The judges returned at 9 a.m. today to kick off Day Three of the World’s Best judging. They seem upbeat, focused and ready to head into the home stretch. They narrowed the field of 343 overall entries down to 14 by the end of Saturday — and have already taken the survivor pool down to 11 as of 10:15 a.m. EST. Their work is not done once they select their finalist(s), however. Once chosen and agreed on, they will have to select pages for the annual book and then craft their summary statements for each winner.

If you’ve been cruising the streaming web-cam (linked to the right), you’ll notice that this morning’s view is somewhat odd. Don’t worry, the camera is working — in fact we did some testing earlier to improve the feed for the announcements to come Tuesday — but since the judges are actually looking at the final Round Three entries, holding them up, sharing them, discussing with each other and whatnot, we need to avert our eyes until they are done with their deliberations. We’ll adjust the view as soon as we can.

We do expect to be able to relay their final announcements on Tuesday. Watch The Blog for exact details and continued updates.