π is hiding between two well-chosen dates. Here's the trick.
Pi Season is bracketed by two famous π approximations — one below the true value, one above:
| Date | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| March 14 | 3.14 | π rounded down to 2 dp |
| July 22 | 22 ⁄ 7 = 3.142857142857… | the classical fraction, π from above |
Since 3.14 < π < 22⁄7, a straight line between these two points must cross π exactly once on the way up.
At any UTC instant t between the two dates, the formula is just linear interpolation:
where t is the fraction of the way from March 14 00:00 UTC to July 22 00:00 UTC. t = 0 puts you on 3.14; t = 1 puts you on 22⁄7.
Setting piValue = π and rearranging:
So the Pi Moment is about 55.74% of the way through Pi Season. The full interval is 130 days = 11,232,000,000 ms.
Multiplying out gives 72 days, 11 hours, 10 minutes and ~38 seconds past midnight UTC on March 14 — which lands on:
The score is the number of decimal places where your piValue matches the true π. Each tenfold improvement in your timing buys one more matched decimal:
| How close | |value − π| | Matched dp |
|---|---|---|
| ~4 days off | ~10⁻⁴ | 4 |
| ~10 hours off | ~10⁻⁵ | 5 |
| ~1 hour off | ~10⁻⁶ | 6 |
| ~6 minutes off | ~10⁻⁷ | 7 |
| ~30 seconds off | ~10⁻⁸ | 8 |
| ~3 seconds off | ~10⁻⁹ | 9 |
With millisecond-resolution timing the theoretical ceiling is around 12 matched decimal places. The green digits are what you got right; the red digits are where your value diverged from π. Example for a shot fired about 30 seconds before the Pi Moment: