Revised point system has been posted for anyone who wishes to further critique it:
POINT SYSTEM:
Participants will be awarded points based on how well they complete the challenge while observing the various rules. This allows us to enforce the rules rather loosely (since it is hopefully all in fun) while also not ignoring them completely (since some structure is needed). Points will be kept track of and can accumulate over multiple cycles. Awards and penalties are as follows:
+100 points for releasing a module as part of the challenge
+10 points for using one of the proposed themes
+15 points for using at least one theme from each list
+5 points for using 3 or more themes (note this is +5 total for any number of additional themes used, not 5 per theme)
+25 for releasing on time
+25 for respecting CC restrictions
+25 for a submission free of game-breaking bugs
+15 for releasing a submission at least 3 days early
-20 for releasing a submission that is seriously buggy
-1 per day for submitting late
-1 per mebabyte used in excess of the CC limit.
The cycle organizer (me) reserves the right to award further bonuses and penalties beyond those listed here as additional reasons for them occur to him, as well as to generally revise the system in response to feedback from the community.
In the interest of simplicity there is only a single early reward and no direct cancellation of it for buggyness (the buggyness penalty is simply larger).
In reference to other possibly stupid ideas of mine, we might also want to consider if there is a better way to handle the choosing of themes. What I did for this cycle was obviously very ad hoc. Not an urgent matter, since we do not need to worry about it until a future cycle, but something we probably want to give a bit more thought to at some point.