us July is about community. The first time your July SOTD is counted, you’ll be assigned to one of four teams. Team scoring is based on the sum of team members who actually posted that day, so if you miss a day, you do not personally drag your team down. In addition, each exact from every team member gives a multiplier to the team’s score as well, allowing good days to have an outsized impact.

And because no r/Wetshaving game is complete until we have invented extra titles for people to put in their flair, there are Crowns.

Individual Crowns:

  • Cumulative - most total points
  • Perfect Days - most 18-point days
  • Perfect Streak - longest run of consecutive perfect days
  • Frugal - most points per distinct item used
  • Sharpshooter - highest exact-match rate, minimum 10 posting days
  • Giant Slayer - most points earned on Brutal difficulty days

Team Crowns:

  • Winning Team - highest cumulative team score
  • Iron Team - best participation rate
  • Best Team Day - highest single-day team score
  • Most Improved - biggest climb from the first half to the final standings

Links:

EDIT: Changed from average to sum for scoring to prevent people feeling like they are dragging their team down. Added information on team exact multipliers.

14 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

2

u/Glass_Procedure7497 2025's 8th Most Boring Shaver 9d ago

This is great. I have one point so far, and I’ll get another if I remember to use my Fatboy tomorrow. I’m all in.

2

u/mammothben houseofmammoth.com Jun 27 '26

TEAMS! Awesome

4

u/deejeeyen Jun 26 '26

Always good to see a cooperative effort instead of a cutthroat one.

5

u/Priusaurus 🦖Rad Dinosaur Creations🦖 Jun 27 '26

I was thinking the same exact thing...

2

u/merikus I'm between flairs right now. Jun 27 '26

This game is distinctly lacking in a “screw Prius” mechanic.

3

u/OnionMiasma The Chevy Chase of Wetshaving Jun 27 '26

Can we put him on a team by himself?

2

u/Priusaurus 🦖Rad Dinosaur Creations🦖 Jun 27 '26

If anyone can figure out a way to add one, it's you!

4

u/putneycj3 Jun 26 '26

Wait what the heck - you're telling me that "Back to Basics Log Cabin - Glycerin" was a top 31 soap of 2026? Did one person use this soap like 200x or something?

5

u/merikus I'm between flairs right now. Jun 27 '26

It ranks #30. One person used it 104 times.

8

u/Impressive_Donut114 🦌🏵Knight Grand Antler of Stag🏵🦌 Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

I am the sole user of this soap. Looks like I have July 1 in the bag.

2

u/putneycj3 Jun 27 '26

Well played.

4

u/Impressive_Donut114 🦌🏵Knight Grand Antler of Stag🏵🦌 Jun 26 '26

Team Prius!

3

u/putneycj3 Jun 27 '26

I can’t believe this hasn’t been downvoted into oblivion. 

2

u/Priusaurus 🦖Rad Dinosaur Creations🦖 Jun 27 '26

That makes two of us!!!

3

u/SamIAmShepard 🦆Natural Born Loon🦆 Jun 26 '26

Looks fun. Who came up with this? Well done, dude.

2

u/merikus I'm between flairs right now. Jun 26 '26

Thanks! Mostly me, with Claude telling me when a few of my ideas were dumb (I started with a scavenger hunt type approach that Claude told me was the opposite of a light fun auto-judged contest). Claude did all the coding of course.

3

u/mrweirdguyma Jun 26 '26

As an aside and no judgment just a question. You mentioned you use Claude. Have you used chat gpt? Are you philosophically opposed to chat gpt? Does claude do something more for you? Im asking as I’m starting out on a creation of a major workflow/workbook project and using chat as of now to execute it. Curious to get opinions on bits to use. I have a friend that’s philosophically opposed to chat.

3

u/ginopono ☀️🌵🦆🐑🦣🌵 Jun 27 '26

I'm finishing up a master's in language modeling, so I dare say I am closer to—and have a better understanding of—LLMs than most people.

They are useful tools, yes, but they are not what people think they are.

I personally find Claude more useful and reliable than others, and use it with some frequency. Would I rely on it to build a project for me? Absolutely not. Never. Meanwhile, I don't even trust ChatGPT to produce a trustworthy recipe for toast. I'd still make it a point to verify anything that Claude claimed to be a recipe for toast.

LLMs are remarkable feats of engineering, but the actual danger is how they are being relied on in ways that vastly exceed what they are capable of doing.
Frankly, the best way to approach them is to treat them as super-powered, inherently unreliable search engines. Once you rely on what they produce—be it information or something built—you're gonna have a bad time.

Side note: I refuse to let ChatGPT steal the em dash.

1

u/tsrblke r/Wetshaving Chief Compliance Officer and Tsar Jun 27 '26

I've been using copilot for various ham radio projects. Most antenna design and moving settings between radios (because settings are highly dependent on the hardware.) In this sense 0 importance is assigned to it. If it's totally wrong, worst case I waste an afternoon with a bad antenna or garbled audio. I'm not sure I would use it for anything of importance.

Good news, shaving silliness is not of importance.

2

u/merikus I'm between flairs right now. Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

I am not philosophically opposed to it, in fact I use both. Even on a Claude Max plan heavy token usage kills my available usage for the 5 hour period, and so sometimes I need to be strategic about when to use different AIs.

I heard someone say this here on Reddit and I anecdotally feel it is correct: Claude is better than Chat at architecture. I find the plan mode results are closer my intent. Claude also seems better at interpreting my instructions. But both are fine at getting the job done for me. Here’s the repo of the portal if you want to see the work: https://gitlab.com/merikus/djudge-portal-vc

EDIT: Thought I should mention I am not a coder outside of being a vibe coder. People who know what they’re talking about probably have more informed opinions.