by heb23

Yup – We’re Just a Ragtag (Trivia) Team of Misfits!

It’s not unusual for pub trivia games that we play to generate lively discussions on our team’s Facebook page which you can visit here. The most recent lively discussion involved two specific questions:

 

“Two different schools have been seeded #16 and have defeated #1 teams. Give the nicknames of both of those teams. For an extra nerd bonus, give the nicknames of both of the teams they defeated.”

 

And the other question:

 

“Titan, the second-largest moon by diameter in the solar system, orbits what planet?”

 

A friend of mine named Kevin, who plays on the rival team Ennui, is one the top “nitpickers” of our page. Few people love dissecting trivia questions as much as Kevin! If there’s an error with a question, Kevin will be sure to point it out (I actually don’t mind that he does this).  If nothing else, it proves that people actually READ my recaps of trivia games!

 

And here’s Kevin’s first comment on the basketball question:

 

Kevin: “Hmmm, this can’t be right, as it was big news that UMBC was the first #16 to upset a #1 last Friday….Two different schools have been seeded #16 and have defeated #1 teams. Give the nicknames of both of those teams. For an extra nerd bonus, give the nicknames of both of the teams they defeated. Or are they talking about men’s and women’s basketball together?”

 

Long story short, the trivia host Lauren from Original Gravity chimed in and answered Kevin’s question:

 

Lauren: “I thought the same thing! BUT we never specified Mens Basketball. In 1998 the Womens Harvard team took down the #1 seeded womens stanford team!”

 

My own husband Mike joined in on the conversation with his own take on the sports question:

Mike: “And as a counterpoint to Sporcle’s often Byzantine sports questions during a regular game, they lob science softballs like naming the planet Titan orbits…”
Trivia host Tim (whom also is a content writer for the league) responded to Mike’s comment: “For what it’s worth, I had 9 teams in both games last night. More teams got that basketball question correct than the Titan question correct. After hosting for this long, you realize that hard sports questions are usually too easy for most teams and that easy science questions are usually too hard for most teams, and since our goal is to entertain to the point that the masses will return, we have to make sure our questions fall on the correct side of those difficulty barriers.”
Mike:  “That’s a disappointing, sad thing to hear. Yeah… I get it. People love sports and don’t know science 101.”
I chimed in with my own response:
Miskatonic University Fighting Cephalopods: “Our team is far more heavy with the science nerdiness than the sports nerdiness! But we’re not exactly normal, lol…not what the league would base their “statistics” on, for sure. Misfits for life!”
And that’s just it! My team is and always has been a bunch of misfits. We’ve survived pretty well in pub trivia over the past few years, for sure. Truth be told, we’re just not “normal” enough to ever be trivia tournament “poster children.” We’re not good at knowing what we’re “supposed” to know. We do try to beef up on the weaker categories, but some things are just best learned by absorbing it – being a part of it – and not simply reading about it and memorizing lists. Though I have done plenty of list studying/note taking, etc. – even resorting to silly mnemonic devices for remembering things!  We may not be able to tell you anything about “Ru Paul’s Drag Race,” “America’s Got Talent” or most of the other reality shows. Blank faces.  But we can talk at length about “The Simpsons,” “The X-Files,” “Doctor Who,” “Rick and Morty,” and “Family Guy.” We are also fairly strong when it comes to shows that aired in the 1970s/1980s. I got REALLY excited to get a ’70s TV question in our trivia game Thursday? Why? Because I KNEW it WOULDN’T be a f—ing reality TV show question! Wait…was “That’s Incredible!” a reality show? God I LOVED that show when I was a kid! The episode where they tried to get video footage of the ghost in Toys ‘R Us? Riveting!
that'sincredible.jpg
Wikipedia confirms that this show, which aired from 1980-1984, WAS indeed a “reality show.” Now if only  they would only make reality shows like THIS, maybe I would tune in, lol!

 

tigerwoodsthat'sincredible

Who can identify this future championship golfer seen on “That’s Incredible!”  in the red and white shirt? Hints: his real name is “Eldrick,” but he is better known by his nickname “Tiger.” Here he is at age 5…
As for “sportsball,” we have some players with above-average sports knowledge, but no real “experts,” aside from some “pet” niche categories, like Brad’s knowledge of former names/locations of sports teams. I’ve done my part by learning the names/locations of all of the “big four” sports teams in North America (this has actually helped the team on many occasions, and occasionally even helps me get sports questions right on my own). And I’m the team’s only hope when soccer gets asked about! But with our team, it’s usually hit or miss with sports. Sometimes we get lucky with a slam dunk, but usually we just come close to the net and… miss it.
As for science? Our team is pretty strong in that subject! Brad has a master’s degree in evolutionary biology, Dave has a doctorate in biology/chemistry…Mike is a decent “armchair” scientist and amateur astronomer. I’m pretty solid in most biology/zoology questions and even decent with most common periodic table symbols, and John also is pretty decent with most science questions. This doesn’t mean every science question will be a slam dunk for us, however!
 There  was also  a tough final question that all of the teams in our  bar missed – name  both  mountains  mentioned  by  name  in the 1982 Toto song “Africa.” Our team’s  “elder  statesman” Brad  did not play with us that night, but he said later that he knew both mountains. He was about 20 when that song  was all over the airwaves, so even though  it annoyed  him, he got to know the song. I was only about 10 when that song came out, and didn’t really start getting  into  the  ’80s music scene until a bit later. I even wrote down the Billboard Top 40 songs every week for a while (I listened to every  broadcast).  Later in the 1980s, when we got cable TV, I became quite the MTV junkie…
We certainly don’t expect any of the trivia leagues to stop asking about Toto songs (lol), sports, reality TV shows, Emmy/Grammy awards and other subjects we don’t like to touch with a 10-foot pole. The best we can hope for is to enjoy the fleeting “triviagasms” when they ask about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Space Ghost” (they asked about “Space Ghost” in a December, 2016 tournament that we could not attend), moons of Saturn, Egyptian/Norse mythology, the TV series “Dynasty” (the original…), “One Night in Bangkok” lyrics, David Lynch films…the list goes on! And that’s pretty much what keeps us in the game…and keeps us going – clinging to the vain hope that one of the questions will be “the” one where you say, “that’s EASY!” 🙂

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