Despite the manifold challenges posed to the participants, there are good reasons to be optimistic. We start with the positive points. In Figs. 10 and 11, a closer look is taken at the four submissions with the lowest RMSD overall (falling below 15 cm -1 ). The differences among these sets are statistically not significant and we see no point in crowning a unique winner. They show how quite different strategies can be across the board successful, with RMSDs reaching close to the 10 cm -1 value. This would be an interesting milestone for the future. If one would have to select winning categories, these would be perhaps the learning strategies (LS) and the anharmonic corrected (AC) submissions. These are the procedures which most strongly focus on the quantity of interest, and inherently carry an advantage for such a specific quantity. Nonetheless, as some results show, this is not at all a guarantee for success.