Because of the various end-game scoring categories and their connection to popularity, it’s difficult for players to determine who is in the lead (this is intentional). However, it is possible for a player to interrupt the game to calculate the final score for each player as they plan out their next few moves. That’s not fun for anyone. The Delay of Game variant says that if a player delays the game (while the game is being played, not during end-game scoring) for more than 10 seconds by trying to calculate the final score, they lose 2 popularity.