![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoyUPDATE: I totally forgot to include the episode with the honey! I'll go add that in now... OK, did so, in the new section "Wherein Andy steals a Bible".
UPDATE #2: Fixed as per Marc's comment, also, added in the conclusion of the seatbelt thing (at the very end of the entry).
Why lacking in detailed stats? Because Mr. Sayres has all our scoresheets. When I get those, I can give you some really detailed statistics; in the meantime you'll have to be content with what's available from the NAQT website.
Rankings after the 10 main rounds
(We're 36th, 6-4 with 1166.23 PP20H)
Team detail on us
Individual rankings
(I'm 30th with 41.35 PP20H, Ben is 117th with 21.27, Marc is 399th with 19.30, Bernadette is 410th with 9.20, Emi is 415th with 7.58, Noam is 418th with 6.19, Bonnie is 441st with 1.33, and Andy is 472nd with 0.00).
Yes, we really did go with 8 people on our team. And no, I didn't take down many quotes, not having with me much of the time paper that would be kept. And whoops, it appears I've lost my quote sheet. Ech. Oh well.
OK. Now let's begin chronological order...
Friday, Newark:
When I get there everyone is already there except Bonnie, Bernadette, Marc, and Ms. Tyburczy. Actually, it turns out Bonnie and Bernadette were there long before everyone else and nearly get us from behind. While Mr. Sayres stands outside to wait for Marc and Tyburczy, Andy (I think it was him) refers to Tyburczy as "Tizzle-Bizzle" and, scarily enough, the name sticks. (Needless to say, Andy spent quite a lot of time imitating Joe Gregg.) Tyburczy arrives, and then Marc finally does.
Our flight was delayed about an hour.
Along with the usual games and books, I also brought along the New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge, more for good luck than anything else. Still, it gets passed around and people read aloud random stuff from it.
On the plane, I say to Mr. Sayres how weird it is that airplane seatbelts work the reverse way of car seatbelts, and how about the first time I was on an airplane, I spent awhile trying to pull the wrong end. He doesn't find it particularly weird.
Friday, Chicago:
Having arrived and claimed our luggage, we must now find the bus to the hotel. ...yeah, OK, there really isn't anything of a story there. Except that while waiting for it, someone thinks to abbreviate "Tizzle-Bizzle" to "TB", which quickly becomes "Consumption". The name doesn't stick. The bus arrives, and we get to the hotel, and we find our rooms. Now, we had 5 boys, and all in the same room, so we had asked the hotel for a cot. Unfortunately, none were left. Mr. Sayres initially suggested it as a joke, but in fact we ended up taking the little benches from all 3 other rooms and combining it with the one from our own to make a makeshift bed (which took up much of the entranceway), and got sheets and a pillow from the front desk. Yay.
Then, of course, we came back down to register (actually, this would probably be before we made the extra bed). While there, we found a person with a video camera recording footage for, crazily enough, a documentary about NAQT. Of course everyone else made a point of presenting me as the person from Spellbound. So we talked to him for a bit. Someone mentioned to him Noam's idea that we should all wear suits when we play. (He had actually gotten everyone except me and Marc to bring suits along.) "Don't do that, that really annoys everyone," he said.
Oh, also, we met Ken Jennings. We ran into the NAQT president when we arrived, who told us that he was downstairs in the room "Love", signing autographs and all, or as he said it, "the Love room" - quickly renamed by us to "the Lovenasium". We didn't actually go down for a while, after we were settled in and registered, and by that time he wasn't there, but still we found him downstairs. Apparently he's their literature editor. So some of us got his autograph, and took pictures with him and all. Yay.
Then, I don't know, other stuff happened in some order - we built the bed, we played practice rounds (splitting into 2 teams, of course) and learned that here it was played timed, and we ordered pizza and we ate and I refused to take a shower and eventually we went to bed.
While I was refusing to take a shower, the others, of course, said they were going to force me to, which eventually led to
Andy: I'm going to give you a spongebath. Not even with a sponge. Probably with my scrotum.
For quite a while after the lights were turned off, you could hear Andy threatening to give Noam a spongebath, and Noam threatening to rip off Andy's sponge.
Saturday:
Marc and I get dressed; the rest of the boys get dressed up. Yes, Andy and Ben have gone along with Noam's plan to wear suits. The girls, however, are not wearing suits, so, after we eat, Andy, Ben, and Noam run back and quickly change (Noam having to borrow some spare clothes from Marc, I think, as he hadn't brought anything else.) Going back to chronological order, I still refuse to take a shower, and then Andy threatens me with cologne (of course, he doesn't think of it as threatening...). "OK," I whimper, "I'll take a shower!" But by that point there is no time left, we must go eat. I promise to take a shower that night.
OK. Here's what you've all been waiting for.
The tournament format is revealed in the meeting before, where we find out that our team numbers our not fixed. Each team has been assigned some number, determined pretty much randomly (we are 16), and that, for the first 5 rounds, whenever two teams play, the winning team will take the lower number, and the losing team will get the higher number. After that, just wait for word from them... they'll try to put teams together of pretty much the same record.
Round 1: Vs Drummond A (Team 15). I don't remember much about this round. WIN 265-140. We get their number.
Round 2: Vs Brookwood (Team 11, I think?). Don't remember anything about this one, save that we got our asses handed to us., and that apparently Brookwood is apparently some big magnet school like TJ, located near the CDC. LOSS 65-430.
Round 3: Vs Wayland Academy (Team 10?). This was a close round all the way through - so close that it ended in a 215-215 tie! So, 3-tossup tiebreaker. Ben gets the first 2 and I get the 3rd for a WIN 245-215. I was accused of being a poor sport when, after I found out we won, said "Oh, so we get your number!"
Round 4: Vs State College Area B (Team 3?). Probably the second-most memorable round of the tournament. When we saw the match was in the room "Kennedy", we were all "Chris is with us!", but that didn't help us here. LOSS 100-230. What was so great about this round was the moderator. He asks for our full names, not just first-name last-initial like in the previous round (lots of them do that, that's not the strange part). Marc, spelling out his last name, means to say "Sweet as in sugar, gall as in ironically bitter" but accidentally says "Sweet as in bitter, gall as in ironically bitter." The moderator replies "You get a lot of dates, don't you?" The entire room cracks up.
OK, all the names are down, the round begins... and the moderator goes crazy. I'm not going to try to describe the weird voice he read in or the things he did with his neck, get one of the others to imitate it for you. I will say that whenever anybody buzzed in he would recognize them with "YO!", and that the first question has to do with some French stuff, and when Ben gets it right, he responds with "Oui". I was subbed out at first, I was very nearly laughing out loud when I heard his reading voice. But I'm no good at describing things like that, so, like I said, get someone else to imitate it.
This was also one of the two games where I sat out a round; don't remember what the other was.
Round 5: Vs Grosse Point North. (Team 26) Don't remember anything about this one either, just that after we lost it, Mr. Sayres pointed out that we could only lose one more. LOSS 105-260.
Then lunch. Following a sheet given out of nearby dining options, we marched under the hot sun to find a deli, a steakhouse, and some other place to eat - all closed. Not wanting to go any further, we headed back and just ate at the hotel, which we had wanted to avoid because the food there was expensive. Oh well.
Round 6: Vs Firestone. No more number-swapping! Of course, I didn't realize it at the time, and checked for it at the end; in fact, the higher number won, so no numbers were swapped anyway. The higher numbered team in this case was us, I think they were team 44? WIN 175-105. This was also the first game where we used a timeout; Mr. Sayres called it. We didn't swap anybody; Mr. Sayres just wanted to turn on more lights.
Round 7: Vs Royal Oak Kimball. This was the round where Ben sat out at first; we found ourselves losing and needing him so we used a timeout to pull him in near the end of the first half. Apparently, it worked. WIN 235-175. Originally we (i.e. someone) had planned to use all 8 players this round, swapping the entire team at the half, but clearly we didn't end up using that.
Round 8: Vs Wausau West. The most amazing round. As a nice coincidence, Andy took an audio recording of this round, or at least most of it. First of all, our moderator was Ken Jennings. But the really amazing part is the end of the round.
So. It's the second half, with about 40 seconds left, and we're 55 points behind. Mr. Sayres calls a timeout, just to tell us, that if we want to win this (and if we lose this we have to win both the next two), we have to speed through so we can get a second tossup. Well, I answer the question quickly - I forget what it was, now for the bonus. Ben (our captain)[3] immediately guesses "Byzantine Empire" on the first part, he's right, interrupts the second part of the bonus to answer it, gets it right, and immediately passes on the third part (nobody knew it immediately). So we're down 25 points with not much time left. Ben is kind of not listening to the question, then, with 2 seconds left, he hears the city of Lübeck mentioned, he buzzes in and says "The Hanse" (pronounced "Hans", with a soft 's'). -5; the answer is "Hansa" or "The Hanseatic League". Ben is certain that he's right, however, and we protest. While waiting for the result, Ken Jennings figures he may as well give us the bonus, and if we don't get 20 points on it, we'll have lost regardless. We mess up the first part (saying "Hamilton" instead of "Hamiltonian", as I was the only one who knew it, and I knew it from the clue that its named for the discoverer of quaternions and so had forgotten that they wanted the operator, not the person), but get the remaining two. So if Ben's right, we win by 5; otherwise, we lose by 30.
Well, the result comes back, none of the people there had ever heard of Hansa without the final 'uh'. "We lost by an 'uh'," Noam complained. But Ben is certain he's right, so he gets Mr. Sayres to go with Ken Jennings to the people to get them to look it up. After quite a while, he comes back. It turns out that "The Hanse" is, in fact, the German name for it... but it's not pronounced as Ben had. But, that *is* an acceptable mispronunciation, so Ben is right, and we win by 5. By this time the other team had already left; when they found out, I'm told, their coach was pissed. Round 9 was delayed quite a bit while the pairings were redetermined.
Round 9: Vs DuPont Manual A. IIRC at the half we were behind 115-150, but the result was a LOSS 165-335. They really turned on in the second half. This one was in one of the hotel rooms, so while we waited for the next round's pairings to be announced, we watched TV! (OK, we have to win the last round now...)
Round 10: Vs Charlottesville. Have to win this one... and we do. WIN 300-190.
I don't remember which round this was in, actually I think it was in one of the practice rounds the day before, but a great neg by Noam: He answered "double helix", the answer was "Space Needle".
So that night we played a big game of Cranium, which Bonnie had brought along. My teammate was Marc. At one point I had to draw "static cling". So I drew a sock, then I drew a shirt to the right of it (which, strangely, was just a bit smaller than the sock), and then I drew some horizontal lines between them. Marc got it immediately, and the others had no idea how. One of them said he could understand if Marc could get static electricity, but static *cling*? Marc thought it was pretty clear, as, of course, did I. :) Later, though, Mr. Sayres came in, and they showed it to him, and asked what he thought it was a drawing of. "JT?"
So, Sunday. Today everyone except Marc and me actually *did* wear suits. As it turned out, my remaining shirt was black, so it looked sort of like I was actually going along with them. :-/ Had I known they would do this, I would have made a point to wear it the day before...
Anyway, time for the playoffs! Alright, there's no stats up on these, so I have to go from memory, which isn't much.
Round 11: Vs DuPont Manual A. Same guys we played in Round 9. And again we got our clock cleaned, don't remember how badly. Oh, at one point the answer was "the binding of Isaac", and I buzzed in with "the Akedah", which wasn't listed there - but while, at first, just to be sure, he counted it as a neg and continued with the question, after the tossup was over, he knew it, he gave it to us, we didn't have to do a protest. Also, this team (unless it was the team from next round?) got a ridiculous power on "Gideon", after just "He chose his army from those who drank from a stream-". Anyway, we lost. One more loss and we're out...
Oh, also, the documentary guy was filming this round.
Round 12: Vs I don't remember who. They also beat us pretty badly. We're eliminated. I suppose you could say we came in 36th. The moderator in this round was very strict on how quickly you could answer. I negged on photoelectric effect, when I paused too long before answering it - actually I had forgotten the name for it, so it's somewhat justified, but he called that I was stalling just when I remembered it. I realized in the question they were talking about light, electricity, and metal pretty much immediately, and the other team didn't get it until the question was pretty much finished.
Afterwards, we met the documentary guy again and talked to him a bit more.
So we're cleaning up and packing so we can check out, and of course the others set to stealing what they can - soap and shampoo and whatnot. And Andy steals the Gideon Bible in the drawer. ....yeah. Also, at breakfast, I don't remember which day, someone picked up two things of honey that were never used, and Andy proposed to Noam that they each drink one. Or maybe Noam suggested it. I don't remember. Well, Andy starts drinking his while Noam just pretends to, but something goes wrong and before long Andy is in the bathroom and we hear him shout "HONEY IN MY NOSE! HONEY IN MY MOTHERFUCKING NOSE!" He never finished the rest of it, needless to say.
So, having much time to kill before our flight, we played another game of Cranium. This time Marc immediately got my "Old Faithful" charade (which consisted of just imitating a geyser), and also my "ants in the pants" charade (which consisted of my holding the top of my pants and hopping around nervously). Wow. He did not, however, get my "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" charade, which consisted mostly of me blowing what was supposed to be fire (i.e. my hands) out of my mouth, and then hiding behind a chair. Then we played some games of Mafia, and I unsuccessfully tried to convince the others we shouldn't have a Nurse.
At 15:30 we left for the airport. For some reason, the bus driver refused to let people on the bus before exactly 15:30. Whatever. We get our tickets, which all say to go to gate K13, except Ben's, which says K17. Mr. Sayres goes to find out what's going on and it turns out Ben's ticket is right. The plane is scheduled to leave about 17:30, I think. Well, we're killing time playing Mafia and all seems well, and just as the plane's arrival time is approaching, we find out that the plane still hasn't left Detroit. Expected time we can be out of here is now about 19:30. Niceness. Well, we're killing time playing Hearts and all seems well, Marc and I even go to the McDonald's to get some food as it'll be really late by the time we get home, and then we find out the plane *still* hasn't left Detroit (there's some weather problems, apparently), and it won't leave there till about 22:00. So we can be out of here by about 23:00? (Kind of irrelevantly, sometime around 20:00 they decide to move the flight to gate K13. :P ) Well at last the plane arrives, it's about 23:00, they call for us to board, it sounds like - but sorry, no, we can't actually board yet. They don't yet have the crew. So they assemble the crew but no, we still can't board, because the flight attendants are missing. So after quite a while of looking for the flight attendants, they finally decide to stop looking and wait another 20 minutes for another flight to come in so they can use its flight attendants. We finally leave at about 00:00, arriving home at about 2:15. I get to bed at about 3:30. Naturally, I didn't go to school today.
Oh, and, on the flight back, when the fasten seatbelt light was turned on, I noticed (and of course pointed out to Mr. Sayres) that the fasten seatbelt light shows the seatbelt being fastened like a *car* seatbelt, rather than like an *airplane* seatbelt, and thus probably leads to a bunch of people taking quite a while to fasten their seatbelts. Mr. Sayres didn't care. :P
-Sniffnoy
[3]Ben was always captain except when he wasn't in. This was decided sometime right towards the beginning, and definitely turned out to be a good idea.
UPDATE #2: Fixed as per Marc's comment, also, added in the conclusion of the seatbelt thing (at the very end of the entry).
Why lacking in detailed stats? Because Mr. Sayres has all our scoresheets. When I get those, I can give you some really detailed statistics; in the meantime you'll have to be content with what's available from the NAQT website.
Rankings after the 10 main rounds
(We're 36th, 6-4 with 1166.23 PP20H)
Team detail on us
Individual rankings
(I'm 30th with 41.35 PP20H, Ben is 117th with 21.27, Marc is 399th with 19.30, Bernadette is 410th with 9.20, Emi is 415th with 7.58, Noam is 418th with 6.19, Bonnie is 441st with 1.33, and Andy is 472nd with 0.00).
Yes, we really did go with 8 people on our team. And no, I didn't take down many quotes, not having with me much of the time paper that would be kept. And whoops, it appears I've lost my quote sheet. Ech. Oh well.
OK. Now let's begin chronological order...
Friday, Newark:
When I get there everyone is already there except Bonnie, Bernadette, Marc, and Ms. Tyburczy. Actually, it turns out Bonnie and Bernadette were there long before everyone else and nearly get us from behind. While Mr. Sayres stands outside to wait for Marc and Tyburczy, Andy (I think it was him) refers to Tyburczy as "Tizzle-Bizzle" and, scarily enough, the name sticks. (Needless to say, Andy spent quite a lot of time imitating Joe Gregg.) Tyburczy arrives, and then Marc finally does.
Our flight was delayed about an hour.
Along with the usual games and books, I also brought along the New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge, more for good luck than anything else. Still, it gets passed around and people read aloud random stuff from it.
On the plane, I say to Mr. Sayres how weird it is that airplane seatbelts work the reverse way of car seatbelts, and how about the first time I was on an airplane, I spent awhile trying to pull the wrong end. He doesn't find it particularly weird.
Friday, Chicago:
Having arrived and claimed our luggage, we must now find the bus to the hotel. ...yeah, OK, there really isn't anything of a story there. Except that while waiting for it, someone thinks to abbreviate "Tizzle-Bizzle" to "TB", which quickly becomes "Consumption". The name doesn't stick. The bus arrives, and we get to the hotel, and we find our rooms. Now, we had 5 boys, and all in the same room, so we had asked the hotel for a cot. Unfortunately, none were left. Mr. Sayres initially suggested it as a joke, but in fact we ended up taking the little benches from all 3 other rooms and combining it with the one from our own to make a makeshift bed (which took up much of the entranceway), and got sheets and a pillow from the front desk. Yay.
Then, of course, we came back down to register (actually, this would probably be before we made the extra bed). While there, we found a person with a video camera recording footage for, crazily enough, a documentary about NAQT. Of course everyone else made a point of presenting me as the person from Spellbound. So we talked to him for a bit. Someone mentioned to him Noam's idea that we should all wear suits when we play. (He had actually gotten everyone except me and Marc to bring suits along.) "Don't do that, that really annoys everyone," he said.
Oh, also, we met Ken Jennings. We ran into the NAQT president when we arrived, who told us that he was downstairs in the room "Love", signing autographs and all, or as he said it, "the Love room" - quickly renamed by us to "the Lovenasium". We didn't actually go down for a while, after we were settled in and registered, and by that time he wasn't there, but still we found him downstairs. Apparently he's their literature editor. So some of us got his autograph, and took pictures with him and all. Yay.
Then, I don't know, other stuff happened in some order - we built the bed, we played practice rounds (splitting into 2 teams, of course) and learned that here it was played timed, and we ordered pizza and we ate and I refused to take a shower and eventually we went to bed.
While I was refusing to take a shower, the others, of course, said they were going to force me to, which eventually led to
Andy: I'm going to give you a spongebath. Not even with a sponge. Probably with my scrotum.
For quite a while after the lights were turned off, you could hear Andy threatening to give Noam a spongebath, and Noam threatening to rip off Andy's sponge.
Saturday:
Marc and I get dressed; the rest of the boys get dressed up. Yes, Andy and Ben have gone along with Noam's plan to wear suits. The girls, however, are not wearing suits, so, after we eat, Andy, Ben, and Noam run back and quickly change (Noam having to borrow some spare clothes from Marc, I think, as he hadn't brought anything else.) Going back to chronological order, I still refuse to take a shower, and then Andy threatens me with cologne (of course, he doesn't think of it as threatening...). "OK," I whimper, "I'll take a shower!" But by that point there is no time left, we must go eat. I promise to take a shower that night.
OK. Here's what you've all been waiting for.
The tournament format is revealed in the meeting before, where we find out that our team numbers our not fixed. Each team has been assigned some number, determined pretty much randomly (we are 16), and that, for the first 5 rounds, whenever two teams play, the winning team will take the lower number, and the losing team will get the higher number. After that, just wait for word from them... they'll try to put teams together of pretty much the same record.
Round 1: Vs Drummond A (Team 15). I don't remember much about this round. WIN 265-140. We get their number.
Round 2: Vs Brookwood (Team 11, I think?). Don't remember anything about this one, save that we got our asses handed to us., and that apparently Brookwood is apparently some big magnet school like TJ, located near the CDC. LOSS 65-430.
Round 3: Vs Wayland Academy (Team 10?). This was a close round all the way through - so close that it ended in a 215-215 tie! So, 3-tossup tiebreaker. Ben gets the first 2 and I get the 3rd for a WIN 245-215. I was accused of being a poor sport when, after I found out we won, said "Oh, so we get your number!"
Round 4: Vs State College Area B (Team 3?). Probably the second-most memorable round of the tournament. When we saw the match was in the room "Kennedy", we were all "Chris is with us!", but that didn't help us here. LOSS 100-230. What was so great about this round was the moderator. He asks for our full names, not just first-name last-initial like in the previous round (lots of them do that, that's not the strange part). Marc, spelling out his last name, means to say "Sweet as in sugar, gall as in ironically bitter" but accidentally says "Sweet as in bitter, gall as in ironically bitter." The moderator replies "You get a lot of dates, don't you?" The entire room cracks up.
OK, all the names are down, the round begins... and the moderator goes crazy. I'm not going to try to describe the weird voice he read in or the things he did with his neck, get one of the others to imitate it for you. I will say that whenever anybody buzzed in he would recognize them with "YO!", and that the first question has to do with some French stuff, and when Ben gets it right, he responds with "Oui". I was subbed out at first, I was very nearly laughing out loud when I heard his reading voice. But I'm no good at describing things like that, so, like I said, get someone else to imitate it.
This was also one of the two games where I sat out a round; don't remember what the other was.
Round 5: Vs Grosse Point North. (Team 26) Don't remember anything about this one either, just that after we lost it, Mr. Sayres pointed out that we could only lose one more. LOSS 105-260.
Then lunch. Following a sheet given out of nearby dining options, we marched under the hot sun to find a deli, a steakhouse, and some other place to eat - all closed. Not wanting to go any further, we headed back and just ate at the hotel, which we had wanted to avoid because the food there was expensive. Oh well.
Round 6: Vs Firestone. No more number-swapping! Of course, I didn't realize it at the time, and checked for it at the end; in fact, the higher number won, so no numbers were swapped anyway. The higher numbered team in this case was us, I think they were team 44? WIN 175-105. This was also the first game where we used a timeout; Mr. Sayres called it. We didn't swap anybody; Mr. Sayres just wanted to turn on more lights.
Round 7: Vs Royal Oak Kimball. This was the round where Ben sat out at first; we found ourselves losing and needing him so we used a timeout to pull him in near the end of the first half. Apparently, it worked. WIN 235-175. Originally we (i.e. someone) had planned to use all 8 players this round, swapping the entire team at the half, but clearly we didn't end up using that.
Round 8: Vs Wausau West. The most amazing round. As a nice coincidence, Andy took an audio recording of this round, or at least most of it. First of all, our moderator was Ken Jennings. But the really amazing part is the end of the round.
So. It's the second half, with about 40 seconds left, and we're 55 points behind. Mr. Sayres calls a timeout, just to tell us, that if we want to win this (and if we lose this we have to win both the next two), we have to speed through so we can get a second tossup. Well, I answer the question quickly - I forget what it was, now for the bonus. Ben (our captain)[3] immediately guesses "Byzantine Empire" on the first part, he's right, interrupts the second part of the bonus to answer it, gets it right, and immediately passes on the third part (nobody knew it immediately). So we're down 25 points with not much time left. Ben is kind of not listening to the question, then, with 2 seconds left, he hears the city of Lübeck mentioned, he buzzes in and says "The Hanse" (pronounced "Hans", with a soft 's'). -5; the answer is "Hansa" or "The Hanseatic League". Ben is certain that he's right, however, and we protest. While waiting for the result, Ken Jennings figures he may as well give us the bonus, and if we don't get 20 points on it, we'll have lost regardless. We mess up the first part (saying "Hamilton" instead of "Hamiltonian", as I was the only one who knew it, and I knew it from the clue that its named for the discoverer of quaternions and so had forgotten that they wanted the operator, not the person), but get the remaining two. So if Ben's right, we win by 5; otherwise, we lose by 30.
Well, the result comes back, none of the people there had ever heard of Hansa without the final 'uh'. "We lost by an 'uh'," Noam complained. But Ben is certain he's right, so he gets Mr. Sayres to go with Ken Jennings to the people to get them to look it up. After quite a while, he comes back. It turns out that "The Hanse" is, in fact, the German name for it... but it's not pronounced as Ben had. But, that *is* an acceptable mispronunciation, so Ben is right, and we win by 5. By this time the other team had already left; when they found out, I'm told, their coach was pissed. Round 9 was delayed quite a bit while the pairings were redetermined.
Round 9: Vs DuPont Manual A. IIRC at the half we were behind 115-150, but the result was a LOSS 165-335. They really turned on in the second half. This one was in one of the hotel rooms, so while we waited for the next round's pairings to be announced, we watched TV! (OK, we have to win the last round now...)
Round 10: Vs Charlottesville. Have to win this one... and we do. WIN 300-190.
I don't remember which round this was in, actually I think it was in one of the practice rounds the day before, but a great neg by Noam: He answered "double helix", the answer was "Space Needle".
So that night we played a big game of Cranium, which Bonnie had brought along. My teammate was Marc. At one point I had to draw "static cling". So I drew a sock, then I drew a shirt to the right of it (which, strangely, was just a bit smaller than the sock), and then I drew some horizontal lines between them. Marc got it immediately, and the others had no idea how. One of them said he could understand if Marc could get static electricity, but static *cling*? Marc thought it was pretty clear, as, of course, did I. :) Later, though, Mr. Sayres came in, and they showed it to him, and asked what he thought it was a drawing of. "JT?"
So, Sunday. Today everyone except Marc and me actually *did* wear suits. As it turned out, my remaining shirt was black, so it looked sort of like I was actually going along with them. :-/ Had I known they would do this, I would have made a point to wear it the day before...
Anyway, time for the playoffs! Alright, there's no stats up on these, so I have to go from memory, which isn't much.
Round 11: Vs DuPont Manual A. Same guys we played in Round 9. And again we got our clock cleaned, don't remember how badly. Oh, at one point the answer was "the binding of Isaac", and I buzzed in with "the Akedah", which wasn't listed there - but while, at first, just to be sure, he counted it as a neg and continued with the question, after the tossup was over, he knew it, he gave it to us, we didn't have to do a protest. Also, this team (unless it was the team from next round?) got a ridiculous power on "Gideon", after just "He chose his army from those who drank from a stream-". Anyway, we lost. One more loss and we're out...
Oh, also, the documentary guy was filming this round.
Round 12: Vs I don't remember who. They also beat us pretty badly. We're eliminated. I suppose you could say we came in 36th. The moderator in this round was very strict on how quickly you could answer. I negged on photoelectric effect, when I paused too long before answering it - actually I had forgotten the name for it, so it's somewhat justified, but he called that I was stalling just when I remembered it. I realized in the question they were talking about light, electricity, and metal pretty much immediately, and the other team didn't get it until the question was pretty much finished.
Afterwards, we met the documentary guy again and talked to him a bit more.
So we're cleaning up and packing so we can check out, and of course the others set to stealing what they can - soap and shampoo and whatnot. And Andy steals the Gideon Bible in the drawer. ....yeah. Also, at breakfast, I don't remember which day, someone picked up two things of honey that were never used, and Andy proposed to Noam that they each drink one. Or maybe Noam suggested it. I don't remember. Well, Andy starts drinking his while Noam just pretends to, but something goes wrong and before long Andy is in the bathroom and we hear him shout "HONEY IN MY NOSE! HONEY IN MY MOTHERFUCKING NOSE!" He never finished the rest of it, needless to say.
So, having much time to kill before our flight, we played another game of Cranium. This time Marc immediately got my "Old Faithful" charade (which consisted of just imitating a geyser), and also my "ants in the pants" charade (which consisted of my holding the top of my pants and hopping around nervously). Wow. He did not, however, get my "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" charade, which consisted mostly of me blowing what was supposed to be fire (i.e. my hands) out of my mouth, and then hiding behind a chair. Then we played some games of Mafia, and I unsuccessfully tried to convince the others we shouldn't have a Nurse.
At 15:30 we left for the airport. For some reason, the bus driver refused to let people on the bus before exactly 15:30. Whatever. We get our tickets, which all say to go to gate K13, except Ben's, which says K17. Mr. Sayres goes to find out what's going on and it turns out Ben's ticket is right. The plane is scheduled to leave about 17:30, I think. Well, we're killing time playing Mafia and all seems well, and just as the plane's arrival time is approaching, we find out that the plane still hasn't left Detroit. Expected time we can be out of here is now about 19:30. Niceness. Well, we're killing time playing Hearts and all seems well, Marc and I even go to the McDonald's to get some food as it'll be really late by the time we get home, and then we find out the plane *still* hasn't left Detroit (there's some weather problems, apparently), and it won't leave there till about 22:00. So we can be out of here by about 23:00? (Kind of irrelevantly, sometime around 20:00 they decide to move the flight to gate K13. :P ) Well at last the plane arrives, it's about 23:00, they call for us to board, it sounds like - but sorry, no, we can't actually board yet. They don't yet have the crew. So they assemble the crew but no, we still can't board, because the flight attendants are missing. So after quite a while of looking for the flight attendants, they finally decide to stop looking and wait another 20 minutes for another flight to come in so they can use its flight attendants. We finally leave at about 00:00, arriving home at about 2:15. I get to bed at about 3:30. Naturally, I didn't go to school today.
Oh, and, on the flight back, when the fasten seatbelt light was turned on, I noticed (and of course pointed out to Mr. Sayres) that the fasten seatbelt light shows the seatbelt being fastened like a *car* seatbelt, rather than like an *airplane* seatbelt, and thus probably leads to a bunch of people taking quite a while to fasten their seatbelts. Mr. Sayres didn't care. :P
-Sniffnoy
[3]Ben was always captain except when he wasn't in. This was decided sometime right towards the beginning, and definitely turned out to be a good idea.
