New Scaratings

Nobody is implying that anybody, east or west, had a repeat game--except for Buzztime, which seems to be laboring under that delusion. Anybody who plays regularly knows it wasn't a repeat game.
XT

As of right now, here's where things stand:

1) I think it is evident that last night's game was not a repeat, not only because of the fact that everyone whose opinion on this I have seen (both on and offline) confirmed it was new to them, but also because the categories included Lauren Bacall, which was specific to this week's game as posted on the BT website beforehand. When BLZBUB posts his game summary, I suspect this will be confirmed. If so, this clearly does not qualify as a "system-wide repeat game" (as mentioned in the official tournament rules).

2) My two queries to BT alerting them to the issue and then asking them to unflag this as a repeat game have yet to receive a response.

3) I have retrieved the top six scores from each participating East-Feed site via the circuitous, but reliable method of finding its individual page for that night (i.e., clicking on the location's name, then the "Games" tab, then "Game History" (for Showdown), then "Game Details" (for September 23). I have fed these into a spreadsheet to come up with game averages for each team.

4) Congrats to Houlihan's-Westbury for a fantastic score and a well-deserved win for the night--whether or not BT ever officially posts it in the HOF.

5) My contact for Henry Hudson's in Oklahoma City notified me that there was a fire at their location, so they played instead at Lumpy's Sports Grill. I commend them for rolling with the punches so successfully on short notice, and have credited the Lumpy's score to them in accordance with the official rules.

6) Because the data for each team in the tournament do exist--regardless of whether BT gets its act together on the HOF--and unless compelling evidence presents itself indicating that the game broadcast in the East was materially different from the one broadcast in the West, I intend to include last night's scores in the tournament standings.

7) I will wait to post the official cumulative standings to give BT a chance to fix the HOF. Should it not, and barring compelling evidence which argues that I should wait longer, I will post the official standings no later than Friday.

8) I have actual work to do today, so I'm going to have to leave this here for now.

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

This has happened before, in the past BT has unflagged the repeat but it won't show up in the HOF until the next day when they run the batch files.

This is good to know--thanks. I'll have my fingers crossed for tomorrow, then. And congrats to Stadium on a great score last night.

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

From the cheap seats, it looked like GOOGIE's petition for a variance was reasonable, well-documented, and persuasive. Despite his protestations to the contrary, ANON's refusal to honor this request seemed inflexible and cold-hearted. Now that the Commish is apparently saddled with piles of extra work, might the phrase "divine retribution" come to mind?

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liljol, still residing in a humble lil abode in Buzztime's Backyard, San Diego County, in The Horribly Site-Poor Golden State, California...

<--805 NTN Buzztime sites visited as of 11/13/2018...

F CUBS!!!!! FBOSOX!!!!!

FPDRES!!!!! FCHGRS!!!!!

To be fair, I don't think I actually argued that my decision was NOT inflexible and/or cold-hearted; but rather that it was consistent with precedent--however inflexible and cold-hearted the application of that precedent may seem. It's a fine distinction, I admit, but one worth noting.

To the larger point, though, there are some fundamental differences between what happened Tuesday and what happened in the individual case to which you refer. The most important, I believe, is the one regarding control over circumstances. If you read the rules, they tend to be lenient regarding situations over which a team or teams cannot reasonably be expected to have any control: Generally, regarding things like a system-wide repeat (or whatever the hell happened on April 1); and specifically, for things like the fire that forced Henry Hudson's to play at Lumpy's this week. The main exception to this tendency is a localized glitch mid-game. Even here, though, the rules this year very specifically took this into account by allowing teams to drop a low score for the first time--which actually is redress of a sort for local circumstances beyond a team's control.

The situation at BWW-Ironton, on the other hand, was one over which the team in question had the potential of some control. Knowing that it was a tournament game, and knowing that registered handles were the only ones that counted, they could have given their friend a registered handle under which to play for that game so that every score would count. As the inflexible and cold-hearted rules also clearly stated, "The Fellowship takes no responsibility for and offers no solution nor redress" for problems like this.



If the Commish has divine retribution coming his way, he suspects it will be for any one of myriad other offenses that are closer to the front of the line than this.

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

So the Buzztime site still has not fixed the flagging problem, nor has it responded to either of the emails I sent them asking that this situation be addressed. I doubt a third note from me would make a difference, but if anyone else wants to politely ask them about it (perhaps several emails from several different people might do the trick, perhaps not), you can send them a note by clicking on the "Help" tab from your BT homepage, then "Contact Us," then "Website Issue," which will give you the opportunity to select "Online Rankings/Leaderboard Problems" and write a note specifying the issue. I think it would be nice to have a game that was so good for so many teams be officially recognized.

Assuming that this does not get fixed before tomorrow, though, I am going to post here the averages that I have collected for each team. Please feel free to check my math by using the method I described in my post from yesterday, and let me know of any problems:

61963 Houlihan's-Westbury, NY
61091 BWW-Kent, OH
60644 Stadium Cafe, Addison, TX
60474 Blue Goose, Cincinnati, OH
59629 BWW-Arlington, VA
59614 Teaser's, Chicago, IL
59456 Henry Hudson's, Oklahoma City, OK
59312 Tilted Kilt, Scottsdale, AZ
59168 Meriden AOH, CT
59056 Cedar Cottage, Vancouver, BC
58699 Brewstirs, Roselle, IL
58460 New Edinburgh Pub, Ottawa, ON
57438 BWW-Tallahassee, FL
57126 BWW-Columbia, MD
56440 Scooter's, Las Vegas, NV
55998 Broadway Bar & Grill, Nepean, ON
55957 Adam's Mill, Manchester, CT
54835 Dagwood's, Tampa, FL
54451 Mad River, New York, NY
53751 Four Corners, Chapel Hill, NC
53140 Residuals, Studio City, CA
52904 Wallaby's, Lenexa, KS
52115 Fletcher's, Kalamazoo, MI
51958 Houlihan's, Brick, NJ
50948 Coaches Pub, Houston, TX
50752 Old Barn, Portland, OR
49940 8th Street Grill, Minneapolis, MN
47776 Heroes, Wichita, KS
46305 Hokie House, Blacksburg, VA
45028 Old Town Tavern, Goleta, CA
44539 Schanks North, Calgary, AB
44372 West Park Station, Cleveland, OH
22369 Time Out, St. Louis, MO
21417 BWW-Ironton, OH

I will hold off posting the updated totals until tomorrow just in case something significant happens between now and then.

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

Hey Folks,

These are VERY unofficial. (I could easily have made a mistake so feel free to drop me a note here if I did). That said, here's the scoring so far entered into a Google Doc Spreadsheet that I just made public.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

Anon, if you want access to edit the SS drop me a PM with your email address and I can give you permission.

-Séamus

Thanks so much for this--it's always good to have another set of eyes checking the figures. I'll send you a PM.

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

OK, it has now been three days since the game, and Buzztime still has not unflagged it as a repeat. In the meantime, BLZBUB has definitively shown that the game broadcast in the West was identical to the one in the East (Thanks!), so here are the official standings after three weeks:

170148 BWW-Kent, OH
164566 Houlihan's-Westbury, NY
162923 BWW-Arlington, VA
158425 Brewstirs, Roselle, IL
157243 Tilted Kilt, Scottsdale, AZ
155985 BWW-Columbia, MD
154313 Scooter's, Las Vegas, NV
154239 Stadium Cafe, Addison, TX
153417 BWW-Tallahassee, FL
152575 Mad River, New York, NY
151291 New Edinburgh Pub, Ottawa, ON
150621 Henry Hudson's, Oklahoma City, OK
150330 Blue Goose, Cincinnati, OH
147032 Dagwood's, Tampa, FL
146234 Meriden AOH, CT
145868 Fletcher's, Kalamazoo, MI
144682 Teaser's, Chicago, IL
143962 Cedar Cottage, Vancouver, BC
141819 Residuals, Studio City, CA
141679 Four Corners, Chapel Hill, NC
140504 Adam's Mill, Manchester, CT
139303 Wallaby's, Lenexa, KS
138886 8th Street Grill, Minneapolis, MN
137386 Broadway Bar & Grill, Nepean, ON
134375 West Park Station, Cleveland, OH
133189 Old Barn, Portland, OR
132734 Hokie House, Blacksburg, VA
130575 Coaches Pub, Houston, TX
129700 Houlihan's, Brick, NJ
125476 Schanks North, Calgary, AB
124456 Heroes, Wichita, KS
103372 BWW-Ironton, OH
83094 Old Town Tavern, Goleta, CA
53985 Time Out, St. Louis, MO

These scores, of course, represent only the minimum possible score for each team, as all teams will drop a low score after this week. Accordingly, the field has the potential to tighten considerably--the teams at the top can only improve their scores by a few thousand points, while the ones further down can leap up by tens of thousands with a good game. Thanks to the above-average scores this week, the "bubble" is considerably higher than I had predicted it might be earlier, currently standing in the mid-140k-range with the potential to go only higher.

Good skill to all on Tuesday, and let's cross our fingers that Buzztime will report the results promptly and correctly this week.

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

I think you were just making a joke and not really serious. I did read the rules and knew that there was a slim to no chance that even with my pictures and explanation that we would get credit for the non registered box. I just had to at least try. Joe is someone I respect a lot not just because he is way more intelligent than I am but because he is also a better person than me. He quit playing almost immediately when he found out the Ohio State fan was cheating. While I avoided the topic until finally he left. Really it was only a few hundred points and probably will not end up mattering.

As for this past week's game, I'm a bit suspicious personally. The game was not a repeat but the questions seemed familiar. Not all of them, just certain ones. I had this same feeling during a Glory Days awhile back. The questions seemed like ones I had seen but not in the same game. Like the game had new questions mixed with older questions that had been used before. Is it possible the questions for Showdown had been used before mixed with new ones?

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Homer:No beer and tv make Homer something something.
Marge:Go crazy?
Homer:Don't mind if I do!

From the "Will Wonders Never Cease?" Department:

Somehow, someway, Buzztime finally posted the correct standings for the East Network sometime this weekend. I doubt it will have any effect on the tournament at all, but In the interests of consistency, and because the BT website has been the official record source for the tournament, I am reposting the standings for this week and overall using Buzztime's official figures. Apparently, the Buzzies are morally opposed to rounding up even when Excel thinks you should, so about half of the East Network scores lost a point as a result:

Week 3 Standings:

61963 Houlihan's-Westbury, NY
61091 BWW-Kent, OH
60643 Stadium Cafe, Addison, TX
60473 Blue Goose, Cincinnati, OH
59629 BWW-Arlington, VA
59614 Teaser's, Chicago, IL
59455 Henry Hudson's, Oklahoma City, OK
59312 Tilted Kilt, Scottsdale, AZ
59167 Meriden AOH, CT
59056 Cedar Cottage, Vancouver, BC
58698 Brewstirs, Roselle, IL
58459 New Edinburgh Pub, Ottawa, ON
57438 BWW-Tallahassee, FL
57125 BWW-Columbia, MD
56440 Scooter's, Las Vegas, NV
55997 Broadway Bar & Grill, Nepean, ON
55957 Adam's Mill, Manchester, CT
54836 Dagwood's, Tampa, FL
54451 Mad River, New York, NY
53751 Four Corners, Chapel Hill, NC
53140 Residuals, Studio City, CA
52904 Wallaby's, Lenexa, KS
52114 Fletcher's, Kalamazoo, MI
51958 Houlihan's, Brick, NJ
50947 Coaches Pub, Houston, TX
50752 Old Barn, Portland, OR
49940 8th Street Grill, Minneapolis, MN
47776 Heroes, Wichita, KS
46305 Hokie House, Blacksburg, VA
45028 Old Town Tavern, Goleta, CA
44539 Schanks North, Calgary, AB
44371 West Park Station, Cleveland, OH
22368 Time Out, St. Louis, MO
21416 BWW-Ironton, OH

Overall Standings:

170148 BWW-Kent, OH
164566 Houlihan's-Westbury, NY
162923 BWW-Arlington, VA
158424 Brewstirs, Roselle, IL
157243 Tilted Kilt, Scottsdale, AZ
155984 BWW-Columbia, MD
154313 Scooter's, Las Vegas, NV
154238 Stadium Cafe, Addison, TX
153417 BWW-Tallahassee, FL
152575 Mad River, New York, NY
151290 New Edinburgh Pub, Ottawa, ON
150620 Henry Hudson's, Oklahoma City, OK
150329 Blue Goose, Cincinnati, OH
147033 Dagwood's, Tampa, FL
146233 Meriden AOH, CT
145867 Fletcher's, Kalamazoo, MI
144682 Teaser's, Chicago, IL
143962 Cedar Cottage, Vancouver, BC
141819 Residuals, Studio City, CA
141679 Four Corners, Chapel Hill, NC
140504 Adam's Mill, Manchester, CT
139303 Wallaby's, Lenexa, KS
138886 8th Street Grill, Minneapolis, MN
137385 Broadway Bar & Grill, Nepean, ON
134374 West Park Station, Cleveland, OH
133189 Old Barn, Portland, OR
132734 Hokie House, Blacksburg, VA
130574 Coaches Pub, Houston, TX
129700 Houlihan's, Brick, NJ
125476 Schanks North, Calgary, AB
124456 Heroes, Wichita, KS
103371 BWW-Ironton, OH
83094 Old Town Tavern, Goleta, CA
53984 Time Out, St. Louis, MO

Good skill to all this week.

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

I noticed BT does not round up scores when I was crunching numbers for the Six Challenge. It must be some of that George Bush Fuzzy Math.

_________________
http://www.buzztime.com/profile?pid=4095712
http://www.sixchallenge.com

BT has never ever rounded, they have always truncated. And the HoF was updated sometime Friday afternoon.

sigh...

Yeah... It's been my observation that folks with an MBA from Harvard Business School are traditionally really bad at math...

Any other dated zingers in your bag of knee slappers? FYI, the "Ten-Cent Jimmy" Buchanan and RutherFraud insults are all the rage on the internets...

"Ten-Cent Jimmy" is a classic, but personally, I'm hoping for the comeback of "Free Soil, Free Love, Fremont!"

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

Tough game.

How tough? Of 34 teams participating, only 3 avoided dropping Tuesday's game as a low score, and one of those teams kept the score to replace a game it missed earlier in the tournament. So here are the Week 4 standings, posted with an advisory that small children and people with weak constitutions may wish to leave the room or look away:

WEEK 4 STANDINGS
53,664 BWW-Kent, OH
45,974 BWW-Arlington, VA
44,591 Blue Goose, Cincinnati, OH
44,460 New Edinburgh Pub, Ottawa, ON
44,106 Mad River, New York, NY
42,561 BWW-Tallahassee, FL
42,081 Houlihan's-Westbury, NY
41,088 Heroes, Wichita, KS
40,902 BWW-Columbia, MD
40,738 Stadium Cafe, Addison, TX
39,237 Henry Hudson's, Oklahoma City, OK
37,949 Scooter's, Las Vegas, NV
33,660 Coaches Pub, Houston, TX
33,103 8th Street Grill, Minneapolis, MN
30,693 Schanks North, Calgary, AB
28,839 Meriden AOH, CT
28,151 Old Town Tavern, Goleta, CA
25,205 Wallaby's, Lenexa, KS
22,873 Houlihan's, Brick, NJ
22,080 Teaser's, Chicago, IL
21,160 Old Barn, Portland, OR
20,792 Adam's Mill, Manchester, CT
19,790 Fletcher's, Kalamazoo, MI
19,385 Residuals, Studio City, CA
17,800 Dagwood's, Tampa, FL
17,725 Broadway Bar & Grill, Nepean, ON
17,341 BWW-Ironton, OH
17,004 Tilted Kilt, Scottsdale, AZ
16,641 Cedar Cottage, Vancouver, BC
15,797 West Park Station, Cleveland, OH
15,372 Brewstirs, Roselle, IL
15,193 Hokie House, Blacksburg, VA
15,063 Four Corners, Chapel Hill, NC
0 Time Out, St. Louis, MO

Accordingly, the final standings show hardly any difference from the overall standings of last week, with the notable exception that Blue Goose--one of the few to improve--leapfrogged several places to a much higher seed. These are the rankings after dropping low scores for each team (top 16 teams in bold):

FIRST ROUND FINAL STANDINGS
1 170,148 BWW-Kent, OH
2 164,566 Houlihan's-Westbury, NY
3 162,923 BWW-Arlington, VA
4 158,424 Brewstirs, Roselle, IL
5 157,243 Tilted Kilt, Scottsdale, AZ
6 156,423 Blue Goose, Cincinnati, OH
7 155,984 BWW-Columbia, MD
8 154,313 Scooter's, Las Vegas, NV
9 154,238 Stadium Cafe, Addison, TX
10 153,417 BWW-Tallahassee, FL
11 152,575 Mad River, New York, NY
12 151,290 New Edinburgh Pub, Ottawa, ON
13 150,620 Henry Hudson's, Oklahoma City, OK
14 147,033 Dagwood's, Tampa, FL
15 146,233 Meriden AOH, CT
16 145,867 Fletcher's, Kalamazoo, MI
17 144,682 Teaser's, Chicago, IL
18 143,962 Cedar Cottage, Vancouver, BC
19 141,819 Residuals, Studio City, CA
20 141,679 Four Corners, Chapel Hill, NC
21 140,504 Adam's Mill, Manchester, CT
22 139,303 Wallaby's, Lenexa, KS
23 138,886 8th Street Grill, Minneapolis, MN
24 137,385 Broadway Bar & Grill, Nepean, ON
25 134,374 West Park Station, Cleveland, OH
26 133,189 Old Barn, Portland, OR
27 132,734 Hokie House, Blacksburg, VA
28 130,574 Coaches Pub, Houston, TX
29 129,700 Houlihan's, Brick, NJ
30 127,602 Heroes, Wichita, KS
31 125,476 Schanks North, Calgary, AB
32 111,051 Old Town Tavern, Goleta, CA
33 103,371 BWW-Ironton, OH
34 53,984 Time Out, St. Louis, MO

Congratulations to the top 16 teams that made the elimination round. Before setting out the pairings, I first would like to thank all of the participating teams that will not be advancing. You are in extremely good company, and it is an indication of the strength of the field that a lot of the teams that are stopping at this point have made the elimination round in past tournaments. Your participation in the tournament made it one of the most competitive we have had, and I hope you will participate in the Sandbag and the McCarthy Cup tournaments next year.

The knock-out round will be in standard bracketed format, with the following pairings this week:

1 BWW-Kent, OH
16 Fletcher's, Kalamazoo, MI

8 Scooter's, Las Vegas, NV
9 Stadium Cafe, Addison, TX

5 Tilted Kilt, Scottsdale, AZ
12 New Edinburgh Pub, Ottawa, ON

4 Brewstirs, Roselle, IL
13 Henry Hudson's, Oklahoma City, OK

3 BWW-Arlington, VA
14 Dagwood's, Tampa, FL

6 Blue Goose, Cincinnati, OH
11 Mad River, New York, NY

7 BWW-Columbia, MD
10 BWW-Tallahassee, FL

2 Houlihan's-Westbury, NY
15 Meriden AOH, CT

What a great field with some intriguing matchups--including a head-to-head tilt between two former Sandbag Champions.

Congrats to all of the Sweet 16, and good skill to all on Tuesday.

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

Love and hate for the scores.

Love - JESSE played at Wallaby's last night, and did not attempt to answer the final question in order to preserve his sexy P+ points. But the only way they advance is if they answer final correctly. So by not answering he guarantees they don't advance. Awesome team player! But in the end it's not like they had a chance last night anyway since QUAGGA and wife didn't play, the rest of the group can't break an egg.

Hate - we play a west feed team next week.

All the teams above 89K qualified. No team that dropped a 40K missed the elimination round. All qualifiers finished 10K above ANON's over/under. My friends at 8th Street Grille are a resilient bunch, and for those who got past them, you're both lucky and good. And you'll need both those virtues if 8th Street Grille enters again. But over the short term, you'll need both those virtues to advance in single elimination. And at the risk of growing tedious: these are 41-question quizzes, where money is to be made on the final 7-8 questions of the quiz. Are you patient enough, open-minded enough, after 35 questions still fresh enough, to run the end of this quiz?

Not quite. West Park Station had a 90k score after week 2. Otherwise, over/under 89k after week 2 was a pretty good predictor.



There were only eight of these (counting teams that dropped a 50k score), but true enough. This was obviously not quite as predictive as the 89k threshold was.



Although I said "around or north of 135k"--which technically made my guess valid at the end--it is quite true that I was expecting it to be closer to 135k than 145k. Interestingly, it should be noted that week 3 proved to be something of a statistical anomaly. Not only was the game that week relatively easy, it was by far the easiest of the year. According to Don Denton's site (and excluding the glitched-out April Fool's Day game), the top-100 average score (49.7k) was more than 4,000 points higher than the next easiest game this year, and fully 13,000 points higher than the average of all games this year.

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

My mistake: since West Park is basically the gold standard on Thursday nights, they're not easy to overlook.

I just wanted to take the opportunity to wish our friends in the K-zoo Krew good skill tonight as The Fellowship faces off against them in the first round.

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

The members of The Fellowship wanted me to come on here yet tonight and give a sheepish tip o' the hat to our friends of the Fletcher's crew for an outstanding performance in our matchup tonight. Sheepish, because we felt that the way we narrowly edged you out tonight had more to do with luck than with skill. In a just world, you should have won, but for the 200 billionth week in a row, life has continued to be unjust.

Anyway, you have our compliments and admiration for very nearly pulling off the upset.

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

I'd love to know if we won. Thanks Buzztime.

By the way, what is the win/loss record for a west feed team against an east feed team in head-to-head play?