New Scaratings

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you believe your method is successful more than 25% of the time in BTT and 20% of the time in CD, you should quit playing BT and use that time to search for the Loch Ness Monster.

Although Foo's response above was greatness.

BO

I think that BO is the Loch Ness monster. (Just kidding!)

Actually, I'm in basic agreement with BO, but there is one thing to be said about having some sort of guessing method: at least you are answering something rather than wasting time and points fretting over what is outside your control.

-- RWM

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

My guessing method is a simple five-step system:

1. Read hundreds of trivia books and reference materials
2. Play tens of thousands of BT games
3. Play in and write hundreds of live trivia events
4. Watch countless television trivia game shows
5. Hope that some of it sticks.







Or hit #3...

You got it right. I missed several questions tonight because I did not hit 3.

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"Truth Like Football. Gets kicked around much, before reaching goal." - Charlie Chan

" Don't look back, The bastards might be gaining on you." - Satchel Paige

Frank

Here's a guessing method that I picked up from Dayton: If all of the choices are names of people, guess the person with either three names or the longest overall name.

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BRB
All-time trivia champion of BWW Middletown... until Cloudy transferred there

I use that one a lot when I can't get my hands on any chicken entrails.

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"We don't do comprehensive well." Lamar Alexander.

I still go "when in doubt pick 3" and "2 hasn't come up in awhile"

BIGDOG is absoletely right...! I would expand on this idea to include all questions, where people's names are the answers. If you have no idea, but have heard of 4 of the people, and there is one name up there you have never heard of, it's going to be right 80% of the time. (No scientific, statistical, or intelligent research went into my 80% of the time assertion.) Try it, and I think you will be amazed how often it works.

p.s. Damn, I should have posted this, before BIGDOG stole my thunder.

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"The game is afoot."

JESSE has studied guessing methods more than anyone I know. One of his ideas is to go with the name that has initials in it. Another JESSE idea is to go with the answer that has some kind of punctuation in it.

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"The game is afoot."

Yeah, everyone knows about "The Longest Answer" guessing method, even though it doesn't seem to work as well as it used to. However, this is my reason not to give up on it.

Some underpaid peon at NTN has to pound away on the keyboard all day putting those questions and answers in. I would think that this person, when having to type in distractors for a question with movie title answers, would be more likely to choose something like "The Jerk" than "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" as a distractor. Eight clicks instead of thirty-one. If one choice is extremely longer than the others, I think going with it is still probably a good idea.

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"The game is afoot."

And every second of that study was useless.

BO

Well sure.
But was it as worthless as that time at TP II when he found out that I also played the SHMEKL board and asked me if I knew what it meant.
sigh...

I never should have used the word "Studied", so I will have to backtrack a little, and try to better explain what I was trying to say.

(All of this is predicated on the assumption that simply playing trivia is not a waste of time.)

I don't think JESSE actually wasted any time at all coming up with his guessing ideas. I don't think he ever made an actual study of the answers. My feeling is that he just experienced gazllions of questions, and after playing all day, every day, over the years he gradually saw patterns in the answers. (I probably should have used the word "Nearly" a couple times in the last sentence.)

His "go with the alcohol answer" idea, works pretty darn well.

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"The game is afoot."

I think I know... In Yiddish, "Schmekel" means a small coin found in pocket change. Right...?

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"The game is afoot."

Close.
You could certainly find one in a pocket.

Schmekel is the same as a schmuck.

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"Truth Like Football. Gets kicked around much, before reaching goal." - Charlie Chan

" Don't look back, The bastards might be gaining on you." - Satchel Paige

Frank

Saul Bellow is almost always the wrong answer. For years, when I had no idea, if Saul Bellow was one of the answers, I always went with him, and it was always wrong. I finally figured out that Saul Bellow was an answer that could always be ruled out.

You guessed it, the next time I saw an author question, and Saul Bellow was one of the answers, I picked somebody else. Yep, that time Saul Bellow was the right answer. However, that was just one time out of dozens. I still say, steer clear of Saul Bellow, when you don't know.

p.s. Saul passed away in 2005, so if the the question is about new literature, definitely do not go with him.

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"The game is afoot."

Never listen to someone, who shouts out an answer, who doesn't have a game box in his/her hands, and swilling down a drink at the bar. For every one time they are right, your "no idea guess" will be right many more times. If you change your guess answer to what they yell out, you will be sorry most of the time.

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"The game is afoot."

I could say the exact same thing about shouters with a box in their hands.

I did that on an occasion or two on Spotlight, BO. Shout out an answer that I thought I am sure of, then its was the first one gone and messes everyone's game. So I am GULTY AS CHARGED......LMMFAO

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Mitch (MTCHWF/WLFFLY)

Co-Home Bar: Buffalo Wild Wings Edwardsville, IL and Time Out in St Louis, MO

As in everything else in life, "that depends". If I really don't know what the answer is, and am not on a team, I'll probably listen. And my experience has been that in that situation, it's worthwhile to listen. I won't hear a correct answer 100% of the time - not even close - but it will be more reliable than my guesses.

If I do have a strong hunch, I frequently stay with that hunch even when a strong teammate thinks the answer is something else, so I certainly should stay with that hunch against the total stranger with no trivia box.

-- RWM

(Tonight, after I made the above comment, I think Cloudy's friend came over to Rookies. He had no box, had his beer in hand, was slightly drunk, and kept blurting out answers, almost all of them obviously incorrect. I ignored his suggestions while privately wishing for him to shut the hell up.

Still, I think whether to listen to someone without a box depends on the situation and also the person giving the answers.)

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

Without reading all of the previous 71 posts to make sure I'm not duplicating, we at Varsity Grill and Bar/Hooter's/Applebee's Capital Circle in Tallahassee, FL always pick the longest answer when we're not sure. Always pick fish, bird, Madonna, Shakespeare, or Napoleon.

Seriously, what is the root of the word? Shaskov for example would be Russian or Polish, not Japanese, Chinese, or English. Most of the time we just say, "I have no idea" and move on to the next question.

For those hacks who think a certain number choice comes up more frequently than others, are you aware that BT now randomly scrambles the answer order throughout the network to eliminate using the mobile PM to cheat?

Without this crutch to lean on, I'd say the numerologists won't be able to crack 10k in CD now.

Number 3 still works fo me.

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"Truth Like Football. Gets kicked around much, before reaching goal." - Charlie Chan

" Don't look back, The bastards might be gaining on you." - Satchel Paige

Frank

And over the long haul you'll be right exactly 20% of the time.