New Scaratings

Over on the BadBart Facebook group there is a discussion ongoing for the Final Strategy question from 28 Mar 2017.

There seems to be a division of opinion on whether the question was fair, or not. The kerfuffle is all about whether or not using Einstein as a "distractor' was fair when asking which person moved to Switzerland in 1902 to avoid military service.

One side says that it is common knowledge that Einie moved to Switzerland for just that purpose, so his inclusion on the list of five choices was either 'sneaky' or an failure to proofread and edit out near coincidences.

LILJOL seems to take the other side of the coin, opining that a historical fact is indeed a fact, whether or not the player knew this fact.

Ken Z. wholeheartedly sides with Joel on this issue. He does so because BUZZTIME clearly put the exact year of this move into the question. A quick fact check shows that Einie moved to Switzerland in 1896, and Mussolini to Switzerland in 1902. Had BUZZTIME said the move was made "near the turn of the last century," or similar wording, those crying foul might have a legitimate argument. But they didn't; they were specific.

CASE CLOSED.

P.S. The recap will reveal that the Ragged Rascals prospered mightily from a peculiar quirk of how BUZZTIME structures the Final Strategy query. Stay tuned.

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

I can predict how Ken Z's team profited mightily from Buzztime's format. On their screens, Einstein was probably the first name deleted, while it was later, sometimes much, much later on others. I don't understand why this irregular pattern continues, as it has for years.
XT

Hey this is DUFF, Ken's (BLZBUB's) teammate. I was the one to pre-call Herr Einstein. My first reaction was phah! too easy. I knew Einstein moved to Switzerland to avoid German militarism. I also knew it was right around then when he was in his late teens or early 20s, though I wasn't sure of the exact date. I had no idea Mussolini did so. While I agree with Ron on Badbart that the question was Devilish in the extreme, I must concur that in the end, 'twas fair. Brutal distractor, but c'est la vie.

(cross posted to Badbart)

At our location, the two answers left at the end were Einstein and Mussolini.

Players have complained to no end about this inexactness across the network. Each and every time BT has told us that it's random so it will all even out in the end. True, but that doesn't mean it's the way things should be.

We were actually fortunate in that Juan (PLCMTS) pre-called Einstein but then seeing the list of choices remembered that Mussolini had done the same thing (he recently finished a book about Mussolini) and realized his error. I do not remember what order the choices were eliminated, but I don't think Einstein was first or last.

ESB

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Eric (ARROW)
Las Vegas NV (formerly of Sooner Legends, Norman OK)

You are correct sir. BLZBUB also does not understand why this error in the game architecture persists to this day.

Perhaps TTLPKG can explain why this was done to SHOWDOWN, as he was one of the players put on the player's committee to recommend realignment to the game (to cut down on Borging and disadvantageous team play.)

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

I was on that committee as well.

Traded emails with one of the writers about how to write borg free questions, and for a while this happened. But somewhere along the line it gradually morphed back to easily borgable and now perhaps easier than ever.

Gotta remember that none of the NTN/BT team that we talked about all this with have been with the company for a long time.

One of the changes that came out of this committee was changing the location score to include the top 6 scores instead of top 5. Was basically done to make it more difficult for the West Covina team to merely game the system with proper splitting.

Crew from Blacksburg was lucky enough to have Einstein wiped out first.

We weren't sure Einstein was right, but most of us settled on it, then gradually shifted to Mussolini after Einstein was taken away.

While I empathize with locations that had their choices left to Einstein and Mussolini, there have been plenty of other weeks in Showdown where our location has been left with the most likely choices (I'm sure some of them have even been during the competitions), and we haven't cried foul.

I do wish Buzztime would level the playing field, and remove the answers in the same order for everyone, but until they do, that is one of the reasons the drop week exists.

Bill AKA VIKING

Now that everyone who is clinically sane has moved past this question, it's time for me to weigh in. BLZBUB and LILJOL express an equivalence, or at least a sufficiency, between fact and fairness. I hold both these players in such esteem that I can't permit their shared opinion to pass without dissent.

The original question?

PARTLY TO AVOID MILITARY SERVICE IN HIS NATIVE COUNTRY, HE EMIGRATED TO SWITZERLAND IN 1902:

1. LEO TOLSTOY
2. ALBERT EINSTEIN
3. JOSEPH GOEBBELS
4. BENITO MUSSOLINI
5. GEORG VON TRAPP

To perform a strip of the drop down box, one would need to answer to the following question:

IN WHAT YEAR DID ALBERT EINSTEIN EMIGRATE TO SWITZERLAND?

1. 1879
2. 1896
3. 1902
4. 1905
5. 1921

If this question were to occur in a Countdown, nobody would question it's fairness. But it might also raise an eyebrow. In a life so remarkable, why this particular detail?

You can turn this question, with a similar answer, into parody:

WHICH EVENT OCCURRED IN 1896?

1. THE BOER WAR ENDED
2. MCKINLEY WAS ASSASSINATED
3. QUEEN VICTORIA DIED
4. THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR COMMENCED
5. A TEENAGER NAMED EINSTEIN FAILED TO OBTAIN ADMISSION TO THE SWISS GYMNASIUM OF HIS CHOICE

(Hint: if in doubt, take the longest answer.) The question is fair.

As for Mussolini. what does any well informed 21st C American student of history know about him? In the 1960's, I was taught that he obtained power in 1921, consolidated his position into a dictatorship in 1924, and ruled into 1943, when he was deposed. Thereafter, Hitler set him up in a client state known as the Republic of Salo. Eventually, Mussolini was captured by a Communist cell, shot by a firing squad, and hung by his ankles at the local Esso station.

Did anyone reading this know more? Oh, yes. Mussolini was a vain individual, who enjoyed being photographed, especially in military uniform.

BENITO MUSSOLINI EMIGRATED TO SWITZERLAND IN 1902 FOR ALL THESE ACTIVITIES *EXCEPT*:

1. TEACHING
2. DRAFT DODGING
3. FOUNDING FASCISM
4. STONECUTTING
5. ATTENDING UNIVERSITY

Wikipedia has a fine article on Mussolini. What a contrary individual! I took note of the most attributed sources in Wikipedia's footnotes, and went to the local library, hoping to spook one of them up. Alas, Wikipedia's most cited sources are not in the Dakota County Library System. At present writing, I'm tossing in my hands a biography of Mussolini by an author named Anthony James Joes. This book has all the appurtenances of adult literature (footnotes, index, bibliography), and a handsome collection of photographs. The Dakota County Library serves 400,000 residents. So I inquired of the librarian, how often this book been checked out?

"Oh," she replied, punching buttons. Then smiling up at me: "We acquired the book in 1982, it's been checked out 37 times."

Now, put yourself in the position of some random player, let's call him ANON, surrounded by a score of fellows; or, at a distance of 700 miles, you might select certain MICE, surrounded by half as many players. Or you might combine them, and so have 30 players in aggregate celebrating the easiest 60K of all time. Except that Einstein isn't the answer. The draft dodger in question turns out to be the guy who loved to be photographed in military uniform.

So let's swap out the toxic Einstein and write in some other distractor:

PARTLY TO AVOID MILITARY SERVICE IN HIS NATIVE COUNTRY, HE EMIGRATED TO SWITZERLAND IN 1902:

1. LEO TOLSTOY
2. VI LENIN
3. JOSEPH GOEBBELS
4. BENITO MUSSOLINI
5. GEORG VON TRAPP

Most of us are likely to go for Lenin, but at least the content writer has our attention. Or better yet:

1. GEORGES SOREL
2. NICKOLAI CHERNYSHEVSKY
3. JOSEPH GOEBBELS
4. BENITO MUSSOLINI
5. GEORG VON TRAPP

That Mussolini was a draft dodger is such an extraordinary fact that most of us would still fight shy of the correct answer. For a content writer to drop Einstein in as a distractor displays an interplay of naivete and sadism, not unlike a very young child tearing the wings off a butterfly and dropping it on an ant hill, just to see how it shall behave.

I've written several dozen questions in keeping with Buzztime's format, with the five item drop down box, primarily to shock and scandalize the fictional cotery of triviots who congregate at a fictional saloon in a fictional town. Buzztime's original question looks like something I would have written, to illustrate some vanishing literary conceit. Fairness is out the window. Many of these questions are too strange to present to a public even as well informed as this thread's readers. I was also sitting with CARO and ARKUAT in a group of three on February 4, 2014, when Buzztime presented that CARO was the only player in the eastern split who recognized Lima Syndrome as the contrapositive (sic) of Stockholm Syndrome; and so we landed the only three 50K scores on the HOF. The results were described, by a commentator on that quiz, as the lowest scoring Showdown in at least four years. Three years later, REBEL, playing in Phoenix, was the only player to breach 50K nationwide. A 7 year low?

I'm pleased to report that, in the most recent quiz, I confused Catherine de Medici with Marie de Medici, and Henry IV, who wasn't in the drop down box, with Louis Quatorze, and so flatlined for the second week in a row. The difference is, the latter question was fair.

As a graduate of Whatsamatta U., I gotta say What???

Please accept my apology, RAYJ. I may have grown a little over-heated, but I can't possibly correct myself without your feedback.

The gist of my argument was that much-neglected Mussolini was such a counter-intuitive correct answer to this Final Showdown, that to include Albert Einstein as a distractor was unfair. Einstein was correct except for the date (1902), which sifted out as insignifica (quoting ANON, citing VICTOR), an insignificance applying to both Einstein and Mussolini, in light of their future careers.

I didn't want to express it that baldly. I also wanted to inject a hint of the frenzy which may have ensued when Einstein was wiped out from the drop-down box. at sites better favored than my own, with an earlier elimination. At the Tailgate, we were gloating - that is, until we weren't.

A trivia question full of factual dickishness...
Happens all of the time.

One of the smartest people on our team wasn't there the week the Mussolini question was posed. When I explained it to him, he said Einstein didn't go to Switzerland to avoid military service. He went there to attend a Swiss school that he had to take an entrance test for. He avoided military service by renouncing his citizenship in Wurttemburg, the kingdom where he'd been born. So it shouldn't have been a difficult question.
XT

The Anthony James Joes biography of Mussolini is something of a hoot. In the chapter devoted to historical background, he notes that Pope Pius IX, in addition to being the longest serving pope and the first to be infallible when speaking ex cathedra, declared that any Italian Catholic who participated in electoral politics was in a state of sin. Shades of the Daesh?

The upshot was that Italian politics in the 1860's going forward were dominated by anti-clerical liberals, who were roughly divided between the Historic Right (the party of Cavour) and the simply designated Left. The Historic Right held sway for the first 14 years of the constitutional monarchy. When the Left came to power that many years later, they were not so much a political party as "an accumulation of grudges."

What felicity!