If we lynch anyone for misreading the setup I think it should be Awaclus with his Miller thing
I don't think it's hard to interpret the original text in multiple ways.
In fact, before we do any more claiming, we ought to poll everyone on how they interpreted faust's statement of the item-winning and penalty item rules [/i]at the time they made their bid[/i]. Getting that info out there before any claim orders or claim facts get decided will help to remove wiggle-room on scum's claims.
For instance, if there are people A, B, and C, with rank numbers 1, 2, and 3 respectively, and then all bid on a single slot that contains a good item and a penalty item, who did you think would get each thing?
I think Awaclus is saying he thought
A: penalty item
B: good item
C: nothing
-- that's pretty much how I read it, too, though I was VLA at the weekend on a trip to London for all of Sunday, so I didn't invest a lot of though time in the pre-game bidding.
If I'd thought more about it, I'd have realises that my initial interpretation disadvantages people with a low-numbered ranking number rather too much. OTOH, giving the penalty item to the person with the largest rank number (I'd have described those people as low-ranked, but this is where the confusion stems from!) also forces people who've ranked poorly to go for slots without penalty items, which doesn't seem to encourage diversity as much as I thought faust's twist to the setup was designed to do, given that a lot of slots had penalty items...
PPE ~6.