Okay, I just wrote this ridiculously long answer to my own question. I certainly hope this gets at least 3 votes. ._.

The "Everybody Gets a Hat" hat will be much harder to get on many sites this year, because there aren't so many cheap hats that you can get easily on just about any site by just visiting at a particular time or something.

Seems like there's no tumbleweed hat this year

@Mariano and that I'm not too disappointed about. that was one of the harder ones.

@David well, I spent some time yesterday chasing for tumbleweeds, and already got 2 accepted and upvoted. So I guess I'm not so happy about it :-\

@Mariano I too looked for prospective tumbleweeds, but I have yet to answer any of them.

@David There's no hat, at least not with 1 upvote. Proof: es.stackoverflow.com/a/124698/127 and es.stackoverflow.com/a/124708/127

@Mariano I don't' doubt you.

they did change thing a bit this year, everything is easier. I guess that is to cut down on the "hyper hat activity"

@David and so I've seen. But I'm still hoping there are some secret hats difficult to get. However, this year the regular hats may be harder on smaller sites

@Mariano VERY HARD great question is nearly impossible on many sites (like BSE) even getting 7 votes is going to be very hard for me.

@David Indeed, same thing applies to Stack Overflow en español. As well as fashionable (9k views), Silencium or Waffles

There are only 84 questions with -3 or less

@Mariano out of the hard to get hats list the aviator's waffles is the easiest.

@Mariano and I know from experience that finding one that has even a remote chance to go to +3 is nay impossible.

@David I'll give it a try, but I'm pretty sure it's a lost cause

@Mariano this is mine, answer got up to 5 (that is a surprise) but the question is still at only +1

You're quite close to getting the hat

2 votes :/

@alecxe its always nice to get a HNQ during the bash. They're good for a hat or so.

@David :) Long time no see

you too. it's been a year. hos is everything going?

Nice work with the hats today! 23 wow.

Winter bash going good so far, I see you are close to the "Waffles" - that's a tough one..

@alecxe no kidding. but not the hardest.

now just one more question upvote and it's yours :p

thanks ;)

which one would you consider the hardest so far?

on a small site, Universe Brain and Fashionable, just not going to happen.

after that Silencium

then waffles

yeah, Fashionable needs the HNQs..

@alecxe indeed.

you have any thoughts on the chicken saga?

@Mithrandir that's a book. UVed well done.

actually just catching up with it..was all into hats :)

thanks!

@alecxe you know me, I'm all about the WB. but not hitting it quite as fast as you, I still got nearly 3 weeks.

right, we have a lot of time to get them all :) And I also remember that "Ye Olde Hat Shoppe" last year's chat room, that was a year ago..time flies..

but it's nice to see last year's company on the leaderboard..I guess we are more prepared this year

@alecxe yeh, many of the same avatars are back on the top.

its fun

@alecxe I still remember "David's hat store" that was from the 2015 WB

ah right-right, that was a fun time

a lot less activity this year, both in this room and on meta.

I'm guessing that it will pick up next week.

noticeably less people active about WB this year..will get better I hope

may be it was a bit less advertised and talked about beforehand..

@alecxe not sure. my theory is that starting 6 days earlier this year changed the usage, many more people next week.

good theory, that's probably it, we'll see

okay, nice talking to you and hope for a good and fun WB, ttyl

@alecxe U 2 :)

TTFN

Are there very few secret hats this year, or just that they are yet to be discovered owing to lesser participation?

@CinCout I suspect its a bit of both, or really obscure triggers?

Why is this room too on the main domain rather than on meta?

@David No no. There are fewer harder hats, but also fewer easy hats. There aren't five free hats for just visiting a site at a specific date.

Last year, "I Am Your Father", "Mmmm Bacon", "Bûche de Noël", "Epiphany", "I Have A Little Dreidel", "Amped Up", "Where in the World" and "First Responder" were all very easy hats that don't seem to have a non-secret equivalent this year. (There might still turn out to be some date-related secret hats.) We still have the equivalent of "Just Here for the Hat", "The Hatter", "Like Clockwork" and "Search You Must". Hmm, I guess I'm wrong, we still have some easy hats.

Now excuse me, I have to go to every SE site and do a search.

Area 51 doesn't seem to have the hat rack in my user page. :-(

I think A51 is on a different codebase from... everything

@b_jonas yep all around a bit different this year.

@David 22,000+ characters. :O

wow

Those footnotes were hard :p

my longest only has ~10000

Each one looked something like this:

<sup>[\[1\]](http://www.sacred-texts.com/pac/om/om07.htm)</sup>

But it took a while to figure out that I needed to escape things.

so you wanted the brackets in the text?

Yes.

Next task: rollover text :P

@Mithrandir that is actually do able.

Yep, I was just writing at 2AM and I still have stuff to add at some point. If the character limit lets me I'll get around to it

there is this great little trick, where you use a bad image link, put the display text as the image alt, the then use the tool tip text for the hover. it looks like this ![display text](https://whateverdoman.youwant "tool tip text")

And if you remove the !, that will just be a link with rollover text?

yes, but then it changes color.

do you guys know if the Sherlock hat could be awarded if I answer a question I posted before Winter Bash?

@eLRuLL just a sec

@eLRuLL no, for that one you need to post both the Q and A during the bash.

yeah looks like it :/

\o/ 10 hats! 1 away from another 2; try and work that out while drunk :P

@cairdcoinheringaahing not hard. you are one up vote away from IDENTIFICATION DIVISION and Galaxy Brain

or something like that

Is this meant for gathering ideas for more secret hats? ;-)

@David I need one vote on this to get the nice answer hat :P

Otherwise I have to get 6 comments upvoted :/

@Panda no. that is just the annual fun contest for some swag.

Oh, I see lol

;)

Man, the crowds are rough this year. I waited until I had a real question and then asked it at 7:00 somewhere, twice. First one was a non-obvious dupe and the second has a favorite but still no upvote. Harsh!

Yes! Got the Universe Brain! That bounty paid off!

Hat submission rates are really going up today. It's nice to see the creativity.

@HDE226868 It does help that this is the first day that Fascinator can be earned

@cairdcoinheringaahing Oh, I meant on this meta post, not hats in general.