6. It's better to be loved by few than liked by many. Preferential voting, concedes Davis, makes "for some very complicated tallies." (We haven't even gotten into the scenario in which a film receives considerably more votes than it needs, in which case it secures a nomination and all of its ballots are redistributed into other piles, with the second or third or fourth choices counting as a fraction of a vote.)

In practical terms, the most important wrinkle is that rarely are a member's fourth or fifth choices counted. That means a film with passionate but limited support will often fare better than one that is appreciated but not adored by a larger group of voters: if 80% of voters list a film fourth on the ballot but only 10% of those fourth-places choices are counted, it's probably out of luck.

7. The system can even be used to mess with critics' lists. On Jan. 1, the Movie City News website had collected 130 different top 10 lists from critics and critics' groups around the country, and ranked the listed movies using a traditional weighted system.

Under the MCN system, the top five films were "Brokeback Mountain," "A History of Violence," "Capote," "Good Night, and Good Luck" and "The Squid and the Whale." "King Kong" is a close sixth, followed by "2046," "Crash," "Caché" and "Grizzly Man."

But if those same lists were viewed as if they were Oscar ballots, and each critic's list was tabulated using the preferential system, a different picture emerges. (To do this, we have to eliminate the critics that don't rank their top 10, reducing the number of voters to 107.)

The top three films are the same — and by securing a nomination in the third round of counting, "A History of Violence" cements its position as the overall critics' favorite.

But "The Squid and the Whale," which received two more first-place votes than "Good Night, and Good Luck" and picked up high scores as some of the artier competitors were eliminated, passes the George Clooney film to wind up with the fourth nomination.

And in the fifth slot, "Munich" jumps all the way from 12th in MCN's tabulation, courtesy of a steady stream of top-five votes on ballots whose top picks fall out of the running.

In doing so, it outlasts seven films that scored higher using the weighted system, including "Syriana" (eliminated at the end of the first round, with only a single number-one vote), "Grizzly Man" and "Crash" (both second-round casualties).

There's no telling if this will be good news for "Munich" once the real Oscar ballots are returned — academy voters' lists are not critics' lists, and an entirely different film could end up benefiting from the vagaries of the preferential system. Not that we'll ever really know, given PricewaterhouseCoopers' fabled ability to keep secrets.

8. Don't worry, it gets easier. Once nominations voting is over and you receive your final ballot, you can forget all about the preferential system until next December.

Final Oscar ballots are tallied the old-fashioned way: They count the votes in each category, and the movie with the biggest number takes home the Academy Award.

Until then, though, things are a little trickier. Just remember: It ain't over until the accountants say it's over.