<p>It occurred to me that creating a contest, where (1) a statistical challenge or problem was completely defined, (2) judging criteria were unambiguously defined in terms of the winning answer, and (3) contest rules like "ending date," "no clear winner," etc. were unambiguously articulated might be a Good Idea.</p>

<p>I felt that such a contest could be a fun way to publicly express different approaches to solving problems in statistics, with the added advantage of identifying promising "best practices"—at least within the constraints of the contest rules. Something along the lines of <a href="https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/">Code Golf</a>, but delimited by statistical interests and approaches.</p>

<p>I note that <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/114610/what-is-the-relationship-between-y-and-x-in-this-plot">highly regarded questions and answers may present a statistical challenge</a>, and wonder if we might add a <code>[contest]</code> or some similar tag, along with appropriate desiderata for posing such a contest.</p>

<p>I feel that the <code>[puzzle]</code> tag is getting at a different motivation, because it implies the OP knows the answer, whereas what I envision as the use for a <code>[contest]</code> tag implies the OP as criteria for judging a best of acceptable answers within a time frame, but does not know the winning answer <em>a priori</em>... indeed is hoping to see creative, possibly unorthodox, and certainly non-canonical answers. </p>
