Final Tragedy 11/08/11

Akbar71 · **Posted:** Tue Nov 08, 2011 10:06 pm

Not only was the Final Tragedy easily borg-able, it was unnecessary even to borg it, as it was ripped straight from the regular CD question bank?!? Stay classy, BT!

ANON · **Joined:** Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:59 pm **Posts:** 2232

I'd just like to say a few words about the initial tragedy at our location. Half the boxes were not registering as part of the system at gametime, at which time management called Buzztime to see what could be done. In order to fix the problem, BT rebooted the system in the middle of the warmup round. We got all of our boxes working again, but scored a zero across the board for the first round, essentially starting us at a 7500 deficit to start the game. We had been on a top-ten streak and were trying to continue it, but pretty much gave up on that and decided to shoot for trying to land a spot in the top fifty as a kind of moral victory. After the pyramid round, we thought maybe even that was asking too much.

So we didn't make the top ten. By 26 points. I have never been so pleased to come in at 11th, and have never been prouder of my team for making the best of a bad situation and never giving up. I think it is a more impressive showing than many of the times we've come in first, and if any of you are reading this, you guys just rock.

Brandyb · **Joined:** Sun Jan 10, 2010 9:30 pm **Posts:** 189

Sorry, still pissed off about the Lady Gaga question in Showdown.

FrankC · **Posted:** Wed Nov 09, 2011 12:59 am

Brandyb wrote:

Sorry, still pissed off about the Lady Gaga question in Showdown.

We all thought Bo would post the first comment on the Lady Gaga question. You beat him.

liljol · **Joined:** Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:41 pm **Posts:** 2497

FrankC wrote:

Brandyb wrote:

Sorry, still pissed off about the Lady Gaga question in Showdown.

We all thought Bo would post the first comment on the Lady Gaga question. You beat him.

Ahem...GAG-a. :roll:

poman · **Joined:** Sun Jan 17, 2010 12:05 pm **Posts:** 1513

Akbar71 wrote:

Not only was the Final Tragedy easily borg-able, it was unnecessary even to borg it, as it was ripped straight from the regular CD question bank?!? Stay classy, BT!

It happens in Spotlight and Playback every so often, it was only a matter of time before it carried over to Showdown too.

Maybe buzztime just wants to "reward" dedicated CD players? Who knows

-BO- · **Joined:** Wed Mar 10, 2010 3:20 pm **Posts:** 2291

FrankC wrote:

Brandyb wrote:

Sorry, still pissed off about the Lady Gaga question in Showdown.

We all thought Bo would post the first comment on the Lady Gaga question. You beat him.

Ah, yeah. Sorry to disappoint. Took a while to drag my dead carcass home after that ass-kicking last night. Hadn't seen a beating like that since someone put a banana in my pants and turned a monkey loose.

And was it 4 of the top 5 and 7 of the top 10 last night are borg?

RABBIT · **Joined:** Tue Nov 16, 2010 10:47 pm **Posts:** 65

ANON wrote:

I think it is a more impressive showing than many of the times we've come in first, and if any of you are reading this, you guys just rock.

Couldn't have done it without our fearless leader! And some ANONymous guy who kept saying... "at least we can laugh..."

It's always fun with the Fellowship.

-BO- · **Joined:** Wed Mar 10, 2010 3:20 pm **Posts:** 2291

ANON wrote:

I'd just like to say a few words about the initial tragedy at our location. Half the boxes were not registering as part of the system at gametime, at which time management called Buzztime to see what could be done. In order to fix the problem, BT rebooted the system in the middle of the warmup round. We got all of our boxes working again, but scored a zero across the board for the first round, essentially starting us at a 7500 deficit to start the game. We had been on a top-ten streak and were trying to continue it, but pretty much gave up on that and decided to shoot for trying to land a spot in the top fifty as a kind of moral victory. After the pyramid round, we thought maybe even that was asking too much.

So we didn't make the top ten. By 26 points. I have never been so pleased to come in at 11th, and have never been prouder of my team for making the best of a bad situation and never giving up. I think it is a more impressive showing than many of the times we've come in first, and if any of you are reading this, you guys just rock.

Out of curiosity, if at least 6 boxes were working, why would you ever reboot once the game started?

RABBIT · **Joined:** Tue Nov 16, 2010 10:47 pm **Posts:** 65

-BO- wrote:

Out of curiosity, if at least 6 boxes were working, why would you ever reboot once the game started?

I'm not certain but from what I saw, even the 10 or so that were working weren't fully charged. In addition, we had trouble during the Sandbag Tourney with some boxes working for an answer or two or even through BB and then not registering points or bleeding points during SD. We actually rebooted just BEFORE Warm-Up and it came back up on question three or four before the system pooped out again. We would have been down only 1,000 or 1,500 points (and the accompanying 50% wager) under our pre-game reboot plan. The system itself took a dive around questions five or six--much to our dismay.

Also... a fleet of 20 or 30 players is part of a our strategy.

Had the first reboot been the only one, we'd have been top 5, I think.... even with a tragic Pyramid round.

Dingo · **Joined:** Thu Jan 21, 2010 4:59 pm **Posts:** 162

It has been a crazy year in Showdown. At SRO OT, this week's pyramid round was unanimously declared the most difficult we had ever seen. We did not have any idea what any of the answers were. There were a couple of tentative calls on the Schiller question, but they were both wrong. Otherwise - clueless.

So at the end of Pyramid we had the following scores:
5/5 0 boxes
4/5 0 boxes
3/5 0 boxes
2/5 0 boxes
1/5 4 boxes
0/5 5 boxes

(statistically, the team of monkeys hitting answers at random would have done twice as well. Humans hitting answers at random are apparently less reliable).

So then we are looking at "LAW" as the FT category and at that point, if somebody had said "Guess what! You're still going to finish in the top 15" I would probably have bet my car against it. Luckily that temptation was never dangled in front of me...

RABBIT · **Joined:** Tue Nov 16, 2010 10:47 pm **Posts:** 65

Dingo wrote:

It has been a crazy year in Showdown. At SRO OT, this week's pyramid round was unanimously declared the most difficult we had ever seen. We did not have any idea what any of the answers were. There were a couple of tentative calls on the Schiller question, but they were both wrong. Otherwise - clueless.

So at the end of Pyramid we had the following scores:
5/5 0 boxes
4/5 0 boxes
3/5 0 boxes
2/5 0 boxes
1/5 4 boxes
0/5 5 boxes

(statistically, the team of monkeys hitting answers at random would have done twice as well. Humans hitting answers at random are apparently less reliable).

So then we are looking at "LAW" as the FT category and at that point, if somebody had said "Guess what! You're still going to finish in the top 15" I would probably have bet my car against it. Luckily that temptation was never dangled in front of me...

Yikes... yeah, we were struggling. We had a lucky guesser who managed 5 of 5, I think! And we had a few 4 of 5. It was impressive considering that as the questions came up, instead of precalls, we were shouting "At least we can laugh!" We had our physics guy garner "COLOR VISION"... and I am totally blank on the other questions. Something about ROCKFISH?
Eeek... well, we have all lived to see another round!

(edited to correct my "4 of 4" to "4 of 5")!

ANON · **Joined:** Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:59 pm **Posts:** 2232

-BO- wrote:

Out of curiosity, if at least 6 boxes were working, why would you ever reboot once the game started?

Miscommunication on my part, I'm afraid. I had told the manager as soon as she walked in (toward the end of BB) that there was a problem, and asked her immediately to reboot the system in hopes that it would fix things in time for the game, and if it didn't, she would need to call Buzztime. The only thing the first reboot got us was missing the first two questions of the Warmup Round, no extra boxes. We collectively shrugged and decided to make do. In the meantime, our manager--who really wanted to be helpful--called Buzztime to get help. To get the boxes to work, they had to reboot the system on their end, which they did after we had answered a few warmup questions. I should have told her to wait after the game, so ultimately it is my fault. At least we had boxes for everyone afterward. Fortunately, the team is very forgiving of blunders by certain ANONymous parties.

-BO- · **Joined:** Wed Mar 10, 2010 3:20 pm **Posts:** 2291

ANON wrote:

so ultimately it is my fault.

Nah. Just sounds like the manager was trying to help but didn't understand the situation. I suppose since I'm bored I could comment about this is what happens when a woman is in charge, but I would never do such a thing. :shock:

However it is certainly your fault that we lost in Sandbag round of 16. 100%.

RABBIT · **Joined:** Tue Nov 16, 2010 10:47 pm **Posts:** 65

-BO- wrote:

ANON wrote:

so ultimately it is my fault.

I suppose since I'm bored I could comment about this is what happens when a woman is in charge, but I would never do such a thing.

Pssh... and certainly not if you and I were in the same room.

ANON is too hard on himself. The manager just tried to help. No harm done.

lewser · **Joined:** Mon Jan 11, 2010 2:25 pm **Posts:** 1028

Nice, 4 of the top 5 were BORG last night.

Dingo · **Joined:** Thu Jan 21, 2010 4:59 pm **Posts:** 162

Not surprising the Borgs dominated, given the difficulty of Pyramid Round....

Dingo · **Joined:** Thu Jan 21, 2010 4:59 pm **Posts:** 162

RABBIT wrote:

Yikes... yeah, we were struggling. We had a lucky guesser who managed 5 of 5, I think! And we had a few 4 of 5. It was impressive considering that as the questions came up, instead of precalls, we were shouting "At least we can laugh!" We had our physics guy garner "COLOR VISION"... and I am totally blank on the other questions. Something about ROCKFISH?

We were laughing too.

I remember 4 of them: Sebastes a genus commonly known as ROCKFISH, Schiller wrote an essay dividing poets into NAIVE/SENTIMENTAL, the Young-Helmholtz theory referring to COLOR VISION (I associate Helmholtz with thermodynamics, so no help there), the "Superfluous Man" concept found in RUSSIAN literature.

The fifth eludes me.

Falcon · **Posted:** Wed Nov 09, 2011 1:55 pm

Dingo wrote:

RABBIT wrote:

Yikes... yeah, we were struggling. We had a lucky guesser who managed 5 of 5, I think! And we had a few 4 of 5. It was impressive considering that as the questions came up, instead of precalls, we were shouting "At least we can laugh!" We had our physics guy garner "COLOR VISION"... and I am totally blank on the other questions. Something about ROCKFISH?

We were laughing too.

I remember 4 of them: Sebastes a genus commonly known as ROCKFISH, Schiller wrote an essay dividing poets into NAIVE/SENTIMENTAL, the Young-Helmholtz theory referring to COLOR VISION (I associate Helmholtz with thermodynamics, so no help there), the "Superfluous Man" concept found in RUSSIAN literature.

The fifth eludes me.

The fifth was
Critic Lawrence Alloway coined the trem (pop art). I think we got that on 5 or 6 boards because it seemed most likely. We were guessing wildly on the others, except Sebastes, that we got by elimination, since the others were commercial fish whose genera would be recognizable.
We were worried when 'Law' came up for the final, expecting it to something about American law, and were pleasantly surprised to see the Hugo Grotius question. We were still astonished to end up in the top 40!

ANON · **Joined:** Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:59 pm **Posts:** 2232

Dingo wrote:

Not surprising the Borgs dominated, given the difficulty of Pyramid Round....

That, and I suspect the fact that the Travelling Trophy is going on (at least some places, we never get included in this anymore for some reason) has caused some teams to pull out some hardware to help them this month. If Borging is indeed now not kosher for the Smartest Bar, maybe they can extend that policy to the next TT tournament?

S O B · **Posted:** Wed Nov 09, 2011 5:16 pm

ANON wrote:

If Borging is indeed now not kosher for the Smartest Bar, maybe they can extend that policy to the next TT tournament?

Good luck with that rule in the Washington/Oregon area!

(I'm just happy we're borgless in The Florida Cup competition. We're defending it for, oh, about the twelfth time now. Even though we've had two bad Tuesdays in a row, our chances look pretty good.)

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Final Tragedy 11/08/11

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