At Geek Bowl V last year, my team The Anti-Social Network ended up winning all the marbles, except the marbles were actually considerable sums of cash. Hooray! This year, the event moved from Denver to Austin, Texas, and we didn't fare quite so well, coming in 10th out of 146 teams. Still a respectable showing! But not enough to get paid, as only ( Read more... )

A couple of years ago, I wrote about my annual Christmas traditions with my friends Siân and Kelly, a mix CD of songs I've been listening to that year. The songs generally reflect a little something about my life in one way or another, though not perfectly so -- sometimes they're just songs I've imprinted on for some reason. The liner notes ( Read more... )

On day 2 of TCONA, the first trivia event was scheduled at 8:30am, but it was the Quiz Bowl Seeding Test, which I co-wrote. So I wouldn't be taking it, which was all for the best, since I'd had a late night. I left my sister asleep in our room and toddled on down to the conference room around 9:45, as the test was breaking up ( Read more... )

If you tend to read what I write here, you'll know that this has been quite a trivia year for me. The most recent highlight is that I played in another pub quiz tournament with the Anti-Social Network (renamed The A-OK's for this event), i.e. the same team that won The Geek Bowl. And we won again! This time the purse was $1000. It is astonishing, ( Read more... )

I had another great trivia day last Saturday, this time a "Clubhouse Bowl" -- just like a Basement Bowl, except held in a guy's apartment clubhouse rather than a basement. There were trivia bowl-style games along with a bunch of Jeopardy! games run on a magic Jeopardy! simulator created by one of the gang. There was even "Trivia Battleship" -- a ( Read more... )

That post about the art of the trivia question is still brewing, but I got sidetracked this week by another event in the trivia world. You may have heard about it. Watson, an IBM supercomputer, played two games of Jeopardy! against that show's most famous champions, and thoroughly trounced the both of them ( Read more... )

Okay, so some of this is covered in my review of Wordplay, but here it is from a slightly different angle. But before we go there, answers to the last entry's questions: Following in the footsteps of Anthony Michael Hall and Jason Lively, he played Rusty Griswold in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. More famously, he appeared as David Healey, ( Read more... )

In my last entry, I explained the structure of the trivia bowl, and talked about its history at CU. Before I continue, let me provide some answers to the questions I posed there: Q: James Rado, Gerome Ragni, and Galt MacDermot were the writers behind what song medley, which won Record Of The Year, topped the charts for six weeks in 1969, and was ( Read more... )

Having just been to another Basement Bowl, I've been ruminating on a blog entry about what makes a good trivia question. And I do want to write that, but first I'd like to address those of you who may be saying, "another Basment Wha?"

( Let me say: this is going to be long )

Something Dante loves is to find some little Flash game on JayIsGames and play it with me. At this point, he's got a repertoire of them in his head, and he calls them out for me from time to time like requests at a piano bar. "I want to play Electric Box 2!" "I want to play Meeblings!" "I want to play FireBoy and WaterGirl!" "Let's play Shape ( Read more... )