It was bootleg!
Dec. 13th, 2003 07:59 pmWE WON!
More specifically won the Academic Battle at Columbia, better known as that-quizbowl-tournament-at-a-place-which-is-called-Columbia-but-isn't-Columbia-University-but-rather-is-Columbia-High-School-which-is-in-New-Jersey-and-is-famous-for-inventing-Ultimate-Frisbee-and-has-a-really-weird-format.
Unlike Pinyan, I do *not* have a good memory for quotes, so unfortunately I won't be able to give you any. Also note that with my bad memory, I may have gotten rounds mixed up.
OK, our teams. Bergen County A (or "Bergen City A", as it was announced at one point) was me, Stefan (captain), Shu, and Czolacz. Why not James Roan? You'll see. Bergen B was Jacob, Joe Gregg, someone-whose-actual-name-I-forget-but-who-they-always-called-"X", and, uh, somebody else. C was our "sophomore team", which was James's idea - he captained it, of course. It was James, Andrew Chong, and two other sophomores. D was our freshman team, consisting of George, RJ, Caroline, and Molly.
For those of you who don't know it, I'll take a paragraph to explain Columbia's weird format.
Each round has 25 questions, arranged into 5 categories and 5 values (10-50 points), like in Jeopardy, except that Jeopardy has 6 categories. Toin coss[5] picks a team to go first. Teams alternate. On your turn, you pick a question, the entire team has 30 seconds to answer. Get it right, n points (where n is the question's value). Get it wrong, other team gets 10 seconds to answer. Note that when time runs out, time *has run out*; there is no "Answer?" prompt. After 13 questions, the 4 Lightning Round categories are put up on the board. Team with lowest score picks one. Each one has 10 questions, 10 points each. 60 seconds in total; you can pass on a question and get back to it later. Any you get wrong or don't get to, the other team get's a chance to do, in 6n seconds, where 6 is the number of questions they have to answer. If you get all 10, you get a 20 point bonus. Then the other team picks one. Then it goes back to the Jeopardy board, until all 25 questions are answered, at which point team with lowest score picks another Lightning Round category, and then the other team gets the last one. In the final round, it's Bergen Brain Buster style: ie, NAQT-format, but no power or negs, and boni are single-part and only worth 20. 30 questions long, with lightning rounds at the half and and the end, just like in a normal round.
OK, now that that's out of the way...
1st round. Don't really remember this one (or any of the other ones) too well, but we win. We get 0 on the New Testament lightning round, however, being 3 Jews and a Hindu. Right at the beginning, Stefan tells Czolacz to put on his headband. Czolacz says no; the headband is only for when you're behind. Otherwise you're wasting the power of the headband. "It's a get-aheadband, not a stay-aheadband." Shu wears it instead. I call Stefan an idiot when he almost answers "the 28th amendment". We score 350, but it is marked on the scores as 400. We don't complain, but it's later corrected anyway.
2nd round. Mr. Sayres (or "Mr. Juwann", as they[4] call him) moderates. Scares us all by putting up "Pokemon" as one of the categories, quickly replacing it by "Snakes". (A category we did surprisingly well in.) One lightning round is called "ISO"; two-letter country codes are given, what's the country. For "DE", Stefan immediately says "Denmark"! Ag! Whatever. We win again.
3rd round. We completely dominated this round, playing against a C team. We get 730 points this round. There is a lightning round in which a person is named, what sort of money are they on? We later learn that our own D team was disqualified from this Lightning Round when Molly actually pulled out some money and started looking at it. One question asked for the closest galaxy to the Milky Way; Stefan was about to answer Andromeda, when Czolacz and Shu both write down "Alpha Centauri"! He actually started to answer as that, thankfully I corrected him.
Lunch break. We head to Blimpie's, only to find the line incredibly long. That's OK, I brought lunch. Well, it's OK for *me*, anyway. Looking at the scores... we're currently in the top 8, Bergen B is close, D isn't doing all that bad, and C is pretty close to last place. I ask Joe Gregg about the origin of his use of the word "bootleg"[0], and don't get anything approaching an answer. We're probably going to make it to the quarterfinals, unless we screw up horribly. We're playing against another one of the top 8, Millburn, in this round; we want to draw points away from them so B can also make it to the quarterfinals.
4th round. Shu and Joe are missing! When Shu finally turns up, Czolacz goes missing! Thankfully he reappears before we start. A considerably closer match than any of the previous ones, but we win again by a good margin. I correctly answer "The Law of Diminishing Returns" despite not knowing what said law actually is.
Scores are tallied... we're in! And as for B? Tied for 8th place. Tiebreaker time!
Tiebreaker. The tiebreaker consists of a lightning round, which each of the two teams does separately, in different rooms. Bergen B gets 4. Newark Academy gets 6. Only our A team goes on to the quarterfinals...
Quarterfinals. OK, *now* things start getting harder. We're playing Colonia. I really don't remember too much specific from this one. Before it starts, we put our hands in the center and go "Semifinals!". Well, we make it to the semifinals.
Semifinals. Er... who was this against? Don't remember. (Bloomfield A, it seems to be, actually.) Really annoying moderator, though. Refused to use "prompt". One category was "Clerihews"; "What the hell is a clerihew?" everyone wondered. I still don't know. Before it starts, hands in the center... "Finals!" Close match, but we win.
Final round. *Phew*. It's *not* against Pingry[8]. It's against Millburn B. OK. We start out considerably ahead. As was remarked later, their team consisted of essentially 1 person. One tossup had an answer of "podiatry"; I get that one, of course.[3] The lead diminishes, but by the time we get to the final 2 lightning rounds, we're leading by 110 points again. They take the lightning round "Origins": given an author, name his country of origin. They sweep it. 100 points plus 20 point bonus. That puts them, all of a sudden, 10 points *ahead*. OK. One lightning round left. "Natives". Given a clue, what famous Native American are they talking about? We get 5 right. We're 40 points ahead, but now the other team has 5 questions to answer... if they get all 5, we lose, if they get 4, we go to tiebreaker, and if they get 3 or less, we win. They get 3, and we win by 10 points! w00t!
One bonus question from the final round I *do* remember:
(Don't remember the actual *question*)
Me: Geodes?
Stefan: Geodes.
Moderator: That is incorrect, the answer is "inclusions".
?: What's a geode, anyway?
Me: I don't know.
It should be noted that there had been something of a running joke throughout the whole tournament that we were going to haze the freshmen. Eventually this was narrowed down to just RJ and George, and eventually (of course) just to George. There was a point to this paragraph, but I forget what.
OK... in other news... colleges again!
Apparently Dr. Ostfeld and Mr. Holbrook have decided that I'm going end up going to either Columbia, Caltech, or University of Chicago. "Hey, that's neat, I know someone who goes to University of Chicago!" So we're going to go visit there sometime, though I have no clue when. My mom keeps bugging me to ask Ashley how she likes it there (very much like how she kept bugging me to ask Josh how he likes it at Yale). I've always found asking people that sort of thing pretty awkward, but presumably she's going to read this anyway, so I won't have to. :)
Er... that's it for now. Maybe later I'll remember more quizbowl details, and get a copy of the scores. Hey, I have a copy of the scores! The rounds 1-4 scores, that is. Unfortunately I don't remember who we played against. So I'll just give the scores of all the Bergen teams.
And that really *is* it for now (save the footnotes). Go bug somebody else.
-Sniffnoy
[0]OK. This definitely requires some explanation. Joe Gregg probably also uses the word "bootleg" with its normal meaning, but he also uses it to mean absolutely anything else he wants, especially if he simply can't think of the word he's actually looking for. It's just a generic adjective. Usually it's in a sense so that you can get the meaning from context, but it can get pretty ridiculous. As Mr. Sayres was making fun of him on Tuesday, "That chalkboard is bootleg!".
[3]My mom is a podiatrist.
[4]I'm not quite sure just who "they" are, though...
[5]Wow. I did not notice at all that I had made that tyop until I spell-checked this thing.
[8]Strangely enough, it was Pingry *D* that made it to the playoffs. They probably just deliberately named their teams weirdly. (Note that Pingry A did do better than Pingry B, and Pingry B did do better than Pingry C.)
--
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public
office."
-Aesop
More specifically won the Academic Battle at Columbia, better known as that-quizbowl-tournament-at-a-place-which-is-called-Columbia-but-isn't-Columbia-University-but-rather-is-Columbia-High-School-which-is-in-New-Jersey-and-is-famous-for-inventing-Ultimate-Frisbee-and-has-a-really-weird-format.
Unlike Pinyan, I do *not* have a good memory for quotes, so unfortunately I won't be able to give you any. Also note that with my bad memory, I may have gotten rounds mixed up.
OK, our teams. Bergen County A (or "Bergen City A", as it was announced at one point) was me, Stefan (captain), Shu, and Czolacz. Why not James Roan? You'll see. Bergen B was Jacob, Joe Gregg, someone-whose-actual-name-I-forget-but-who-they-always-called-"X", and, uh, somebody else. C was our "sophomore team", which was James's idea - he captained it, of course. It was James, Andrew Chong, and two other sophomores. D was our freshman team, consisting of George, RJ, Caroline, and Molly.
For those of you who don't know it, I'll take a paragraph to explain Columbia's weird format.
Each round has 25 questions, arranged into 5 categories and 5 values (10-50 points), like in Jeopardy, except that Jeopardy has 6 categories. Toin coss[5] picks a team to go first. Teams alternate. On your turn, you pick a question, the entire team has 30 seconds to answer. Get it right, n points (where n is the question's value). Get it wrong, other team gets 10 seconds to answer. Note that when time runs out, time *has run out*; there is no "Answer?" prompt. After 13 questions, the 4 Lightning Round categories are put up on the board. Team with lowest score picks one. Each one has 10 questions, 10 points each. 60 seconds in total; you can pass on a question and get back to it later. Any you get wrong or don't get to, the other team get's a chance to do, in 6n seconds, where 6 is the number of questions they have to answer. If you get all 10, you get a 20 point bonus. Then the other team picks one. Then it goes back to the Jeopardy board, until all 25 questions are answered, at which point team with lowest score picks another Lightning Round category, and then the other team gets the last one. In the final round, it's Bergen Brain Buster style: ie, NAQT-format, but no power or negs, and boni are single-part and only worth 20. 30 questions long, with lightning rounds at the half and and the end, just like in a normal round.
OK, now that that's out of the way...
1st round. Don't really remember this one (or any of the other ones) too well, but we win. We get 0 on the New Testament lightning round, however, being 3 Jews and a Hindu. Right at the beginning, Stefan tells Czolacz to put on his headband. Czolacz says no; the headband is only for when you're behind. Otherwise you're wasting the power of the headband. "It's a get-aheadband, not a stay-aheadband." Shu wears it instead. I call Stefan an idiot when he almost answers "the 28th amendment". We score 350, but it is marked on the scores as 400. We don't complain, but it's later corrected anyway.
2nd round. Mr. Sayres (or "Mr. Juwann", as they[4] call him) moderates. Scares us all by putting up "Pokemon" as one of the categories, quickly replacing it by "Snakes". (A category we did surprisingly well in.) One lightning round is called "ISO"; two-letter country codes are given, what's the country. For "DE", Stefan immediately says "Denmark"! Ag! Whatever. We win again.
3rd round. We completely dominated this round, playing against a C team. We get 730 points this round. There is a lightning round in which a person is named, what sort of money are they on? We later learn that our own D team was disqualified from this Lightning Round when Molly actually pulled out some money and started looking at it. One question asked for the closest galaxy to the Milky Way; Stefan was about to answer Andromeda, when Czolacz and Shu both write down "Alpha Centauri"! He actually started to answer as that, thankfully I corrected him.
Lunch break. We head to Blimpie's, only to find the line incredibly long. That's OK, I brought lunch. Well, it's OK for *me*, anyway. Looking at the scores... we're currently in the top 8, Bergen B is close, D isn't doing all that bad, and C is pretty close to last place. I ask Joe Gregg about the origin of his use of the word "bootleg"[0], and don't get anything approaching an answer. We're probably going to make it to the quarterfinals, unless we screw up horribly. We're playing against another one of the top 8, Millburn, in this round; we want to draw points away from them so B can also make it to the quarterfinals.
4th round. Shu and Joe are missing! When Shu finally turns up, Czolacz goes missing! Thankfully he reappears before we start. A considerably closer match than any of the previous ones, but we win again by a good margin. I correctly answer "The Law of Diminishing Returns" despite not knowing what said law actually is.
Scores are tallied... we're in! And as for B? Tied for 8th place. Tiebreaker time!
Tiebreaker. The tiebreaker consists of a lightning round, which each of the two teams does separately, in different rooms. Bergen B gets 4. Newark Academy gets 6. Only our A team goes on to the quarterfinals...
Quarterfinals. OK, *now* things start getting harder. We're playing Colonia. I really don't remember too much specific from this one. Before it starts, we put our hands in the center and go "Semifinals!". Well, we make it to the semifinals.
Semifinals. Er... who was this against? Don't remember. (Bloomfield A, it seems to be, actually.) Really annoying moderator, though. Refused to use "prompt". One category was "Clerihews"; "What the hell is a clerihew?" everyone wondered. I still don't know. Before it starts, hands in the center... "Finals!" Close match, but we win.
Final round. *Phew*. It's *not* against Pingry[8]. It's against Millburn B. OK. We start out considerably ahead. As was remarked later, their team consisted of essentially 1 person. One tossup had an answer of "podiatry"; I get that one, of course.[3] The lead diminishes, but by the time we get to the final 2 lightning rounds, we're leading by 110 points again. They take the lightning round "Origins": given an author, name his country of origin. They sweep it. 100 points plus 20 point bonus. That puts them, all of a sudden, 10 points *ahead*. OK. One lightning round left. "Natives". Given a clue, what famous Native American are they talking about? We get 5 right. We're 40 points ahead, but now the other team has 5 questions to answer... if they get all 5, we lose, if they get 4, we go to tiebreaker, and if they get 3 or less, we win. They get 3, and we win by 10 points! w00t!
One bonus question from the final round I *do* remember:
(Don't remember the actual *question*)
Me: Geodes?
Stefan: Geodes.
Moderator: That is incorrect, the answer is "inclusions".
?: What's a geode, anyway?
Me: I don't know.
It should be noted that there had been something of a running joke throughout the whole tournament that we were going to haze the freshmen. Eventually this was narrowed down to just RJ and George, and eventually (of course) just to George. There was a point to this paragraph, but I forget what.
OK... in other news... colleges again!
Apparently Dr. Ostfeld and Mr. Holbrook have decided that I'm going end up going to either Columbia, Caltech, or University of Chicago. "Hey, that's neat, I know someone who goes to University of Chicago!" So we're going to go visit there sometime, though I have no clue when. My mom keeps bugging me to ask Ashley how she likes it there (very much like how she kept bugging me to ask Josh how he likes it at Yale). I've always found asking people that sort of thing pretty awkward, but presumably she's going to read this anyway, so I won't have to. :)
Er... that's it for now. Maybe later I'll remember more quizbowl details, and get a copy of the scores. Hey, I have a copy of the scores! The rounds 1-4 scores, that is. Unfortunately I don't remember who we played against. So I'll just give the scores of all the Bergen teams.
Round
Team 1 2 3 4 Total
A 350 530 730 500 2110
B 360 310 530 490 1690
C 110 240 180 160 690
D 230 330 240 340 1140And that really *is* it for now (save the footnotes). Go bug somebody else.
-Sniffnoy
[0]OK. This definitely requires some explanation. Joe Gregg probably also uses the word "bootleg" with its normal meaning, but he also uses it to mean absolutely anything else he wants, especially if he simply can't think of the word he's actually looking for. It's just a generic adjective. Usually it's in a sense so that you can get the meaning from context, but it can get pretty ridiculous. As Mr. Sayres was making fun of him on Tuesday, "That chalkboard is bootleg!".
[3]My mom is a podiatrist.
[4]I'm not quite sure just who "they" are, though...
[5]Wow. I did not notice at all that I had made that tyop until I spell-checked this thing.
[8]Strangely enough, it was Pingry *D* that made it to the playoffs. They probably just deliberately named their teams weirdly. (Note that Pingry A did do better than Pingry B, and Pingry B did do better than Pingry C.)
--
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public
office."
-Aesop
