Did the math, indeed the board is not so bad, but only if you use the 700 coupons option, otherwise its worthless, so its NOT a f2p event (unless you go broke on coupons).
Nothing wrong with your calculations on guy's tortoise, the amount of ingots is absurd.
As for the cat quiizz, yea its hard and the prize is not better tha 9 tails. But its fun, even with a dying server like mine, so in new servers it must be quite nice. I think we can afford having only 4 9 tails in a week and have this on thursdays instead. The time is the same as 9 tails and it doesnt have great rewards so pointless to complain about timing and such.
Stil waiting to see how the weekend events will work out. But overall its looking like a good week,