Maximising entertainment in the score reveal problem

Fowler, Aric and Booth, Richard ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6647-6381 2026. Maximising entertainment in the score reveal problem. Annals of Operations Research 363 , pp. 1919-1957. 10.1007/s10479-026-07329-0

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Abstract

In many elections or competitions, a set of voters assign scores to the candidates in a way that indicates their preferences, with the winning candidate being the candidate with the highest total score. When it comes to revealing the result after all votes have been cast, some competitions proceed by having a roll call where each voter announces their vote in turn. This is often done for entertainment purposes, leading to the introduction of the score reveal problem: Which ordering of the voters should be chosen to maximise the entertainment utility of the roll call? We define several entertainment measures and consider their properties, motivated by considerations such as avoiding early resolution of the outcome, focusing attention on the leading candidates, and catering towards preferences for surprise or suspense. We compare several approaches for finding optimal solutions, demonstrating that entertainment measures can be applied and solved effectively in a realistic context and comparing the hardness of optimising different entertainment measures on various voting formats. We also identify cases where instances are degenerate, meaning that all solutions according to a given measure have the same score.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Computer Science & Informatics
Publisher:	Springer
ISSN:	0254-5330
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	13 July 2026
Date of Acceptance:	18 June 2026
Last Modified:	02 Sep 2026 10:18
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/188179

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