Heroes in a half-shell - turtle power!
Jan. 31st, 2004 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoyUnfortunately, due to the weird format, there was no power. (Though there was one time when Czolacz definitely should have gotten power, for getting the answer after only two words.)
Yes, today was the Bloomfield QB Tournament. How did we do? For that, you'll have to read the rest of this entry. Or be a cheater and skip to the end. But anyway.
First, the format.
Each round (or "match") was split into 4 "quarters" or "rounds". The first was tossups with no boni. The value of each tossup was either 5 or 10 points, depending on the question. Then came 10 point tossups with 20-point, 4-part boni. Then came lightning rounds, which work like Columbia lightning rounds except that while there are 4 categories, only 2 will actually get read (due to the fact that there are no more lightning rounds later). Finally, more tossups with no boni, this time worth 10 or 15 points.
Really weird, I know.
Now the *tournament* format was also pretty bad. We arrive and are told there will be 4 rounds. As it turns out, there are only 3 (4 would take way too long and require scheduling that they haven't done yet). Sort of. The way it works is, there is round 1A, then round 1B, then 2A, etc. Each team is in either the A or the B bracket (all our teams were in B), and questions in 1A and 1B are the same, etc. While one bracket is playing, the *entire other bracket* gets a bye. Really poorly done.
Oh, our teams? A team was me, Czolacz (captain), Shu, and Muneem (aka X); B was Hyungmin, James, Andrew, and Rhiannon; C was Caroline, RJ, Mitchell, and Molly. Even with both James and Andrew, though, there were no Pokemon answers. :P Oh, and did you know RJ's middle name is actually "Louis"? Apparently the 'J' actually stands for "Junior".
Anyway...
In the cafeteria beforehand. Not much happens. We declare that we are going to "take ass and kick names". (Much later, Shu attempts to do the first literally (please don't ask), while others kick around his nametag.) Someone decides to review some history, and asks what weapon the British used to defeat the French at some battle in the Hundred Years' War. Nobody gets it; it's the longbow.
Round 1. We play Kellenburg C, and guess which question gets asked? You got it, the longbow. We win easily.
Round 2. We play Kellenburg A. There is a question asking who wrote "Antigone" and "Electra". We answer Sophocles; it had Euripides; we protest it; the question gets thrown out. We win, but not by much.
Round 3. Yah, we win again. To the playoffs.
Octofinals (?): We play Newark Academy. One kid on the other team, Jason, I recognize... he's on our math team! Traitor... quotes from that round:
[A buzzer on the other team stops working. We have to wait. Somebody must have asked what we were waiting for.]
Moderator: We're waiting for a technical person.
Person whose buzzer stopped working: I'm a technical person!
Other team's captain: Yes, you are, technically, a person.
[After a question about what type of virus HIV is - the answer is "retrovirus".]
Someone on other team: What is a retrovirus, anyway?
Someone else on other team: It's a virus from the 70's.
A bit later...
Someone else: What is a retrovirus, anyway?
Mr. Sayres: It's a virus from the 70's.
Me: Yeah, someone from the other team already used that joke.
We win. Time for the quarterfinals.
On the other team (everyone on the other team is wearing purple skull rings, for some reason) is Austin Randazzo, who recognizes me. "Oh yeah, you," I say. "I remember not remembering you." "That's OK, I remember not remembering you too."
I start to get very tense that round. I slam the desk when the other team gets a question about the Minoans before me (I'm doing my history paper on them!). I think that Deuterium has 2 neutrons instead of a mass number of 2. The second question, worth 10, was about the Koran; it mentioned 114 "sutras". Apparently it's actually supposed to be pronounced "surras", and we protest. Later, on a bounceback from our lightning round - well, the lightning round is, given a song title with a blank, name the city which completes the song title. The question was "Moon Over [blank]". They were looking for "Miami"; the other team said "Parma". Apparently that's actually the name of the Drew Carey theme or something, so they protested. At the end of the round, we were 10 points ahead. Well, their protest was accepted, ours wasn't, so we're tied. However, we can't do the tiebreaker question because the team whose buzzers we were using has left. We have to go to another room. While we wait before leaving, I start to spin RJ around, for no good reason. (I'm very hyper by this point, though it'll get worse later.) Finally we head to another room, only to find that it has no buzzers either. While we wait outside, I notice an AED in the wall. "OOH! AED!" I shout - Hyungmin immediately grabs me, turns me around, and says "NO." He continues to hold on to me until we finally head to the auditorium for the tiebreaker question. The question is, "What line starts the Shakespeare monologue containing the line 'To sleep, perchance to dream'." Maybe there was more to it, but I buzzed in and got it then, so we won. Wow.
*Now* I am incredibly hyper. Time for the semifinals, which will be against Pingry A (uh-oh). Much of our team is missing (or at least not on the stage), for whatever reason. The others watch me, amused at my hyperness, as I, well, scurry around, on and off stage repeatedly, and talk quickly. Everybody laughs when I happen to mention that "I'm confused." Anyway, since we're in the auditorium, instead of nametags, we have big boards that say our names, like in Jeopardy. Well, Pingry, on these boards (this is before the rest of my team comes back), instead puts "War", "Famine", "Pestilence", and "Death". Someone (Andrew, I think) suggests that we be the Ninja Turtles. And so I go and write on our boards, Donatello (which, when we sit down, turns out to be Muneem), Leonardo (me), Raphael (Shu), and RJ writes Michaelangelo (which became Czolacz) since I wasn't sure how to spell it. Muneeem, incidentally, is actually wearing a Ninja Turtles shirt, though I don't realize this till after he gets back. I ask where the rest of our team is.
Andrew: One of them went off to war, one starved to death, one got sick, and the other... just died.
Me: That makes 5.
Andrew: No, 4.
Me: 4, plus me is 5.
Andrew: You don't count.
Me: Oh, OK. No, wait!
Well, once it finally starts, the round is very very close; we're tied by the time for the lightning round, so we have to do a toin coss to see who gets to pick first. For their category, all the answers contain the word "rate"; the clue is "repeat", they say "iterate". The answer was "reiterate"; we get it on the bounceback. They protest. Well, we're still tied *after* the lightning rounds as well - but soon we find out their protest was accepted, so really they're 20 points ahead. And they do win in the end. The final question is to translate some Italian proverb; Shu answers "The forbidden fruit is not meant to be eaten", but they get it - "The forbidden fruit is sweeter". Apparently had we gotten it we would have won, but it appears not even the Ninja Turtles can beat the Four Horsemen. (Oh, and you'll notice skipping directly to the end will not tell you how we did. :) )
We stay to watch the finals. Pingry A vs Bergen Catholic A. The Bergen Catholic coach says to me that he had hoped to play Bergen Academy in the finals since they're so often confused for us. The Bergen Catholic people put their real names on the boards, so I say that apparently we'll be using real names this round - but apparently not, as the Pingry players label themselves as "Johnson &", "Lyndon B.", "Magic", and "Howard". I actually didn't figure it out at first, because of the order of "Johnson &" and "Lyndon B."; I had to wait for someone to tell me. Apparently they'd been using joke names all day, including doing something like the above with Jackson and with Jones. The 4 lightning round categories that round were "All creatures", "Great", "And", and "Small". Well, Pingry beats Bergen Catholic easily, and that ends this year's Bloomfield Academic Tournament of Excellence.
Oh, and I don't remember what round this was from, but at one point, on a 20-15-10-5 (instead of 30-20-10) bonus, the first clue is "There are only 2 named characters in this American novel." Czolacz guesses "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". I'm the only person who finds this funny. We end up getting it for 10; it's actually "The Old Man and the Sea". Oh, and they also had some really annoying trick questions: Like who was the last non-American to win the Pulitzer prize, and the answer is noone, it's for Americans only.
I could add more on here about my failed attempts to reinstall various Windows games last night, but I've written enough already. Wait till tomorrow, if you really want to hear about that.
-Sniffnoy
--
Znqr lbh EBG!
Yes, today was the Bloomfield QB Tournament. How did we do? For that, you'll have to read the rest of this entry. Or be a cheater and skip to the end. But anyway.
First, the format.
Each round (or "match") was split into 4 "quarters" or "rounds". The first was tossups with no boni. The value of each tossup was either 5 or 10 points, depending on the question. Then came 10 point tossups with 20-point, 4-part boni. Then came lightning rounds, which work like Columbia lightning rounds except that while there are 4 categories, only 2 will actually get read (due to the fact that there are no more lightning rounds later). Finally, more tossups with no boni, this time worth 10 or 15 points.
Really weird, I know.
Now the *tournament* format was also pretty bad. We arrive and are told there will be 4 rounds. As it turns out, there are only 3 (4 would take way too long and require scheduling that they haven't done yet). Sort of. The way it works is, there is round 1A, then round 1B, then 2A, etc. Each team is in either the A or the B bracket (all our teams were in B), and questions in 1A and 1B are the same, etc. While one bracket is playing, the *entire other bracket* gets a bye. Really poorly done.
Oh, our teams? A team was me, Czolacz (captain), Shu, and Muneem (aka X); B was Hyungmin, James, Andrew, and Rhiannon; C was Caroline, RJ, Mitchell, and Molly. Even with both James and Andrew, though, there were no Pokemon answers. :P Oh, and did you know RJ's middle name is actually "Louis"? Apparently the 'J' actually stands for "Junior".
Anyway...
In the cafeteria beforehand. Not much happens. We declare that we are going to "take ass and kick names". (Much later, Shu attempts to do the first literally (please don't ask), while others kick around his nametag.) Someone decides to review some history, and asks what weapon the British used to defeat the French at some battle in the Hundred Years' War. Nobody gets it; it's the longbow.
Round 1. We play Kellenburg C, and guess which question gets asked? You got it, the longbow. We win easily.
Round 2. We play Kellenburg A. There is a question asking who wrote "Antigone" and "Electra". We answer Sophocles; it had Euripides; we protest it; the question gets thrown out. We win, but not by much.
Round 3. Yah, we win again. To the playoffs.
Octofinals (?): We play Newark Academy. One kid on the other team, Jason, I recognize... he's on our math team! Traitor... quotes from that round:
[A buzzer on the other team stops working. We have to wait. Somebody must have asked what we were waiting for.]
Moderator: We're waiting for a technical person.
Person whose buzzer stopped working: I'm a technical person!
Other team's captain: Yes, you are, technically, a person.
[After a question about what type of virus HIV is - the answer is "retrovirus".]
Someone on other team: What is a retrovirus, anyway?
Someone else on other team: It's a virus from the 70's.
A bit later...
Someone else: What is a retrovirus, anyway?
Mr. Sayres: It's a virus from the 70's.
Me: Yeah, someone from the other team already used that joke.
We win. Time for the quarterfinals.
On the other team (everyone on the other team is wearing purple skull rings, for some reason) is Austin Randazzo, who recognizes me. "Oh yeah, you," I say. "I remember not remembering you." "That's OK, I remember not remembering you too."
I start to get very tense that round. I slam the desk when the other team gets a question about the Minoans before me (I'm doing my history paper on them!). I think that Deuterium has 2 neutrons instead of a mass number of 2. The second question, worth 10, was about the Koran; it mentioned 114 "sutras". Apparently it's actually supposed to be pronounced "surras", and we protest. Later, on a bounceback from our lightning round - well, the lightning round is, given a song title with a blank, name the city which completes the song title. The question was "Moon Over [blank]". They were looking for "Miami"; the other team said "Parma". Apparently that's actually the name of the Drew Carey theme or something, so they protested. At the end of the round, we were 10 points ahead. Well, their protest was accepted, ours wasn't, so we're tied. However, we can't do the tiebreaker question because the team whose buzzers we were using has left. We have to go to another room. While we wait before leaving, I start to spin RJ around, for no good reason. (I'm very hyper by this point, though it'll get worse later.) Finally we head to another room, only to find that it has no buzzers either. While we wait outside, I notice an AED in the wall. "OOH! AED!" I shout - Hyungmin immediately grabs me, turns me around, and says "NO." He continues to hold on to me until we finally head to the auditorium for the tiebreaker question. The question is, "What line starts the Shakespeare monologue containing the line 'To sleep, perchance to dream'." Maybe there was more to it, but I buzzed in and got it then, so we won. Wow.
*Now* I am incredibly hyper. Time for the semifinals, which will be against Pingry A (uh-oh). Much of our team is missing (or at least not on the stage), for whatever reason. The others watch me, amused at my hyperness, as I, well, scurry around, on and off stage repeatedly, and talk quickly. Everybody laughs when I happen to mention that "I'm confused." Anyway, since we're in the auditorium, instead of nametags, we have big boards that say our names, like in Jeopardy. Well, Pingry, on these boards (this is before the rest of my team comes back), instead puts "War", "Famine", "Pestilence", and "Death". Someone (Andrew, I think) suggests that we be the Ninja Turtles. And so I go and write on our boards, Donatello (which, when we sit down, turns out to be Muneem), Leonardo (me), Raphael (Shu), and RJ writes Michaelangelo (which became Czolacz) since I wasn't sure how to spell it. Muneeem, incidentally, is actually wearing a Ninja Turtles shirt, though I don't realize this till after he gets back. I ask where the rest of our team is.
Andrew: One of them went off to war, one starved to death, one got sick, and the other... just died.
Me: That makes 5.
Andrew: No, 4.
Me: 4, plus me is 5.
Andrew: You don't count.
Me: Oh, OK. No, wait!
Well, once it finally starts, the round is very very close; we're tied by the time for the lightning round, so we have to do a toin coss to see who gets to pick first. For their category, all the answers contain the word "rate"; the clue is "repeat", they say "iterate". The answer was "reiterate"; we get it on the bounceback. They protest. Well, we're still tied *after* the lightning rounds as well - but soon we find out their protest was accepted, so really they're 20 points ahead. And they do win in the end. The final question is to translate some Italian proverb; Shu answers "The forbidden fruit is not meant to be eaten", but they get it - "The forbidden fruit is sweeter". Apparently had we gotten it we would have won, but it appears not even the Ninja Turtles can beat the Four Horsemen. (Oh, and you'll notice skipping directly to the end will not tell you how we did. :) )
We stay to watch the finals. Pingry A vs Bergen Catholic A. The Bergen Catholic coach says to me that he had hoped to play Bergen Academy in the finals since they're so often confused for us. The Bergen Catholic people put their real names on the boards, so I say that apparently we'll be using real names this round - but apparently not, as the Pingry players label themselves as "Johnson &", "Lyndon B.", "Magic", and "Howard". I actually didn't figure it out at first, because of the order of "Johnson &" and "Lyndon B."; I had to wait for someone to tell me. Apparently they'd been using joke names all day, including doing something like the above with Jackson and with Jones. The 4 lightning round categories that round were "All creatures", "Great", "And", and "Small". Well, Pingry beats Bergen Catholic easily, and that ends this year's Bloomfield Academic Tournament of Excellence.
Oh, and I don't remember what round this was from, but at one point, on a 20-15-10-5 (instead of 30-20-10) bonus, the first clue is "There are only 2 named characters in this American novel." Czolacz guesses "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". I'm the only person who finds this funny. We end up getting it for 10; it's actually "The Old Man and the Sea". Oh, and they also had some really annoying trick questions: Like who was the last non-American to win the Pulitzer prize, and the answer is noone, it's for Americans only.
I could add more on here about my failed attempts to reinstall various Windows games last night, but I've written enough already. Wait till tomorrow, if you really want to hear about that.
-Sniffnoy
--
Znqr lbh EBG!
no subject
Date: 2004-01-31 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-01 12:18 pm (UTC)I do that same thing to Bianca all the time. :-P
And if you had all put "Van Helsing" on all of the name board thingies, I guarantee you would have won.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-01 12:19 pm (UTC)