![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoyToday was the Columbia "Knowledge is Power" NAQT tournament. (We found out afterwards, this actually was a tournament from which you could qualify for the NAQT nationals, but it is very, very unlikely that we made it. Oh, I shouldn't have said that yet, should I have? Oh well.)
I don't have any quotes, I'm afraid, but I do have a copy of the records (or most of them), so I can give actual scores rather than just guesses. Also they're going to send Mr. Sayres a copy of the individual statistics, so I can get that too.
Anyway...
For some reason just about nobody could come. A team: Me, Stefan (captain), Czolacz, and Joe Gregg. B team: Yasha, Marc Sweetgall, and some freshman named "Alex" that I'd never seen before. Nobody on our B team had ever done QB before, except Marc, who had been to some of the practices, but that was it. (I believe this made Marc captain.) They actually came in 3rd to last, with no wins and 340 points. (Ranking was done first by win-loss, then points.) That was it. 2 teams, one with no experience and one man short. Well.
The thing was split into 4 brackets, and you played round-robin within your bracket. We were in bracket "Black Kettle", the others being "Sitting Bull", "Crazy Horse" (B's bracket), and "Red Cloud".
OK. So.
Round 1: Bloomfield B.
OK, look, there were 7 rounds, do you honestly think I remember most of them? The record says we beat them 185 to 75.
Round 2: Newton A.
We were in room D201... which meant we were stuck with our own buzzers! Hey, it could have been worse. There was a buzzer shortage, and 3 rooms had to make do with tambourines and maracas. Thankfully Mr. Sayres was, through much rewiring black magic, able to restore them to a usable state. We won 245 to 105. It was strange - 3 of the people on the other team had names from Star Trek (Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Spock, Mr. Chekov), but, while the 4th wasn't using his real name either, it wasn't from Star Trek. I thought it was pretty strange that it was Spock, Chekov, and Picard... apparently Kirk was on their other team. I tried to revive the Ninja Turtles thing in response to this - I even wrote "Leonardo" on my namecard - but it didn't work, and so I just used "Harry".
Round 3: Newark Academy (traitors! ...well, one traitor, anyway)
Back in room D200, where we were first round. We won 395 to 65. It was after this round that I actually thought to look at the computer that had been left on... it was a Mac, and the screensaver was that old rearrange-the-screen-15-puzzle-style one. Getting up to look at it... it was Interactive Physics! Or it looked very much like it. Somehow I didn't think to actually move the mouse and check. Mr. Sayres did, though, and lo! It *was* Interactive Physics!
Round 4: Seton Hall B.
Our highest score, we win 420 to 95. There was this one guy on the other team who just kept *staring* at us - according to Stefan, staring at *him*. We figure he was trying to psyche us out or something.
Lunch! The rankings so far... we're in second (yay!), in first is Millburn. Pingry's 12th (*phew*). Bergen B is second to last, with only Carteret A behind them (they scored 0 in the first round). We wonder if perhaps we'll end up first and them last, or if we'll stay second and them second-to-last, etc.
Whichever of my parents made my lunch forgot to include an icepack. :P Well, it was edible anyway.
Round 5: Lenape Valley A.
Back in D201... and already the buzzers had gone wonky again! Mr. Sayres did refix them, though. Stefan recognized the girl on the other team but didn't remember where he'd seen her. It was, of course... oh, wait, I never told that story, did I? Hm, should I bother? Nah, I don't remember it well enough for it to be funny. Anyway... another win, 235 to 85. They actually didn't score at all after the half.
Round 6: Northern Highlands C.
Not a very good game for Northern Highlands, at all. We won 335 to -35. Yes, really. They really came in assuming they were going to lose. One of them had no name tag. The recognizer decided to just call him "Buzz". Though I don't believe he actually buzzed in at all. He just kind of sat there with his head on his desk. I believe he buzzed in a few times during his team's bonus. It was really pathetic. They were already at -10 at the half. They got but one tossup right, no boni, and never had a positive score, though their single correct tossup did restore them to 0.
Round 7: Half Hollow Hills A.
I just love that name. This round was in D207 - all the previous ones were in D200 or D201, so, not having seen the room before, I was just afraid we might get stuck with the maracas. We didn't, thankfully. We won 335 to 210. They used the names of the Beatles, and so once again I tried to get the others to be the Ninja Turtles, but once again it failed.
And, to go into the playoffs, the results are...
1. Bergen A, 7-0 (yay undefeated!), 2140 points.
2. Livingston A, 7-0, 1745 points.
3. Millburn A, 6-1, 2430 points.
4. Half Hollow Hills A, 6-1 (that was us! :) ), 2050 points.
5. Bloomfield A, 6-1, 1875 points.
6. Millburn B, 6-1, 1795 points.
7. Half Hollow Hills B, 6-1, 1310 points.
8. Pingry A, 5-2, 1840 points.
...oh no! We have to play Pingry in the quarterfinals!
About this time Czolacz and Joe Gregg started coming up with conspiracy theories that people knew that Pingry would be in 8th and so lost deliberately to avoid playing them.
The quarterfinals were in the map room. I call it the map room because I remember, last year, seeing Stefan walking into that room for the first time and seeing the Snoopy map on the back wall and explaining to us all how this very map - his copy of it, that is - was what first got him interested in geography. Later he noticed slight differences, actually.
Pingry went by islands. They were "British Virgin" (that got some weird looks), "Easter" (Blonder 1453), "Orkney" (there was actually a question mentioning Orkney Island later), and "Canary" (Mehta 753).
(I really want to someday see a list of all the Pingry shirts. For those who have never seen them, Pingry QBers wear these blue shirts which on the back have, in white, a name and number. Only, not necessarily a real name, and, well, usually a real number, but not necessarily an integer. The ones I can remember right now are:
Blonder 1453 (with 1453 in a different font from what the other shirts used)
Mehta 753
Kruschev √2
Wang π
Slave e
Freedman 10
The Boosh 03
Irénée Starbuck 1/0 (I may have the accents wrong)
I know I've also seen one that was ½ but I don't recall the name on it. I know there are more but I either don't remember them or haven't seen them. Not everybody always wears their Pingry shirt (though they usually wear the right colors, anyway ("Orkney" did, but "British Virgin" didn't; she was wearing a mostly red Harvard shirt)), and even those that do often wear their blue-and-white Pingry jackets.)
Anyway... once again I tried to revive the Ninja Turtles, but as someone pointed out, "How much good did that do last time?". Stefan led us outside for a "pep talk", which was really a "We're going to lose" talk. I tried to cheer everyone up with "We've beaten Pingry before, we can do it again", but I don't think anyone really listened to what either of us said.
They get the first 5, bringing them up to 140. We get the next 5, except for 8, which they get, evening it out considerably to 130 us to 160 them. Now Stefan starts counting - "Can we beat them?" We get 2, they get 2. After tossup 15, score is 155 us, 195 them. Unfortunately they get the next 2 and the score is 255 to 155. We can still theoretically make it, if we get all the next 3... well, we get 18, but only 10 on the bonus, they get 19, we can't win, nobody gets 20. Final score, 285 to 175.
Mr. Sayres later remarked on how the Pingry kids weren't being very serious at first, and then when we got nearly 5 in a row, they fell dead silent. :)
So, by Stefan's reckoning, we came in 5th, since we were the top seed of those that got out in the quarterfinals. Now it turns out that this tournament is actually one of the ones leading to the NAQT nationals... but they'd have to send 5 teams for us to go, which is ridiculous.
Maybe next year. (Though most of our best players are seniors, and save Jacob who never does anything and Yasha who just joined I'm the only junior, but we have some good players in the lower grades, I suppose...) While we waited for our ride home, we kept hitting ourselves for the quarterfinal questions we should have gotten - "whirlpool", "Patriot Act", "Charles Babbage", and 2 others that Stefan said which I don't remember. Also the last one, a math question, on which Stefan buzzed in with a completely random and ridiculous answer just as I was about to get the right one (not that it mattered at that point).
Other memorable questions (mostly involving me, because, well, that's what I remember):
I got a neg for immediately (ie almost certainly would have been power had it been right) for answering "pi" when the answer was "Avogadro's number". I made up for it later, though, when I actually did get power on an answer of "pi".
The bonus where they asked to give the number of faces, vertices, and edges of a regular octahedron. Gotta know your regular polyhedra.
The tossup where the answer was "Cargo Cult". Apparently I was the only one in the room who had even heard the term, and even I wasn't entirely sure what it meant.
"The golden scepter was extended to her, thus saving her from the fate of her predecessor, Vashti." I happened to buzz in slightly before Stefan, Czolacz and, well, every other Jew in the room, and power on it. Really a bit ridiculous to give out power for a clue that every Jew should recognize.
The bonus about a football team suing two other football teams. ...meh, I can't tell this one right. Stefan's reaction was really funny, though. I can't really describe it, unfortunately. We got all 30 points on it, naturally. :)
"There is only one 3-digit number which is both a palindrome and a perfect cube." I get power on that one. When everybody looks at me a bit funny afterwards, I say, "What? I just know the number 343."
That ends it, I suppose, unless I remember any more later.
-Sniffnoy
--
Captain: Take off every '.sig' !!
I don't have any quotes, I'm afraid, but I do have a copy of the records (or most of them), so I can give actual scores rather than just guesses. Also they're going to send Mr. Sayres a copy of the individual statistics, so I can get that too.
Anyway...
For some reason just about nobody could come. A team: Me, Stefan (captain), Czolacz, and Joe Gregg. B team: Yasha, Marc Sweetgall, and some freshman named "Alex" that I'd never seen before. Nobody on our B team had ever done QB before, except Marc, who had been to some of the practices, but that was it. (I believe this made Marc captain.) They actually came in 3rd to last, with no wins and 340 points. (Ranking was done first by win-loss, then points.) That was it. 2 teams, one with no experience and one man short. Well.
The thing was split into 4 brackets, and you played round-robin within your bracket. We were in bracket "Black Kettle", the others being "Sitting Bull", "Crazy Horse" (B's bracket), and "Red Cloud".
OK. So.
Round 1: Bloomfield B.
OK, look, there were 7 rounds, do you honestly think I remember most of them? The record says we beat them 185 to 75.
Round 2: Newton A.
We were in room D201... which meant we were stuck with our own buzzers! Hey, it could have been worse. There was a buzzer shortage, and 3 rooms had to make do with tambourines and maracas. Thankfully Mr. Sayres was, through much rewiring black magic, able to restore them to a usable state. We won 245 to 105. It was strange - 3 of the people on the other team had names from Star Trek (Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Spock, Mr. Chekov), but, while the 4th wasn't using his real name either, it wasn't from Star Trek. I thought it was pretty strange that it was Spock, Chekov, and Picard... apparently Kirk was on their other team. I tried to revive the Ninja Turtles thing in response to this - I even wrote "Leonardo" on my namecard - but it didn't work, and so I just used "Harry".
Round 3: Newark Academy (traitors! ...well, one traitor, anyway)
Back in room D200, where we were first round. We won 395 to 65. It was after this round that I actually thought to look at the computer that had been left on... it was a Mac, and the screensaver was that old rearrange-the-screen-15-puzzle-style one. Getting up to look at it... it was Interactive Physics! Or it looked very much like it. Somehow I didn't think to actually move the mouse and check. Mr. Sayres did, though, and lo! It *was* Interactive Physics!
Round 4: Seton Hall B.
Our highest score, we win 420 to 95. There was this one guy on the other team who just kept *staring* at us - according to Stefan, staring at *him*. We figure he was trying to psyche us out or something.
Lunch! The rankings so far... we're in second (yay!), in first is Millburn. Pingry's 12th (*phew*). Bergen B is second to last, with only Carteret A behind them (they scored 0 in the first round). We wonder if perhaps we'll end up first and them last, or if we'll stay second and them second-to-last, etc.
Whichever of my parents made my lunch forgot to include an icepack. :P Well, it was edible anyway.
Round 5: Lenape Valley A.
Back in D201... and already the buzzers had gone wonky again! Mr. Sayres did refix them, though. Stefan recognized the girl on the other team but didn't remember where he'd seen her. It was, of course... oh, wait, I never told that story, did I? Hm, should I bother? Nah, I don't remember it well enough for it to be funny. Anyway... another win, 235 to 85. They actually didn't score at all after the half.
Round 6: Northern Highlands C.
Not a very good game for Northern Highlands, at all. We won 335 to -35. Yes, really. They really came in assuming they were going to lose. One of them had no name tag. The recognizer decided to just call him "Buzz". Though I don't believe he actually buzzed in at all. He just kind of sat there with his head on his desk. I believe he buzzed in a few times during his team's bonus. It was really pathetic. They were already at -10 at the half. They got but one tossup right, no boni, and never had a positive score, though their single correct tossup did restore them to 0.
Round 7: Half Hollow Hills A.
I just love that name. This round was in D207 - all the previous ones were in D200 or D201, so, not having seen the room before, I was just afraid we might get stuck with the maracas. We didn't, thankfully. We won 335 to 210. They used the names of the Beatles, and so once again I tried to get the others to be the Ninja Turtles, but once again it failed.
And, to go into the playoffs, the results are...
1. Bergen A, 7-0 (yay undefeated!), 2140 points.
2. Livingston A, 7-0, 1745 points.
3. Millburn A, 6-1, 2430 points.
4. Half Hollow Hills A, 6-1 (that was us! :) ), 2050 points.
5. Bloomfield A, 6-1, 1875 points.
6. Millburn B, 6-1, 1795 points.
7. Half Hollow Hills B, 6-1, 1310 points.
8. Pingry A, 5-2, 1840 points.
...oh no! We have to play Pingry in the quarterfinals!
About this time Czolacz and Joe Gregg started coming up with conspiracy theories that people knew that Pingry would be in 8th and so lost deliberately to avoid playing them.
The quarterfinals were in the map room. I call it the map room because I remember, last year, seeing Stefan walking into that room for the first time and seeing the Snoopy map on the back wall and explaining to us all how this very map - his copy of it, that is - was what first got him interested in geography. Later he noticed slight differences, actually.
Pingry went by islands. They were "British Virgin" (that got some weird looks), "Easter" (Blonder 1453), "Orkney" (there was actually a question mentioning Orkney Island later), and "Canary" (Mehta 753).
(I really want to someday see a list of all the Pingry shirts. For those who have never seen them, Pingry QBers wear these blue shirts which on the back have, in white, a name and number. Only, not necessarily a real name, and, well, usually a real number, but not necessarily an integer. The ones I can remember right now are:
Blonder 1453 (with 1453 in a different font from what the other shirts used)
Mehta 753
Kruschev √2
Wang π
Slave e
Freedman 10
The Boosh 03
Irénée Starbuck 1/0 (I may have the accents wrong)
I know I've also seen one that was ½ but I don't recall the name on it. I know there are more but I either don't remember them or haven't seen them. Not everybody always wears their Pingry shirt (though they usually wear the right colors, anyway ("Orkney" did, but "British Virgin" didn't; she was wearing a mostly red Harvard shirt)), and even those that do often wear their blue-and-white Pingry jackets.)
Anyway... once again I tried to revive the Ninja Turtles, but as someone pointed out, "How much good did that do last time?". Stefan led us outside for a "pep talk", which was really a "We're going to lose" talk. I tried to cheer everyone up with "We've beaten Pingry before, we can do it again", but I don't think anyone really listened to what either of us said.
They get the first 5, bringing them up to 140. We get the next 5, except for 8, which they get, evening it out considerably to 130 us to 160 them. Now Stefan starts counting - "Can we beat them?" We get 2, they get 2. After tossup 15, score is 155 us, 195 them. Unfortunately they get the next 2 and the score is 255 to 155. We can still theoretically make it, if we get all the next 3... well, we get 18, but only 10 on the bonus, they get 19, we can't win, nobody gets 20. Final score, 285 to 175.
Mr. Sayres later remarked on how the Pingry kids weren't being very serious at first, and then when we got nearly 5 in a row, they fell dead silent. :)
So, by Stefan's reckoning, we came in 5th, since we were the top seed of those that got out in the quarterfinals. Now it turns out that this tournament is actually one of the ones leading to the NAQT nationals... but they'd have to send 5 teams for us to go, which is ridiculous.
Maybe next year. (Though most of our best players are seniors, and save Jacob who never does anything and Yasha who just joined I'm the only junior, but we have some good players in the lower grades, I suppose...) While we waited for our ride home, we kept hitting ourselves for the quarterfinal questions we should have gotten - "whirlpool", "Patriot Act", "Charles Babbage", and 2 others that Stefan said which I don't remember. Also the last one, a math question, on which Stefan buzzed in with a completely random and ridiculous answer just as I was about to get the right one (not that it mattered at that point).
Other memorable questions (mostly involving me, because, well, that's what I remember):
I got a neg for immediately (ie almost certainly would have been power had it been right) for answering "pi" when the answer was "Avogadro's number". I made up for it later, though, when I actually did get power on an answer of "pi".
The bonus where they asked to give the number of faces, vertices, and edges of a regular octahedron. Gotta know your regular polyhedra.
The tossup where the answer was "Cargo Cult". Apparently I was the only one in the room who had even heard the term, and even I wasn't entirely sure what it meant.
"The golden scepter was extended to her, thus saving her from the fate of her predecessor, Vashti." I happened to buzz in slightly before Stefan, Czolacz and, well, every other Jew in the room, and power on it. Really a bit ridiculous to give out power for a clue that every Jew should recognize.
The bonus about a football team suing two other football teams. ...meh, I can't tell this one right. Stefan's reaction was really funny, though. I can't really describe it, unfortunately. We got all 30 points on it, naturally. :)
"There is only one 3-digit number which is both a palindrome and a perfect cube." I get power on that one. When everybody looks at me a bit funny afterwards, I say, "What? I just know the number 343."
That ends it, I suppose, unless I remember any more later.
-Sniffnoy
--
Captain: Take off every '.sig' !!
no subject
Date: 2004-04-03 07:19 pm (UTC)And who the hell asks such a basic question about Jewish tradition at a QB event, where most of the people are probably Jewish anyway? :-P
no subject
Date: 2004-04-03 07:23 pm (UTC)Actually Marc, from Dr. Penev, picked up the nickname "Marc the Senior" (that was last year, so now he's sometimes called "Marc the College Freshman", but more commonly "Marc the Senior"), which leads to jokes about taking "Marc the Senior" as an imperative. :P
Actually they really do ask some pretty basic stuff - what really surprised me was that they made that clue power. But then again, there's really very little you can say about Esther that's not automatically a giveaway, now is there?