New Scaratings

Or should that read “snow down” recap for 25 July? Yep it’s pretty close to Christmas in July here in BUZZLAND. Will the Buzzheads bestow gifts for us all before the month ends? Well at least BLZBUB has some ideas for gifts that he wishes were bestowed across the Showdown Nation.

For starters, BLZBUB would like to gift Buzztime with a competent proofreader for their Showdown games. In particular, he’d like to see one that could excise countdown clues that simultaneously eliminate two possible answers or are unambiguous. Of course, this is not a problem in the “clueless”…

Worn-up Round

1. In which state U.S. state will you find Donner Pass and Donner Lake? CALIFORNIA. 2. Like snakes, monitor lizards have ___ with which they sense odors: FORKED TONGUES. 3. Jillian Michaels is known as America’s toughest: PERSONAL TRAINER. 4. Which mathematical formula yields an odd number: 84 DIVIDED BY 4. 5. In Greek mythology, the Gods feed on nectar and AMBROSIA. 6. Rotavirus is the most common cause of severe ___ in infants and young children: DIARRHEA. 7. Which performer just won an unprecedented sixth Tony Award: AUDRA MCDONALD. 8. A sesamoid bone is one embedded within a/an: TENDON. 9. Roxane is the beloved of this Edmond Rostand character: CYRANO. 10. The Inner and Outer Hebrides are island groups off the west coast of: SCOTLAND.

Another group deserving of a gift are all those locations that have been operating at least five years with the blue Playmakers. Special consideration should be given to the hinterlands of this great nation that see a tech service rep about as often as a solar eclipse. The blue boxes should either be rotated out with refurbished machines or, better yet, replaced with the new tablets. This would help reduce dead-battery frustration during the…

Ground-down Round

1. By definition, a modiste makes: WOMEN’S CLOTHING. 2. When he retired from General Electric, he took a severance payment of $417 Million: JACK WELCH. 3. Ultramontanism is a perspective most likely held by a: ROMAN CATHOLIC. 4. Catherine de’ Medici was a powerless queen and then a powerful queen mother in the 16th Century: FRANCE. 5. Johannes Vermeer’s “The Art of Painting” features a model dressed as: CLIO THE MUSE OF HISTORY. 6. The Ubangi River is located in: AFRICA. 7. Nick and Nora Charles are the central characters in this Dashiell Hammett novel: THE THIN MAN. 8. He illustrated Hawthorne’s “Tanglewood Tales” and Baum’s “Mother Goose in Prose”: MAXFIELD PARRISH. 9. Ignominy is defined as: DEEP DISGRACE. 10. Don Alvaro is the tenor role in this Verdi opera: LA FORZA DEL DESTINO. 11. Meaning a person who rules in the name of a king, “Viceroy” was first used by the: CROWN OF ARAGON. 12. The Robert de Nero Sr. Prize is given annually to an American: PAINTER.

Another gift that would be surely welcomed by many teams would be the addition of some top-notch experts on the Classics. Perhaps the Buzzies should throw on some advertisements that teams are looking to recruit academics for a highly competitive knowledge-based trivia game on Tuesday nights. They could even create a registry for new players to contact existing teams, or perhaps direct the newbies to a registry within SCAratings.com. Many weeks, these new folks would be highly welcomed during the…

Scatology Round

S1. PRISONERS OF WAR v classical music
U.S. soldiers Shoshana Johnson and Jessica Lynch were held as prisoners of war in: IRAQ.

S2. Foreign cinema v WORLD GEOGRAPHY
The Line Islands, a chain of atolls and coral islands, are directly south of the: HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.

S3. Ancient History v RESTAURANTS
Le Cirque, founded in 1974, is a famed French restaurant located in:
MANHATTAN.

S4. WORLD GEOGRAPHY v prisoners of war
The Ligurian Sea separates ___ and ___:
CORSICA – ITALY.

S5. RESTAURANTS v foreign cinema
This unique Chicago restaurant operates like a theater with changing productions:
NEXT.

S6. Classical music v ANCIENT HISTORY
Babur, a descendant of ___ and ___ founded the Mughal Empire:
TIMUR – GENGHIS KHAN.

BLZBUB would also like to “bless” the various teams across the nation with host locations that actually welcome “trivots” on Tuesday nights. These would be locations with supportive management, quieter environments, and perhaps some cool drink and appetizer specials. This would surely make it easier to concentrate during the…

Frightening Round

1. The 2014 Tour de France began in ___ for the first time since 2007: ENGLAND. 2. “Rage and Fury” and “African Holocaust” are albums by this reggae act: STEEL PULSE. 3. The clementine is a hybrid of two types of: ORANGES. 4. Michel Martelly is the current president of this country: HAITI. 5. “___: A Court of One” is an acclaimed biography of a Supreme Court Justice: SCALIA. 6. Homo Ergaster, name of an extinct hominid, means: WORKING MAN. 7. A five-day tribute to this folk singer who died in 2014 was just held in New York: PETE SEEGER.

BLZBUB speaks for many when he reminds the Buzzons that there is one giant gift that may be the most highly-desired of them all. It need only be one night of the week, Tuesday. That gift would be the reunification of the Showdown game to a truly nation-wide event. At least that would curtail the temptation of players in the West to ask players from the east for clues to the…

Py-Ram-It Round

P1. Harriet Ann Jacobs wrote an 1861 book “Incidents in the Life of a ___”:
SLAVE GIRL

P2. Which animal listed belongs to the Family Mustelidae?
BADGER.

P3. The 1525 Battle of Pavia was a victory for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V over whom? FRANCIS I.

P4. The term shaman comes from the Tunguska Evenki language of:
NORTH ASIA.

P5. He had two Vice Presidents, both of whom died in office:
JAMES MADISON

Finally BLZBUB has one gift that he’d like to bestow on all teams that play the game “fair-and-square.” That would be the gift of the understanding of ethics for all of the teams that habitually Borg or east-west split cheat. There could at last be peace throughout the land in time to play the…

FINAL STRATEGY, on the Topic of: GEOLOGY

Q: The Earth’s continental crust is composed mainly of:

1. Iron
2. Hydrogen
3. Sulfur
4. Aluminum
5. Granite

The order of the eliminations was 3, 2, 4 and 1, leaving #5, GRANITE, as the correct answer. This was never in serious doubt.
The top six scores were 40539, 37548, 34798, 34675, 34513 and 34397. The resulting oh-not-so-good team score was 36078. This was good enough for EIGHTH place in the Mt/Pac Zone of play.

As of the time of writing this recap. the nation-wide rankings are not available.

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Oh my gawd, they killed
Ken Z.
You bastards!

Thanks for putting this up quickly so I haven't forgotten already. Facts I can recall, but I have a lousy timestamp memory of when things happened.

As expected I went for both Classical Musics, the latter even at the expense of another passion of mine ancient history. Predictably, the only time I can remember SD having two such topics in my wheelhouse, they were ordered such that I had to drop 1.

That said both were decent questions, neither gimmes nor tedious minutiae.

1) Which Donizetti opera is a comedy? The most impressive thing was that they bothered to actually list 5 Donizetti operas rather than give us Tiefly or names of computers for distractors. Anyway it was "La Fille du Regiment", which I've never found funny I admit, but since every one of the others ended up with a bunch of death or insanity, not too tricky to isolate (I jest of course, I know it's supposed to be funny, but then again so is Shakespearean comedy, or Jackass)

2) Who wrote the Piano Concerto for Left hand in D Major? There are only two left hand concertos that I can recall. More probably exist, and Alkan wrote some fabulous solo pieces for both single hands, but as for concertos it comes down to Ravel or Korngold. A brief fear that they both would show as I could remember the key of neither soon dissipated as Ravel was the only one shown. Again credit where it's due we got 5 composers rather than the usual "funny" or idiotically unrelated distractors we normally get on Art questions. Is it too much to hope they have turned a leaf here on SD at least?

I did grab the other ancient history q:

The second or neo-Babylonian Empire came about with the defeat of the................... Here again we had 5 real historical if not always ancient (Ottoman?) military civilizations, so decent marks for the distractors. Not super tricky if you have any real interest in either ancient history or the Bible, since both the rise and fall of the empire are noted there especially as it contained the Exile. So "Assyrians" was a general knowledge if not quite softball, at least underthrown fastball at the belt albeit would have challenged many who have no historical awareness beyond listing Superbowl winners in order. Not a bad Q really.

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Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

The second POW answer was JAMES CLAVELL. Question was about his WWII internment in Singapore.

The only gift Buzztime should give is taking away the split.

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Buzztime is a company full of dumbshits.

That some of the blue playmakers need refurbishing or replacing, I won't argue.

But please don't take them away for the tablets!

I tend to play by touch. I place my finger on the little post on the box, then slide it down to the "2." Then I can easily move it to 1, 3, 4, or 5, all without looking.

On the tablets, there is no texture. In fact, the answers are so close to each other that there's little room for error, and lots of corrections of where the finger has touched the wrong answer, slowing me down.

I'll gladly take a playmaker over a tablet anytime I have that option.

(And that's without mentioning that I like to play Shark Attack between games! Why it's not available on the tablets is beyond me.)

--Rick Magnus
RickM, Blue Goose

(And that's without mentioning that I like to play Shark Attack between games! Why it's not available on the tablets is beyond me.)

Ditto for Shark Attack.
How did everybody like the repeat Glory Daze & Brainbuster games??