Trivial Pursuits

[word_geek]

In between all the other things that happened in one week in October, there was one other bit I didn't mention yet. It happened on Friday, so a few days after getting back from Massachusetts, and the night before the baseball game.

Comments

Quibbles!

[malabranca]

> "Which nation consists of over 8,000 islands?" (answer: the Philippines)

As opposed to Indonesia which consists of over 17,000 islands? :)

Re: Quibbles!

[word_geek]

Y'know, Indonesia was the answer we gave. (Which elicited quite a bit of mocking when the answer was the Philippines, since Mom, and therefore Kate and myself, have slight Filipino ancestry.) In fact, Wikipedia indicates that the Philippines is only 7000+ islands, which would make the question entirely incorrect.

But after the Nixon/Reagan thing, I wasn't going to quibble with any of the answers. During a break, Dad and I concluded that question had to be wrong, and I stepped outside to check on my phone (smart phones weren't allowed in the hall, for obvious reasons). Once I verified that I was right, I did approach the judges at the urging of my parents -- yes, politely, I know, it's hard to believe -- but I was told that "we buy these questions from this guy, and he has a team that does research..." When I started to wave my phone and said, "Yeah, but, I looked it up, and..." I was rather brusquely told "It's a game, for charity. Let it go, all right?" There were several other questions I thought were suspect, but I decided

Re: Quibbles!

[malabranca]

> but I was told that "we buy these questions from this guy, and he has a team that does research..."

How do I get this guy's job? He can afford a /team/ and doesn't even have to be right! Sounds like my cup of tea.

Re: Quibbles!

[ohsochewy]

Oh, man. That's the first rule of Trivia Club: do not [mess] with the Trivia People. Our Team Trivia games are usually pretty clean, but every championship always ends up in some sort of kerfuffle.

Like our last one, for example: I can't remember the exact question, but it was something like, "What was the first non-variety show filmed before a live studio audience?" I believe they wanted I Love Lucy, but we gave them Howdy Doody, which preceded I Love Lucy by four years. They mumbled something about how Howdy Doody was a kid's show, but that's not what the question asked... and even though we weren't actually in the money for that one, it could have meant up to $200 for us. (At the previous championship, we uncharacteristically bet 0 on a four-parter we got correct, which would have given us $1500. Ouch

Re: Quibbles!

[word_geek]

Honestly, only the Reagan/Nixon thing bothered me, because it's so easily verified. I mean, it's not like this is some obscure fact...it's electoral totals. They have records of those. And it's not like it's from the early 1800s, and people might be uncertain. It's also not like it's currently 1985, and you could forgive a trivia-master for not having the latest data. It's pretty cut-and-dry: Nixon, 520; Reagan, 525. You don't even have to know the numbers -- I knew, from personally watching the results in 1984, that Reagan had won every state except Minnesota and DC. Dad knew, from personally watching the results in 1972, that Nixon had won every state except Massachusetts and DC. Massachusetts has more electoral votes than Minnesota (in 1972 and 1984), so Reagan had more. Simple!

It's a good thing I'm not letting this bother me, or anything.

Re: Quibbles!

[ohsochewy]

Clearly, they need a NO MANTIDS rule. Because if something's incorrect, I'll be damned if I just let things go. *shudder*

Re: Quibbles!

[malabranca]

And it gets worse with actual research! :) Finland has just under 180K islands and Canada is well into the tens of thousands (the exact number is unclear because they don't seem to have finished all the tallying).