Three things went live on Universally Bedford yesterday, and they all exist for the same reason: this site is more fun when you are in it, arguing. Here is what is new, starting with the one that will eat your afternoon.

Rope Drop Showdown

Two Universal attractions, side by side. Five seconds on the clock. Which one are you running to when the rope drops? That is the entire game, and it is live at /showdown.

A round is ten of those decisions — long enough to be revealing, short enough to fit in a tea break. At the end you get two things back: your own rope-drop order for the rides you just judged, and the world’s top ten as voted by everyone else who has played.

The pool is 52 attractions from Universal parks around the world, and it does not stop at what is still standing. Jaws, Kongfrontation, Back to the Future: The Ride and Dueling Dragons are all in there, so you can finally settle whether a defunct legend beats the thing that replaced it.

The board at /showdown/rankings is still forming, and that is less a disclaimer than an invitation. With the vote count this low, an early opinion moves the rankings in a way it never will again. Your own all-time list builds up on your device as you play, too — the more rounds you do, the more it starts to look like your actual park day.

Comments are open

Comments are now open on every article on the site. Including, as it happens, this one.

Signing in takes an email address and nothing else. There is no password to invent and then forget: you give us your email, we send you a sign-in link, you pick a display name, and you are in. From there you can reply to other readers, like the comments you agree with, and report anything that needs a second look.

Everything posted is moderated — automated screening before a comment appears, with human review behind it — against our new community guidelines. They are short, and worth two minutes before you post. If someone replies to you we will email you about it, and there is a one-click opt-out in every one of those emails if you would rather we did not.

The Rumour Mill keeps score now

The rumour tracker has always let you call believe or doubt on a rumour. It now asks you properly, in the places where you were already reading.

  • Believe and doubt are one tap from the trending strip on the homepage, so you never have to open a page just to register an opinion.
  • Rumour articles carry a vote widget inside them, right where you have finished weighing up the evidence.
  • Once you have voted, you see how the crowd split — which is often more interesting than the rumour itself.

And there is a new Your Ballot section on /rumour-tracker that keeps track of the calls you have made. As rumours are confirmed or debunked, your record follows them into an insider score: a running answer to the question of how good you actually are at this. No pressure.

Over to you

All three are live right now. If something is broken, or brilliant, or you simply need the world to know that Dueling Dragons should be number one, the box at the bottom of this page is the first comment box this site has ever had. Christen it.

Then go and set the Showdown rankings straight while your vote still counts double.