Vivaaaaaa Geek Bowl! Though it started out in Denver (and returned there for its tenth anniversary), the Geek Bowl has bounced all over the nation since 2012, and this year it landed in fabulous Las Vegas. It was a great location — plenty of fun stuff to do and an excellent venue in The Joint, which is the theater attached to the Hard Rock Hotel. Travel and lodging there are also pretty cheap, unlike last year in Boston, which was equally fun but a much more expensive destination.
I’m a little startled to notice that this year was my own 10th anniversary of Geek Bowling. I keep coming back because Geeks Who Drink puts on a fantastic event, and I somehow have found myself on an incredible trivia team. We won Geek Bowl VIII in 2014 as “How I Met Your Mothra”, and have stuck with variations on the Mothra theme ever since. This year we were “A Mothra Day In Paradise”, because (trivia!) much of what we call “Las Vegas” is actually located in the town of Paradise, Nevada. Plus, the Hard Rock Hotel itself is located on Paradise Road.
Mothra had a phenomenal run of success a few years ago, placing first, second, and second in three consecutive Geek Bowls. We had (for us) a bad year after that, coming in 15th, then battled back in Boston to claim 6th place. No cash prize for that one (money only gets awarded to the top four places), but still a showing to be proud of. This year we had seven great rounds and one really rough one, and still managed to place 7th! On the one hand, it’s frustrating, because we were within a question or two of cash. On the other hand, 7th out of 240 teams is astonishing, especially when you consider the competition.
Concentrated Brainpower
See, Geek Bowl has become a premier, elite event, and that means that it attracts the cream of the trivia world — people who run their own trivia companies, people who construct puzzles for a living, people who’ve had legendary runs on game shows like Jeopardy! and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. I stayed at the Hard Rock and the guy who checked me in said, “Yeah, right before you I checked in the first woman to win the million dollar prize on Millionaire.” There was a video that surfaced from the weekend (taken by a member of the winning team, as it turned out), of a crowd gathered in a bar watching the Jeopardy! All-Star Tournament. In the crowd: many of the same faces from the tournament itself. In fact, Geek Bowl has gathered such momentum that there are now supplementary, unaffiliated trivia events attached to it, such as America’s Quizzing Championships (AQC) and the Toutant Trivia Tournament. The Geeks have recognized this trend by instituting the “amateur prize” — cash for the highest-placing team that includes no previous Geek Bowl winners and nobody who has won more than $10,000 on a game show. This year, the team that won that prize came in ninth overall.
To me, this gathering of trivia royalty has become a very cool side benefit of the annual weekend — a chance to hang with some of the best of the best, and sometimes get creamed competing with them in buzzer games, should the chance present itself. That in fact happened in Vegas, and contrary to the rules I’m going to take it out of Vegas by posting it here, but not just yet. First, I would like to give it up for some of the smartest, funniest, and friendliest teammates ever to grace a trivia table. Ladies and gentlemen, A Mothra Day In Paradise:
From left, that’s me, Don, Jonathan, George, Larry, and Brian. As is our habit, we spent some pleasant time together prior to the Geek Bowl, quizzing each other with warmup questions — some rounds we wrote, some name-that-tune, and some prefab trivia cards. Five of us got together Friday night (Don wouldn’t arrive til Saturday morning), along with Brian and George’s wives, and ate at Block 16 in the Cosmopolitan, where one of podcaster Brian’s listeners very graciously comped our dinners. Woo, just got to Vegas and winning already!
Then Larry, Jonathan, and I headed to the Toutant Trivia Tournament, which turned out to be many rounds of five-person simulated Jeopardy!, thanks to Bill Schantz and his marvelous J! Simulator, as well as the many excellent writers who submitted questions for the event. At the Tournament (which was really more like a Basement Bowl) were some of those trivia celebrities, either famous from TV or just famous to me because they’re some of the best in the nation and I see them ply their craft on LearnedLeague and elsewhere. So much fun getting to play against a crowd like that, and I have to say I did okay, considering.
Saturday was lunch at the Wicked Spoon Buffet, again in the Cosmopolitan, which involved standing in line for 45 minutes so that you could get in the 30 minute line, but once inside the food was ah-MAZING. So many things, so unbelievably good. Just fantastic. (Also, winning $100 on the Simpsons slot machine just before lunch was pretty sweet too.) That time there were still five of us (plus spouses) — we’d gained Don but lost Jonathan to the AQC, which took place all morning and afternoon on Saturday.
After noshing all the nosh we could possibly nosh, we headed to a quiet back room in the Hofbräuhaus, a German-style beer hall across the street from the Hard Rock. The staff there was reasonably gracious about the fact that we were drinking but not really eating anything, because we couldn’t possibly. (We left ’em a nice tip.) We did a lot of audio and question warmups, joined by Jonathan once he was done AQC-ing for the day, and then headed over to enter the Geek Bowl!
Mothra’s Rules of Pub Trivia
We found our table, which had the unexpected bonus of being draped with flags honoring our two championships. (Larry, George, Brian, and I were on a team that won Geek Bowl V.) Also on the table was this plate of cheese and crackers:
Oh, Geeks. Dick-shaped crackers. Maybe couldn’t afford the vegetables for a crudités platter, so went for a crudity platter instead? Though no doubt such “specialty” crackers don’t come cheap either — pretty sure the Masterpiece Cakeshop gave ’em a hard pass. (As it were.)
No, I knew what it was about — this was a punny edible tribute to the night’s musical headliners, Richard Cheese and Lounge Against The Machine. These guys are a comedy/music act, crooning various popular songs Sinatra-style, especially songs from the worlds of hard rock and explicit rap. Imagine the lyrics to Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” sung by Bill Murray’s Nick The Lounge Singer character, except backed by a full band playing well, and you’ve pretty much got the gag. It’s fun. A bit repetitive, but fun.
Anyway, once we were at the table, it was time for the annual reading of Team Mothra’s trivia rules, though it turned out to have been a tactical error to have waited, because the music in there was really fucking loud. Nevertheless, we persisted, with me belting ’em out to the back row:
- Read/listen to the damn question.
- Read it again.
- Pay attention to the category.
- Don’t interrupt the question/audio; let it finish before guessing out loud.
- If you think of an answer, say it/write it.
- Make sure at least two other teammates hear/see it.
- If you heard a teammate suggest a good possible answer that’s not being discussed, throw it out there again.
- Everyone look over each answer sheet before turning it in.
- If the answer is a name and surnames are enough, we don’t need to write the first name.
- If spelling doesn’t count, don’t sweat it. Likewise for punctuation.
- If an answer is used once in a quiz, nothing prevents that answer from being used later in the same quiz (the Quincy Jones Rule).
- Avoid facetious answers (the Ernie Banks Rule – so named after we got a question wrong in a practice round when somebody jokingly said that Ernie Banks, aka “Mr. Cub”, was “obviously from the Mets,” and then our non-sporty scribe dutifully wrote down “Mets.” Heh.)
- Put an answer for each question, even if the whole team believes it’s probably/certainly wrong. You can object to that bad answer, but have a better answer at the ready.
- If you are 100% sure that your answer is right, say so.
- For that matter, try to indicate your confidence level on all answers.
- Focus discussion on answers that aren’t “locked”.
That last rule is a new one, meant to help address a weak spot from last year, where we didn’t realize that one of our answers needed more discussion. Geek Bowl rounds are high-pressure, with only two short minutes from the time the last question is read to the time when all answers are due. These rules give us our best shot at quickly sifting through our thoughts on the questions, putting our heads together in the most efficient and effective way possible.
With the rules freshly read, we were ready to Bowl! And for those of you uncertain as to what that means…
The Geek Bowl Format
This is the part where I copy and paste the same explanations and disclaimers I include in this post every year, with a few alterations as appropriate. If you already know the drill, feel free to skip down to Tiebreaker.
As I’ve done in previous years, I’m going to recap the questions and answers here. A few caveats about this, though. First, the Geeks are pretty careful about their intellectual property, and the agreement we’ve worked out is that I won’t post these recaps until at least a week has elapsed since the Geek Bowl. (Though all things considered I’d have a hard time getting this together in less time anyway!)
Second, I consider these recaps a tribute to the excellent question writers of the Geek Bowl, and an advertisement for a really fun event, but I am in no way officially associated with Geeks Who Drink. However, thanks to Geeks editor-in-chief Christopher Short, I have been supplied with question material this year! Prior to Geek Bowl 12, these recaps were based off notes, memories, and photos of question slides, and in fact many of my descriptions will still suffer from this circumstance, but at least the wording of the questions will be correct. Huge thanks to Christopher for the help, and anything remaining that sucks is my fault, not the Geeks’.
The GWD question material leans heavy on pop-culture and light (though not zero) on sports. In between, there is plenty of academic trivia: history, geography, science, and so forth. There’s also generally a certain amount of edgy (or sophomoric, depending on your point of view) content each year — witness the dick-shaped crackers. However, they’ve moved beyond the place where this feels like an obligatory part of the evening, and are moving towards a tone where (most) anything goes, but there isn’t a raunch quota they always have to meet. I heartily approve of this direction. I don’t have a problem with filth and profanity, or else I wouldn’t have kept coming back, but it’s lovely to feel like they’re no longer a compulsory part of the brand.
Here’s the format: each team has its own small table, with 6 chairs. (Except for a few teams who ended up in fixed seats. As always, I salute you, fixed seat teams!) Quizmasters read questions from the stage, and the questions are also projected onto large screens throughout the venue. One rounds is all-video, meaning that rather than anyone reading questions, the whole round is encapsulated in a video presentation on the screens. Once all the questions in a round have been asked, a two minute timer starts, by the end of which you must have turned in your answer sheet to one of the roaming quizmasters.
The game consists of 8 rounds, each with its own theme. Each round contains 8 questions — usually, each question is worth one point, so there’s a maximum possible score of 8 points for each round. However, some rounds offer extra points — for instance, Round 2 is traditionally a music round, with 8 songs played, and one point each awarded for naming the title and artist of the song. In a regular GWD pub quiz, it’s usually only Round 2 and Round 8 (always the “Random Knowledge” round) that offer 16 possible points. However, in this year’s Geek Bowl, Round 3 also offered 16 possible points. (Actually, the pre-printed answer sheets made it look like there were going to be five 16-point rounds, but this turned out to be an error.)
Finally, a team can choose one round to “joker”, meaning that it earns double points for that round. Obviously, you’d want that to be one of the 16-point rounds, unless you really believed you wouldn’t score above 8 in any of them, which is highly unlikely. We discussed our jokering strategy ahead of time, and decided on thresholds. Our threshold for the music round was 14, and our Round 3 threshold was 13. Failing either of those, we knew we’d have no choice but to joker Round 8.
Tiebreaker
Usually Geek Bowl opens with a big splashy number, but this year the first thing that happened (after a video warning everybody not to cheat) was related to the Bowl’s charitable partner, Opportunity Village. For the last few years, Geek Bowl has been a “Quiz For A Cause”, with some proceeds going to a local charity. Opportunity Village’s mission is to serve people with intellectual and other disabilities, creating opportunities for them to participate in society at large to the fullest extent possible. In that spirit, a few of the Village’s beneficiaries were invited to read the official Geek Bowl XIII tiebreaker question.
The format for this question is to take a few questions, all of which have numerical answers, and combine them into a formula. Some of these questions are nearly impossible to know exactly, so you have to approximate. The Geeks then use these answers to determine placement among teams whose overall scores are identical — the closer you get to the correct final number (on either side), the better.
This year’s tiebreaker had a bit of Vegas flavor, and since I’m about to report it, I guess the question recap has officially begun! As always, I’ll describe our team’s experiences inside [square brackets], and provide the answers in a separate post.
Take the year that Haiti declared independence from France. Add to that the number of Foot Locker stores in the world. Now multiply that sum by the number of legal brothels in Nevada. Now divide that product by the number of human figures in the MySpace logo. Or, to put it a bit more formulaically:
[(H + F) x B] / M
Where H = year of Haiti’s independence, F = worldwide Foot Locker stores, B = legal brothels in Nevada, and M = human figures in the MySpace logo.
Now it was time for the big number, and out came Richard Cheese, who in turn introduced our host for the evening, Fort Collins quizmaster Jenna Riedi. The two of them did a funny song parodying everything about Las Vegas. The whole thing wound up with the full Vegas treatment, including a parade of featherheaded ladies dancing behind the performers. (Well, maybe not the full Vegas treatment, but at least a PG version thereof.)
Soon enough, it was time for…
Round One: You Just Ate This Round
[Now, this was a proud moment for me. Remember how I said that the Mothrans were quizzing each other with homemade warmup rounds? One of the things we try to do in those is to pretend that we’re Geek Bowl writers and anticipate what sorts of rounds may be written. Somebody wrote a round with all 13-related answers, for Geek Bowl 13. Somebody wrote a round in which all the questions related to different Vegas casinos. And I wrote a round in which every question mentioned a different kind of cheese, in honor of the musical guest. Well, I was pretty damn close.]
1. Suburban housewife, junior college student, and Zoya the Destroya. That’s on the TV résumé of what adorable star?
2. The multi-culti cartoon dog Ren Hoëk has a Dutch-ish name, but belongs to what breed that descends from Toltec times?
3. The rhyming nickname for Martina Hingis, and a shitty hot chocolate brand that’s not even from the Alps. What name refers to both?
4. Kumail Nanjiani culture-clashed in The Big Sick when he met his sorta-ex-girlfriend’s parents, played by Holly Hunter and what whitest man ever?
5. A company started by Muhammad Ali’s wife, an L.L. Cool J album, and a bunch of obnoxious Tom Brady fans have all used what acronym?
6. Some 5,000 miles west of the Netherlands, you’ll find what 1940s structure that Woody Guthrie once sang about for the Bonneville Power Administration?
7. Narrated by the daughter of intergalactic refugees Alana and Marko, an Eisner-winning comic series by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples goes by what generic-ass title? [All three comicbook geeks at our table (me, Brian, and George) locked in on this one.]
8. Barely ten weeks after the whole black-guy arrest thing last spring, another Starbucks employee got fired for mocking a customer’s speech impediment, in what East Coast shithole town?
[Also, I guess it turns out that the cheeses on the plate were the 8 cheeses named in this round. In any case, we aced it. Great start!]
See the answers
Round 2: You Win Some, You Lose Some
In the pub version of Geeks Who Drink, Round 2 is always a music round, asked via mp3 clips. Sometimes the recordings are a little askew (e.g. lullaby versions of songs, or slowed-down versions of songs, or 8-bit versions of songs, etc.), and sometimes the theme is a little different (e.g. name the song and then figure out what chemical element abbreviation is made by the artist’s initials), but one way or another, there are 8 questions worth 2 points each, requiring some music knowledge, and Geek Bowl is no different. This means that Geeks Who Drink in general selects pretty distinctly for geeks with popular music knowledge, and generally our team is quite strong in this category. But tonight, hoo boy, tonight was a different story.
We really struggled in Round 2 this year, and I think it comes down to a few different factors. First among these was the musical act itself. Now, Geek Bowl has been doing a live music round for as long as I’ve been attending it. For a while there it was a different band/act for every single question in the round (whew!), and for the last few years it’s settled into one headlining act doing the whole round. That’s how it was this year, but having Richard Cheese be that act added a new dimension of challenge to the music round. See, we’ve had crazy acts before (a mariachi band, a heavy metal mariachi band, The Dan Band, etc.), but all of those acts have more or less kept the musical portions of their covers intact from the original, albeit reinterpreted. Cheese, on the other hand, throws out a lot of the instrumentation and melody of the original song when he does a cover, replacing the tune with crooning or talk-singing, and taking the arrangements in wildly different directions. This is great for fun and originality, but it tends to turn name-that-tune into something more like identify-these-lyrics. That cuts out the strength of a couple of our music stalwarts.
Secondly, unlike many previous years, Cheese only did each song once, which made the lyric thing even more challenging as we’re trying madly to scribble down words we know we won’t get a chance to revisit, in clips that often felt very short indeed. Not to mention, the house lights were turned way down, so we could barely see the words we scribbled. Finally, the songs chosen just hit a bunch of weak genre/era areas for us. And that’s nobody’s fault but ours.
The Geeks have now posted video of this round, but the Cheese slices (sorry) are right up against the answers, which makes it hard to quiz yourself. So here’s what I’m gonna do. The video will go in the answers post, but here you just get my lyric transcriptions. (Which are now much better for having seen the video.) I swear listening to Cheese himself doesn’t give you much more information. Watch the video and see if you don’t agree.
This was allegedly a round about winning and losing, but in our experience (and really, based on the songs too), it was mostly about losing.
1. Snap back to reality, ope there goes gravity, ope
There goes Rabbit, he choked, he’s so mad but he won’t
Give up that easy, no, he won’t have it, he knows
His whole back’s to these ropes, it don’t matter, he’s dope
[“Hey, this won’t be so hard.”]
2. Consider this, consider this
The hint of the century
Consider this the slip
That brought me to my knees, failed
What if all these fantasies come flailing around?
Now I’ve said too much
[“Awesome! We are going to kill this round.”]
3. Hit me!
I put it right there made it easy for you to get to
Now you act like you don’t know what to do
After I done done everything that you asked me
Grabbed you
Grind you
Liked you
Tried you
Move so fast
Baby now I can’t find you
[Annnnnd here’s where it all started to fall apart.]
4. I just fell, I don’t know why
Something’s there we can’t deny…
And when I first knew
Was when I first looked at you
5. A day late, a buck short, I’m writing the report
On losing and failing, when I move I’m flailing now
6. Got so much to lose
Got so much to prove
God don’t let me lose my mind
7. We belong together
And you know that I am right
Why do you play with my heart?
Why do you play with my mind?
Said we’d be forever
Said it’d never die
How could you love me and leave me
And never say good-bye?
8. I was in my room and just staring at the wall
Thinking about everything
But then again I was thinking about nothing at all
“Mom, just get me a Pepsi, please? All I want is a Pepsi”
And she wouldn’t give it to me
Just one Pepsi
[This one we knew, at least. Not sure how it relates to the theme, but whatever.]
[Eee-yikes. That’d be 6 points, out of a possible 16. Not good. Combined with our previous 8, we now had 14 points.]
See the answers
Round 3: Don’t Be A Buster
Round 3 at Geek Bowl (and in Geeks Who Drink broadly) is usually some kind of gimmick round — true/false, this or that, speed round, etc. The past few years at Geek Bowl, it’s been 7 true/false questions and an 8-point speed round on the final question, for a total of 15.
This year, we could see it was going to be different. The answer sheets marked it as a 16-point round, with 8 questions, each of which had a pre-printed “A”, “B”, and “C” on it.
It turned out to be a blackjack-themed round, and the second-cleverest concept from this year’s Geek Bowl. Here’s the Geeks’ explanation:
We’ll give you three questions with numeric answers. Two of those will add up to 21. If you hit 21 on the dot, you get TWO points. If you’re under, you get ONE point. If you’re over — or if you don’t circle exactly two choices — you get NOTHING.
EXAMPLE:
A. The age of Shirley Temple when she signed her first film contract.
B. The age of Barron Trump right now.
C. The legal smoking age in Nevada.
Shirley Temple was 3 when she got her first contract. Barron Trump is 12 today. The legal smoking age in Nevada is 18. Thus, A and C are the two-point answer. A and B would be a 1-point answer. B and C, or any other answer, is worth zero.
We loved the concept of this round, though it turned out to be a very intense experience, with basically triple the usual number of questions to answer.
1.
A. Lakers’ NBA titles.
B. Steelers’ Super Bowl titles.
C. Brazil’s FIFA World Cup titles.
[Thank you to sporty Mothrans Don, Larry, and Jonathan.]
2. Billboard Hot 100 #1 singles as a lead artist:
A. Madonna.
B. Rihanna. [Larry was very confident on this one, which gave us a great anchor.]
C. Katy Perry.
3.
A. Number of TV seasons for Gunsmoke [Somehow I just knew this number. Not sure why.]
B. Number of TV seasons for Wonderfalls
C. Number of TV seasons for Numb3rs
4.
A. Number of human pituitary glands.
B. Number of human baby teeth. [Jonathan had this cold.]
C. Pairs of human cranial nerves.
5.
A. Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon novels. [Don had a confident answer on this one, not locked but confident.]
B. Books in the main “Left Behind” series. [George had the same on this one. (Not the same answer — the same confidence level.)]
C. Books in the main “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series. [Nope, nobody had this one.]
6.
A. Number of Canadian provinces.
B. Number of Canadian teams in the NHL.
C. Total number of astronauts recruited by the Canadian Space Agency.
[We were very clear on the first two, which was all the guidance we needed.]
7.
A. British Commonwealth nations in Africa.
B. African U.N. member states that start with Z. [Several people locked this part.]
C. African nations in the top 100 on the 2018 Human Freedom Index.
8. Including straight-to-video:
A. Hellraiser movies.
B. Land Before Time movies.
C. Police Academy movies.
[This round was super duper fun, and we loved the concept, but the time limit was very, very challenging. We were pushing hard to get our answers nailed down for all the questions within the two-minute window, and as the proctor came up to collect our answer sheet, I was shouting, “ARE WE JOKERING? ARE WE JOKERING?” We very quickly made the decision that we didn’t feel confident enough that we had 13, so we didn’t joker, meaning that we would definitely be jokering Round 8.
As it turned out, this would have been a great round for us to joker. Thanks to an outstanding team effort, Mothra ended up with a perfect score on this round, for a total of 30.]
See the answers
After Round 3, it was time for a scoring break, which meant that Richard Cheese came out to play some of the songs from his regular repertoire. Then he played some more. He seemed to play for an unusually long time. We started to feel the shades of much earlier Geek Bowls, in which scoring breaks stretched to crazy lengths. The Geeks seemed to have whipped this problem in recent years, so the extended Cheese-fest was feeling like a throwback. Not only that, it made the lack of repetition in Round 2 and the harsh time limit (considering the number of questions) in Round 3 feel a little more frustrating. If there’s any knock on this year’s Geek Bowl, it’s that there were pacing problems throughout — a lot of “hurry up and wait.”
One thing that ameliorated this, though, was the fact that the Geeks have really stepped up their PowerPoint joke game. For many years, the Geeks have had a PowerPoint slideshow playing before the Bowl, after the Bowl, and between rounds, generally with lots of gags relating to the host city, but this year there were both more jokes and funnier jokes, or so it seemed to me. A couple of my favorites:
There was also time to check out the incredible food spread. This year’s Geek Bowl was a giant leap forward in terms of the food provided, including mini-cupcakes with the Geek Bowl 13 logo on them. How cool is that? Anyway, the scores finally rolled. A Mothra Day In Paradise was in 45th place, out of 246 teams listed.
Round 4: Splitsville!
Vegas is the divorce capital of the world, so this round is called Splitsville!
1. Square peg Tris Prior is the main character in what oddly-best-selling young adult series? [Great team effort puzzling this one out. I think it was Don who finally hit upon the right answer.]
2. The very first atomic fission experiment karate-chopped uranium into what other, more enema-tastic alkaline earth metal?
3. Having peaced out in 1847, the Missouri Synod now ranks behind the ELCA as the second-largest U.S. body of what Protestant branch? [In a Slumdog Millionaire moment, this question related directly to Don’s childhood.]
4. Good look, guys: What 1896 Supreme Court case gave a judicial-branch imprimatur to “separate but equal” facilities?
5. Fred Martin may have created it, but Bruce Sutter definitely popularized what breaking pitch?
6. Tammy Wynette had a hit with “D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” around the same time she split from Don Chapel and married what other country legend?
7. The breakup of Czechoslovakia was pretty amicable, but it did cause the resignation of what playwright-president with way too many V’s in his name?
8. Hanumanasana is the original Sanskrit name for what beastly yoga pose that’s literally just a split? [Jonathan, bless him, got this from the Sanskrit.]
[Another perfect round for us, taking our score to 38.]
See the answers
Round 5: FrankenBarry Manilow
Round 5 in typical Geeks Who Drink is a visual round, meaning a half-sheet of paper with some image-oriented challenge on it. Round 5 in Geek Bowl raises the bar up to video, and the Geeks’ video productions have been top-notch for a while.
Lucky for me, they’ve posted this video, so I don’t have to try to describe it. Fair warning, though, that the answers are interspersed throughout, so exercise that pause button if you want to try guessing them yourselves.
[7 out of 8 for us on this one — more details in the answers post. Anyway, our total now stood at 45 points.]
See the answers
Round 6: We’re Here, We’re Querying
The Geeks recognize that their core audience is a lot of white dudes, and so they’ll often try to add a little challenge (and maybe do a little education) with rounds on minority groups and topics. This time, it was a round on LGBTQ+ people in the sciences and humanities.
1. Before predicting a few election outcomes, Nate Silver worked with what 12-letter realm of baseball stats that have nothing to do with swords? [I usually know zilch about sports, but somehow I knew this. Perhaps from seeing the movie Moneyball? Like 3 other teammates were on it before I opened my mouth, but I was a little pleased with myself anyway.]
2. At the forefront of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes used repeated phrasing and syncopated rhythms to bring us what musically-inspired poetry form?
3. Cooked up by pathologist Louise Pearce in 1919, tryparsamide saved millions from what tsetse-borne disease?
4. Pearce’s roommate, medical researcher Sara Josephine Baker got her greatest claim to fame in 1907, helping to identify what famous Patient Zero?
5. Alexander von Humboldt is best known for a big 19th-century science treatise, which resurrected what ancient word for the whole ordered universe?
6. Sally Ride was famously the first American woman in space, duh. She went there on what shuttle named for a 19th-century British research vessel? [We started to go wrong on this but Jonathan steered us back to the correct course.]
7. Revelations is the signature work of what alphabetically advantaged New York dance icon, who once worked in a nightclub duo with Maya Angelou?
8. AIDS researcher Bruce Voeller set up a foundation whose name was what Spanish word for “butterfly,” that’s also Mexican slang for “gay”?
[Another 7 on this round, for a total of 52.]
See the answers
After this was a scoring break and more Richard Cheese. Quite a lot of Richard Cheese, which ended at some point, leaving Riedi to kind of helplessly vamp up on stage. Timely score tabulation was definitely an issue at this year’s Geek Bowl. They did throw in some “Jay Walking” style videos with Riedi on the street accosting passers by and asking them questions from previous Geek Bowls. Here’s an example.
They also did a lovely In Memoriam video. This is a Geek Bowl tradition — it starts out with various pop culture figures who’ve died in the past year, then moves on to fictional characters who died in the past year’s worth of TV shows and movies. Richard Cheese accompanied it with his version of Metallica’s “Fade To Black”. Here it is, but spoiler warnings for the following: Arrow, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Good Place, The Conners, Black Panther, A Star Is Born, and Avengers: Infinity War. If you’re spoiler-allergic, you can watch up to 3:28, then pick it up again at 4:09.
For those of you who didn’t watch it: this year’s video included a very touching tribute to Ed Toutant, a quizzing legend (and CU Trivia Bowl winner) who won $1.86 million on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in a remarkable comeback story. I met Ed a number of times at various trivia functions, and he couldn’t have been a nicer guy. He is very much missed, and I loved that the Geeks tipped their hats to him.
At last, the scores rolled once again. A Mothra Day In Paradise was at #21! Considering that we hadn’t jokered yet, we were very pleased to be ranked that highly.
Round 7: Street Theater
Remember how I said that Round 3 was the second-cleverest idea at this year’s Geek Bowl? Well, this was the best one. The Round 7 quizmasters started off by talking about the Fremont Street Experience in Downtown Vegas, and then explained that they were going to bring that experience into this year’s Geek Bowl. For those not in the know (which included me), this means street performers! Every question in this round was presented by a different street performer, each of whom did a little of their act, in a way that each time was a hint to the answer.
There is video of this round as well, but as with the Round 2 video, but the clips of the performers are a bit abbreviated, and the answers are in the video. Once again, you’ll find it in the answers post, and I’ll just leave my original descriptions here.
1. Three Elvis impersonators come out, one of whom is a little person. The larger two sit down to get to his level, then the three of them exchange this dialogue:
“You don’t even know what’s inside these bunkers, do you?”
“Rolexes.”
“Rolexes are swell, but I’m talking about Kuwaiti bullion.”
“You mean the little cubes you put in hot water for soup?”
“No. Not the little cubes you put in hot water for soup.”
“Gold bricks.”
“5 kilos each, $50,000 in today’s market.”
“For one gold brick?”
“I’m sure Mr. Hussein has divided his bricks into many different hiding places, but just one hiding place should be easy to take, and that would be enough to get us out of our day jobs.”
At this point, a slide comes up reading, “Name the 1999 movie.”
2. A guy sets up a bunch of overturned buckets, then plays an awesome drum solo on them. He is handed a mic, and reads:
“Drive a Shelby Mustang. Kiss the most beautiful girl in the world. Get a tattoo. Skydiving. Visit Stonehenge. Drive a motorcycle on the Great Wall Of China.”
Slide: “Name the 2007 movie.”
3. This was the most amazing one of all. There’s a safe — not a big one — on stage. Out comes a guy in a full-body suit with an alligator print on it. Turns out the guy is a contortionist. In some inexplicable, astounding way, he gets himself into the safe, reaching out through a little trapdoor to spin the wheel locking it from the outside. A Geek holds a mic up to the side of the safe, and out comes the guy’s voice:
“WHAT’S IN THE BOX???”
Slide: “Name the 1995 movie.”
4. A magician makes things appear and disappear, including a wineglass, handkerchiefs, etc. While he’s doing this act, he says this:
“Rule number one, this is the, what can you touch and not touch. Can you touch this? Can you touch this? No no no no no no. Second touch. Can you touch this? Can you touch this? No no no no no no no. And finally, last one ladies, can you touch this? Can you ever touch this? Well that too the law says you cannot touch. But I think I see a lotta lawbreakers up in this house tonight.”
Slide: “Name the 2012 movie.”
5. Three women come out and do a jump rope act. During the act, they read the following lines:
“We’re reviving a canceled undercover police program from the ’80s and revamping it for modern times. You see, the guys in charge of this stuff lack creativity and are completely out of ideas, so all they do now is recycle shit from the past and expect us all not to notice.”
Slide: “Name the 2012 movie.”
6. A ventriloquist act. The ventriloquist and his dummy sing part of Gene Pitney’s “Town Without Pity.” Finally, the dummy says:
“Now that’s entertainment!”
Slide: “Name the 1989 movie.”
7. Three people in full-body animal costumes dance and sing to “Shout” by the Isley Brothers.
Slide: “Name the 1978 movie.”
8. Two more little people, this time dressed in quasi-Game Of Thrones garb. They fight, and dialogue:
“I want to know what’s going on. No one just gets as good as you do. Especially you. Start talking! Are you training with someone?”
“Uh, uh, training? I didn’t–”
“It better not involve this.”
“I, I know, this… looks really bad, but, you see, this is uh… Uh, you’re right! You’re right, you’re right. I, I’m through with the lies, I’ve been making… outfits! So, you got me. It’s time everyone knew. Drag me back, go ahead… here we go… OW! Why would you do that?”
“That’s for the lies! And that’s… for everything else!”
Slide: “Name the 2010 movie.”
[We really struggled on #6, but otherwise did well on this round. 7 out of 8, for a total of 59 points.]
See the answers and video
Round 8: Random Knowledge
Time at last for the final round, and our inevitable joker. Round 8 in Geeks Who Drink is always themeless, or rather I guess I should say each question has its own theme. In Geek Bowl, the questions in this round are always worth two points apiece.
1. a) “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” was a Mustafa-rific slogan for what personal-care brand? b) What big-ass company owns that brand?
2. a) A citrus fruit called the tumbo was the traditional fish-curing agent for what Peruvian national dish? b) And according to their creation myth, the Aztecs got chocolate from what feathered-serpent god? [I didn’t track who got part A of this question — I just had a moment of feeling very grateful for my team, because somebody had it locked.]
3. a) What robot-fighting game character bizarrely debuted as an air freshener in Sega’s 1991 arcade racer Rad Mobile? b) In 2018, Styx concerts finally included what operatic prison-break anthem? [Thank you Brian for being dialed into video game questions. George and I debated through the Styx part and did hit on the correct answer.]
4. a) In November 2016, Jayna Zweiman and Krista Suh co-founded what yarn-based activist movement? b) And a main character bailed on an intervention and got 20 years for grand theft auto, in what 1908 kid-lit classic? [Jonathan nailed part B, and I came up with a reasonable guess for part A.]
5. Two Creed points: a) Long before The Office, Creed Bratton played on the #5 hit “Midnight Confessions” for what band? b) What do Christians call their still-repeated statement of orthodox faith against Arianism?
6. Since 2000, Jeff Bezos has founded a space tourism company and bought up a major newspaper. Name both ventures.
7. Two Ramsay TV questions: a) Did Hell’s Kitchen originally air in the United States or Britain? b) Actor Iwan Rheon starred in what failed Marvel show that’s also a fair description of his Game of Thrones character? [Part A was essentially a coin flip — we debated, voted, came up with the wrong answer. Oh well.]
8. I’ll name a sports tournament, you name the current reigning runners-up: a) FIFA World Cup? b) Stanley Cup Final?
[We had a very good Round 8 — 14 points, doubled by our joker to 28. We ended Geek Bowl XIII with 87 total points.]
See the answers
There was one last long, long scoring break, so long that Richard Cheese was cracking jokes about how many more songs he’d have to do. Brian, who has actually hired Cheese before for a podcast event, had no doubt that Cheese was charging them extra for the additional time. Oh well, it was more enjoyable than nonplussed quizmasters would have been. Also, I should mention here that various people approached me throughout the night to let me know that they enjoy these recaps, which was quite touching. They’re fun for me to do, and I love knowing that they provide a little entertainment to others as well.
At last, the final standings were ready, and Geek Bowl 10 winners Shiny & Chrome emerged victorious once again. Huge congratulations to those trivia titans, to everybody else who came out and played, and to Geeks Who Drink for putting on another extraordinary live trivia event. The final video let us all know that Geek Bowl XIV will take place in Chicago! See you then and there!
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