New Scaratings

The best part of a Tuesday night was squandered once again on matters both trivial and sophomoric. In the end, we quested against the boundaries of our knowledge envelope, and came unglued.

Warm-up Round:
The team was forced into a two-way split on #5, but otherwise ran the table well.

1. “The Emperor of All Maladies” by Siddhartha Mukherjee is about: CANCER. 2. In 1954, Roger Bannister became the first man to run the mile in less than __ minutes: FOUR. 3. The Greater Sunda Islands are a part of INDONESIA. 4. Gaga is a yoga-like movement language that originated in: ISRAEL. 5. Spain’s Duchess of __ is said to have more noble titles than any living person: ALBA [And the Jessica of Alba is said to have the most tongues hanging out.] 6. Ferdinand Demara, Frank Abignale, and Anna Anderson were: IMPOSTERS. [Not unlike BLZBUB, who frequently impersonates a trivia guru.] 7. Which animal is most closely related to dugongs and manatees: ELEPHANTS. 8. Howard Schultz is the Chairman and CEO of: STARBUCKS. [Have you prayed to St. Arbuck today?] 9. Tahrir Square is located in downtown: CAIRO. [Is the military junta that took over still in deNile? Rim shot…Parum-pum…the running joke for the team from ten years ago rears its ugly head once again. Thanks CHILL.] 10. Homerus Americanus is more commonly known as the __ lobster: MAINE. [Homer …ummm lobster.]

Ground-down Round
This round has traditionally been a stopper for us. We needed to resort to 5-ways splits on Questions 5, 6, 7 and 9.

1. Acetamides, triazines, and phosphonates are all classes of: HERBICIDES. 2. Who was just named the new U.S. poet laureate: PHILIP LEVINE. 3. In the Sixth Century BC, Bactria was a remote but wealthy part of the __ Empire: PERSIAN. [I’LL TAKE TWO HUMPS WITH THAT.] 4. “The Naked Maja” and “The Clothed Maja” are a pair of: PAINTINGS BY GOYA. 5. Ajaccio is the capital of: CORSICA [Where in the world is Carmen Ajaccio?] 6. The Gilmore Artist Award is given every four years to a/an: PIANIST. [The statue is only six inches tall, but the recipients say it is ten.] 7. The __ Plan was designed to destroy Germany after its defeat in World War II: MORGENTHAU. 8. Alexander von Humboldt laid the foundation for this scientific specialty: BIOGEOGRAPHY. 9. Zoologists consider dormice and woodchucks to be: TRUE HIBERNATORS. 10. This illegitimate son of Charles V won the important Battle of Lepanto: DON JUAN OF AUSTRIA. 11. This member of the mallow family produces edible seed pods: OKRA. 12. The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was a failed attempt to assassinate this king: JAMES I OF ENGLAND.

Scatological Round feat. Scategory Round (the alternate questions for this game, thanks to GANGA)

1. DEATHS OF THE FAMOUS v global business
This royal paid his executioners, a firing squad, to spare his face: MAXIMILIAN OF MEXICO
1 Global Business: HTC a ___ phonemaker is suing Apple for patent infringement.TAIWANESE

2. Animals v HISTORICAL NOVELS
Which novel by Sir Walter Scott features King Richard I as a main character: THE TALISMAN
2. Animals: Blue and black are two types of WILDEBEEST

3. Food v GENERAL SCIENCE
Lee de Forest is known for inventing ___ devices: AMPLIFICATION [He was the first guy with a guitar amp that went to 11.]
3. Food: The pomelo is often mistaken for a GRAPEFRUIT

4. HISTORICAL NOVELS V deaths of the famous
Which historic figure is a character of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”: NAPOLEON I
4. Deaths of the Famous: Suffering from cancer of the jaw, he died of a lethal dose of morphine. SIGMUND FREUD

5. GENERAL SCIENCE v gawd-damned-pink-fuzzy-animules
The wave-particle duality theory of matter was conceived by this nobleman: LOUIS DE BROGLIE
5. Animals: Malaysian, Brazilian, mountain and Baird's are all TAPIRS

6. FOOD v global business
Lebanese, Persian and English are three popular types of: CUCUMBERS [Our resident chef, TWIST, stopped workin’ his gherkin long enough to get us out of this pickle.]
6. Global Business: Raj Rajaratnam, a ____, founded the Galleon Group. SRI LANKAN

Frightening Round
1. A declining industrial area = RUST BELT. 2. PGA rookie won the 2011 PGA Championship: KEEGAN BRADLEY. 3. Terence Blanchard is noted for movie scores for director: SPIKE LEE. 4. Fall River, MA is known as the home town for: LIZZIE BORDEN. 5. Mosquito borne, tropical disease aka breakbone fever= DENGUE FEVER. 6. Claudio Abbado is one of Italy’s greatest SYMPHONY CONDUCTORS. 7. New bestseller set in civil rights South = THE HELP.

There is a standing joke on the team that someone “has that album at home” when we miss a music question. BLZBUB has a signed T. Blanchard CD at home which features some of his compositions for Spike Lee. It didn’t help tonight.

Py-ram-it Round

P1. The hypocaust was a/an __ invented by the ancient Romans:
CENTRAL HEATING SYSTEM [History guru DUFF manning the fires down below…BLZBUB approves.]

P2. Which Old Testament event takes place in the land of Moriah:
SACRIFICE OF ISAAC [BLZBUB mumm on this one…unfortunately, so was the rest of the team. A 5-way saved a fifth of the boxes.]

P3. A marine gamefish, it is the only member of the Pomatomidae family:
BLUEFISH [We could maybe have eliminated pinkfish or another, but played it safe and went with another 5-way. Some of us had heard of the Potawatomi tribe, but none the pomatomidae family.]

P4. Otto Hahn is known as the father of the subfield of __ chemistry:
NUCLEAR [Luckily we have a guy, JOE M, who works at Los Alamos Lab, sitting in tonight.]

P5. His 1903 “Principia of Ethics” had a considerable effect on modern ethical thinking:
G.E. MOORE [While a seldom-seen player blathered on about Bertie Russell, our moderator wisely put us back on a full 5-way split.]

The FINAL TRAGEDY tonight is on the topic of COLORS.
Which color term is used to describe silk or linen in their unbleached state:
ECRU
[Jennifer, at the HEBEGB table, nailed it right away. The rest of us were too wrapped up in our cozy cocoons to see the light.]

The final tally showed scores of 47749, 47033, 45458, 45115, 45020, and 44988, for a nifty, if somewhat pedestrian, team score of 46,060 points. As usual, the speculation soon began over our final ranking. The BUZZHEADS awarded us with SEVENTEENTH place. It could have been much lower and not surprised us. There were much better scores ahead of us, but the totals dropped off rapidly once you got past the top ten teams.

_________________
}}}--( (x) (x) )--->
Oh my gawd, they killed
Ken Z.
You bastards!