For years, the Glimm Memorial operated under a simple legend: The tournament was named for Alma Glimm, the late 11th grade calculus teacher of Glimm Commissioner Josh Kleinbaum. According to the legend, Glimm nearly busted Kleinbaum for gambling in school in 1995. But Josh insisted there was no money involved, so Mrs. Glimm joined the pool — then won the whole damn thing.

In 2011, though, the fable was busted: There was no ‘Alma Glimm.’ Josh’s 11th grade calculus teacher was actually Marion Glim, and she was alive and well. Investigative Reporter and longtime Glimmer Greg Wilson revealed the truth in the Wilson Report, a March 18, 2011 email to all Glimmers laying bare the scandal. Since then, Marion Glim herself has joined the pool (Grandma G), along with much of her family.

But the question remained: If the math teacher was Marion Glim, who was Alma Glimm? Today, thanks to first-time Glimmer but longtime Friend of the Glimm Jeff Eldridge, we have the answer: Alma Glimm was a 16-year-old girl from Freedom, Wisconsin, arrested in 1897 for twice poisoning the family that employed her. From the book Wisconsin Death Trip, written by Michael Lesy and unearthed by Eldridge:

Did Kleinbaum know this back in the late 1990s when he named the Glimm Memorial? Is this entire enterprise a strange tribute to a murderous 19th Century midwestern teenager, and the math teacher ruse just an elaborate cover story? Kleinbaum refused to comment.

As for Eldridge, his investigatory skills proved better than his prognostication skills. In his Friend of the Week bracket, he picked 13 of 16 games correctly, but missed both upsets, which put him at 174th place.

Five Glimmers went a perfect 16 for 16 on the opening day: Sara Frazier, Chris Kern, Francesca Catalano and two brackets from Scott Gregor (Big Puddin and The one where Duke wins).

Games resume at 12:15pm ET today, when Michigan faces off against Oklahoma State (Go Blue!). As always, standings will be updated here throughout the day.

The leaderboard (click here for full standings):

Notre Dame held off an upset attempt by Ivy upstart Princeton. Gonzaga struggled early against 16-seed South Dakota State. Northwestern is preparing for its first-ever tournament game. The madness has begun, which means The Glimm is in full swing.

And we have a record year: 263 total entries. That field includes Q-BALL and Q-Ball. We’ve got expert brackets (A Very Good Bracket, Noreen’s Awesome Picks, Uma WON) and confused brackets (Is This Football?). There’s Big, Big Puddin and bigmama.

Two games in, and 133 of you are undefeated. And one Glimmer lost a Final Four team (Eli Rosenberg, Princeton).

There’s no clear favorite in the tourney field: Villanova, Gonzaga, North Carolina and Duke were all picked to win it all by at least 30 Glimmers.

So enjoy the next three weeks. As always, theglimm.com is your home for all things Glimm – you can see your brackets and others, and check out the latest standings. Enjoy!

The Glimm was still in its infancy in 1993 (not even named the Glimm yet), when an unexpected March blizzard dumped more than a foot of snow on the New York area. Classes at Horace Greeley High School were canceled for several days — making it difficult to collect brackets from other students. On that Thursday morning, with games about to begin, I called classmates so they could dictate their picks, and the pool survived mother nature.

This year, mother nature poses no such threats. Yes, there’s a big March snowstorm, but thanks to modern technology, you can submit your Glimm brackets from the comfort of your warm home. So stop wasting time: Take advantage of this snow day by filling out your bracket.

Before the brackets were even released, Torey Van Oot made a bold statement: She declared that it was her year to win the Glimm. And Torey is at least partially right: It’s March, which means it’s time for the 26th Annual Glimm Memorial NCAA Basketball Pool. But will Torey actually win? It’s up to you, faithful Glimmers, to do your best to prevent that.

That brackets now have been released, which means it’s time to enter the Glimm, the only pool named for Alma Glimm. For $5, the Glimm Memorial guarantees three weeks of entertainment. So click here to submit your bracket now!

More details on The Glimm:

WHAT: The 26th Annual Glimm Memorial NCAA Basketball Tournament

HOW: Go to http://192.168.86.52:2222 and fill out a bracket, then either give me $5 cash, or send me the money via your bank’s online payment system or venmo (username @Josh-Kleinbaum)

HOW MUCH: Five bucks per entry. And yes, you can enter more than once (but no more than five times, thanks to the Nevin Barich rule).

THE PAYOUT: The winner gets 70% of the pot, runner-up 20% and third-place person 10%.  To give some context, last year’s winner Kate Lord took home about $680. There are a few other prizes, too: The Orlov (whoever finishes exactly middle of the pack gets their $5 back, in cash, via snail mail), the Glimm Scholarship (the highest-finishing relative of Mrs. Glimm from the previous year gets a free entry), and the Pity Finisher (the last-place finisher gets his/her $5 back). On top of that, thirty bucks is coming out of the pot to pay for Glimm infrastructure, and I give myself 2 free entries.

SCORING: It’s a 1-2-4-8-12-16 scoring system with upset points. So that means that you get one point for picking a game correctly in the first round, two points in the second round, etc. And we use upset points – any time a lower-seeded team beats a higher-seeded team, you get half the difference between the seeds as bonus points (Note: This is a tweak from many previous years, when you got the full difference between seeds, not half). So if a 15 beats a 2, you get 6.5 bonus points. If a 9 beats an 8, you get half a point. The bottom line: It pays to take risks.

HOW TO PAY: You have 2 options: Give me cash in person, or send $5 via your bank’s online payment system or Venmo (username @Josh-Kleinbaum).

When UNC’s Marcus Paige hit an improbable off-balance 3-pointer with five seconds left in the NCAA championship game, Kate Lord had to be torn. The shot tied the game and kept alive national title hopes for Lord’s beloved Tar Heels. But it hurt Lord’s chances of winning the Glimm Memorial NCAA Tournament Pool.

Lord’s emotional roller coaster continue seconds later, when Villanova’s Kris Jenkins hit a buzzer-beater 3-pointer to win the game. The Tar Heels lost the national championship, but Lord won the Glimm.

The irony: The Glimmer who named all five of her entries for the Tar Heels benefited the most from her team’s crushing loss.

In the first days of this tournament, it seemed unlikely that Lord’s GoHeelsGo2 bracket could win the Glimm. After all, her champion, Michigan State, lost in the first round to Middle Tennessee State in one of the biggest upsets in NCAA tournament history. But Lord thrived everywhere else: Overall, she picked 71% of the games correctly. She got 25.5 upset points, and correctly picked Villanova to reach the championship game and UNC and Oklahoma to reach the Final Four.

Lord finished with 132.5 points, ahead of Adam Rubinfeld (128.5) and Rich Lester (125), who both picked Villanova to win the national title.

And sitting in fourth place, just outside the money, is Mrs. Glim(m). The pool’s namesake made a tremendous run, but fell short when Villanova beat Oklahoma in the semi-final.

The most competitive match of the tournament was determining The Orlov, the prize that goes to the person who finishes in 103rd place, exactly in the middle of the pack. Mike Lazarus, Brent Hopkins and Darren Price all tied for 101st place with 78.5 points – which means the loser of a three-way tiebreak wins The Orlov. And it came down to a single point: Lazarus predicted 137 points in the final game, Hopkins 131 and Price 130. With 151 points actually scored in the game, Price was off by the most, so he wins The Orlov. In memory of Rick Orlov, Price will get his $5 entry fee back, via snail-mail, with a hand-written note of congratulations.

And with that, Glimm XXV is officially done. See you all next year!

UPDATE: A diligent Glimmer, Scott Gregor, noticed a mistake in the scoring: While the first three rounds were scored correctly, there was a mistake in the software for how the fourth round was scored (and subsequent rounds projected). I’ve fixed it, and updated standings/possibilities are now on the site.

What it means: Very little. The current standings are different, but the same four people who were in contention for the Glimm Championship remain in contention. Ten of the 11 people who had a shot at finishing in the money still have a shot at finishing in the money. The only difference: Jen Millman’s Chessmaster 2 bracket, who led for most of the Glimm and could have finished third if Syracuse beat Villanova in the championship game AND she won the tie-break, is officially eliminated from the money. Sorry Jen, and sorry for the confusion!

NEW updated leaderboard (and new updated standings are here):

In case you weren’t sure, let me make it clear: Kate Lord loves the Tar Heels. Her five entries into the Glimm Memorial NCAA Tournament Pool were all named after her alma mater: GoHeelsGo1, GoHeelsGo2, GoHeelsGo3, TAR!, and HEELS! But when she filled out her brackets, Lord didn’t let her emotions get the best of her: She only picked UNC to win the whole thing in two of the five brackets. And those are the worst two of her five.

With just three games remaining in the Glimm, Lord’s GoHeelsGo2 bracket is in first place. But she’s in a delicate position: She must choose between the Tar Heels and the Glimm. If the Tar Heels win the championship, Kate Lord does not win the Glimm. In fact, she can only win if Syracuse or Villanova win the whole thing.

Lord is one of just four Glimmers that still have championship hopes: Kevin Benham, Mrs. Glimm and Nevin Barich are also still alive. Benham or Barich win of UNC wins the championship, and Mrs. Glimm, the pool’s namesake, will win if Oklahoma wins the title.

And what of Chessmaster 2, the Jen Millman bracket that had been leading the Glimm nearly wire-to-wire? Like many Glimmers, the Chessmaster collapsed in spectacular fashion on Saturday when both Kansas and Oregon lost. She has been eliminated from contention for the Glimm title, and is clinging to slim hopes for a third-place finish (Syracuse would have to beat Villanova in the championship game, then she’d have to win a tie-break).

One title has been decided: The Battle for Last Place. When Kansas lost, Jess Glazer clinched that indignity. She picked just 36.7% of the games correctly, to finish with 33.5, 9.5 points behind second-to-last JonesMo1. Jess gets her $5 back, and all of our pity.

The Leaderboard (full standings here):

After three rounds of the NCAA tournament, Jen Millman’s Chessmaster 2 still sits atop the Glimm Memorial NCAA Tournament Pool standings. But a closer look at the leaderboard shows an even more familiar name in the running: Mrs. Glimm herself.

The Grandma G bracket is in 13th place, 14 points behind Millman. But with just seven games remaining in the tournament, Grandma G has a chance: If Oklahoma, UNC and Villanova all win this weekend, then Oklahoma beats UNC in the championship game, Grandma G will win the Glimm for the first time since 1995.

Grandma G, of course, is Alma Glimm, aka Marion Glim, the namesake of the Glimm Memorial NCAA Tourney Pool. Most of you are already familiar with the legend: In 1995, Mrs. Glimm was my 11th grade calculus teacher. As I was passing out brackets for my pool before class one day, she chastised me, saying gambling wasn’t allowed. After I assured her that there was no money involved – a little white lie – she asked if she could play, even though she professed knowing nothing about college basketball. She played, and she won.

Years later, I decided the pool needed a name, and Mrs. Glimm was the perfect person to honor: Her story exemplifies what is great about the NCAA tourney – that anything can happen, and you don’t need to be an expert to win. I fictionalized the story a bit – changing Marion Glim to Alma Glimm – and the pool has been the Glimm Memorial ever since.

Through the magic of the internet, Mrs. Glimm got wind of this pool a few years ago. She told her family about it, and they reached out to me, and some of them joined. Last year, Mrs. Glimm herself joined. And now, once again, she’s in the thick of the race to the pool.

In 1995, because she thought there was no money involved, the first-place prize went to the runner-up.This time, she’s operating under no such illusions: If she wins, the pot is hers. To pull it off, though, she’ll have to leapfrog 12 others, including Millman and Kate Lord, whose GoHeelsGo2 and GoHeelsGo1 brackets sit in second and third place (incidentally, neither of Lord’s GoHeelsGo brackets have the Heels winning it all).

We’re all pulling for you, Mrs. Glimm.

The Leaderboard (full standings here):

Don’t be mistaken: Monique Jones is not doing well in the Glimm Memorial NCAA Tourney Pool. In her JonesMo2 bracket, she missed 15 of the 32 first-round games and 8 of the 16 second-round games. She’s got 39.5 points, good enough for 175th place out of 206.

MacKenzie Hinton, Child Actor

About two months ago, the post appeared on Facebook: MacKenzie Abigail Hinton, daughter of Jen Millman, was born. Over the ensuing weeks, the cute photos followed: MacKenzie with mommy, MacKenzie with daddy, MacKenzie in a bunny suit, even MacKenzie in a Jets sweatshirt.

Now, an exclusive report by the Glimm Investigative Team reveals the truth: MacKenzie is actually a child actor hired by Millman to pose for photos on Facebook, an elaborate cover story to allow Millman to take a ‘maternity leave’ from her job as Managing Editor of NBCNewYork.com so she could spend the last two months preparing for The Glimm.

How else to explain Millman’s stunning run to the top of the Glimm standings? In her Chessmaster 2 bracket, she picked 26 of 32 games correctly in the first round, including upsets by Hawaii, Wichita State, Yale, Northern Iowa, VCU, Stephan F Austin, Arkansas Little Rock, Gonzaga and Syracuse. She has 55 total points – 29 of them on upset points.

She holds a 1.5-point lead over Donald Drumpf (Evan Kwarta), and a 3.5-point lead over Ezra Kleinbaum and defending champ Sophia Ceglinsky.

But Chessmaster 2 and Drumpf are vulnerable: Both picked Michigan State to reach the championship game.

It could be worse: Michigan State’s stunning loss to Middle Tennessee State wrecked many Glimm brackets. The Spartans were the most popular pick to win the whole thing. When they lost, 54 Glimmers (26% of the whole pool) lost their champion.

Games resume at Noon today, so be sure to check theglimm.com to see if Millman can continue her Glimm mastery.

Leaderboard (click here for full standings):