I assume the ideal time for larger donations is right after 6 and 7pm pst.

There isn't a cap on how much matching funds an individual donation can pick up, right?

There's actually even more to it that didn't occur to me at first glance. Many times a player in second will wager low enough, such that if both they and the person in the lead miss the question, the player in second will win (because the player in first has to wager enough to stay in the lead if they get the question right). But the person in second just watched Chu wager for the tie the day before. If they think Chu will do that again (and why not), then now the correct play is to wager everything for the tie. And now Chu wins if they both get it right (because it's a tie), and he also wins if they both get it wrong.

I rather hope he does do it, though I doubt it will be as much of an ultimatum was TWC was. If it happens, I expect it to take the form of "the climax will be posted when somebody figures it out, or after X months otherwise".

This may not have been put in the most diplomatic way possible, but I think the last sentence has merit. My first reaction upon reading the chapter was "wow, Harry did a masterful job of manipulating the hell out of the Malfoys" (not that the manipulation will be to the Malfoy's detriment, but that's beside the point). Then I find out that people are impressed with the competence of Lucius Malfoy and therefore sexism? I suppose it was good that Lucius wasn't blinded by irrational hatred or greed, but that's an awfully low bar to be setting for characters that impress you. He walked in with one plan that Harry saw through in a second.

I anticipate a few possibly short scenes where Harry does basically the same thing and manipulates Bones and Madam Longbottom into supporting him as well. If this scene is being held as evidence of sexism, the laws of evidence tell me those scenes should be held as evidence against, but somehow I don't see it happening that way.

That said, if other people can see what they're looking for then so can I, but that's my take.

That may be true, but it may not be, and in transfiguration, you may recall, you do not care to guess. Harry will take every possible avenue to reduce the amount of magical omnipotence he needs to revive Hermione, and he has utterly no clue how much damage will be done with a straight transfiguration, and he has nobody to ask. I don't believe for a minute that the best he came up with thinking about it for 5-6 hours was to simply transfigure her into a ring/rock.

You'll have to explain why. It seems to me my theory fits the details just as well and isn't prone to catastrophic failure given a slightly more diligent DD. Even if it is the ring, he still precommits to going back in time to do the swap, just in case DD does turn out to be sufficiently diligent.

There's no way he burns all the time turner uses for the day at once unless there's no other possiblity. He learned in Azkaban that you always leave yourself wiggle room. And entirely aside from that, it's good for 6 uses per day. It's a new day.

Eh, the theories about the ring is the body and the gem is the decoy seem crazily, unnecessarily risky. They rely on Dumbledore doing an insufficient search. It seems like a much more reliable strategy is that as soon as Dumbledore asked to check the ring, he precommitted to going back in time to swap the body-gem for the rock-gem. Then he goes to the bathroom, drops back an hour, transfigures the rock, swaps the gems on sleeping Harry, then goes back to the bathroom for the handoff.

That said, it's been stated that solids undergo internal changes over time, and so a living thing transfigured into a solid and back would die within hours. There's got to be another piece to the puzzle than just Harry transfigured the body. I considered the possibility that Harry transfigured it into something more stable than wizards are used to dealing with, like a single gold atom, but that presents it's own logistical challenges.