This is a fantasy sports competition that involves predicting winners and losers, but it's not a straight-up this-makes-sense kind of competition.  Contestants will select countries participating in the World Cup tournament and arrange them in a quantum grid that will generate an ever-increasing (if you are sufficiently lucky or skillful) number of points.  The crack contest staff at Laughton.org will calculate scores according to a complex and baffling formula (don't try this at home) and post results on this page as the tournament progresses.  At its conclusion a winner will be announced and a small prize awarded.  If there are many entries, there may also be second- and third-place prizes.

The World Cup is a tournament among 32 national teams divided into eight groups of four each. Teams play every other team within their group to qualify for the next round.  Matches may end in ties during group play.  After the group stage, sixteen countries advance to the elimination stage, where matches are always played until there is a winner.  If the score is tied at the end of standard time, an overtime period is played.  If overtime play results in a tie, then the teams engage in a shootout - a series of penalty kicks - until one team succeeds in putting the ball in the goal more often than the other and thus wins the match.  You may wish to consult the FIFA World Cup website to read about the groups and schedules before composing your entry.

Participating countries are listed at right along with their rankings in international competition.  These rankings are also displayed on the Official Entry Form for your convenience.  FIFA's qualification process for the World Cup is somewhat quantum in nature, so not all the highest-ranked teams will participate in this year's tournament.  Using the Official Entry Form below, you will choose 16 countries and arrange them in 4x4 grid as shown in this example:

A country may appear in only one location on the grid.  Any entry received with a repeated country will be cast into the nearest black hole.

Each country in the grid has an initial value of zero.  During the tournament this value will change according to the country's wins, ties, and losses.  A win gains 1 point, a tie is worth zero, and a loss incurs a value of -1.  These values accrue during the competition, so a country with 3 wins and 1 loss would receive a net value of 2.  A country with all ties during group play that doesn't advance to the elimination rounds would have a value of 0; a country with 1 win, 1 loss, and 1 tie would also have a net value of 0.

A team will play seven matches at most during the tournament: three in group play, one each in the round of 16, quaterfinals, and semifinals, and then the championship match for those who win the semifinals, the consolation match for those who lose.  For demonstration purposes, let's assume that Germany wins the World Cup by winning all seven of their matches, that England wins five and loses two (the semifinal and the consolation match), and that Egypt and France are eliminated after losing all three of their group matches.  We'll also make up some plausible results for the other teams in the grid without going into detail how they earned them:

The row values and column values are added (or subtracted in the case of negative results) to compute a grand total, which is the player's score:

30 + 0 + 189 + 0 + 0 + 0 -36 + 14 = 197

High score wins!

Please observe the effect of zero and negative values.  Clever players may find ways to use them to their advantage.  As usual in our contests, mid-tournament scores will be updated regularly and posted on this page, but they are merely for the amusement or vexation of the participants.  Only the final scores will determine the winner.

In addition to your grid of 16 countries, the Official Entry Form requires that you predict the total number of goals that will be scored during regular and overtime play during the entire World Cup.  Goals scored during shootouts when a match is tied at the end of overtime will not count for this purpose.  In the event of a tie at the end of this contest, the player whose prediction is closest to the actual number of goals scored - regardless of whether it's higher or lower - will be the winner. 

Can you predict winners better than Achilles the psychic cat?

At the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, a total of 171 goals were scored.  This is the highest total ever and matches the result of the 1998 World Cup in France. Should players still be tied after the predictions are compared, the player whose grid contains the fewest zeroes wins.  If a tie remains, the player whose entry arrived earlier at Laughton.org wins.