New Scaratings

Showdown Recap for 4 Oct 2016 at BWW Gibson in ABQ

The team was up to near full strength for the game of 4 Oct 2016. Everybody was back from vacations or medical absences. In addition, our oft-overworked Los Alamosan was able to shake free and come down from the hill to join us for this game. We were only missing our chem.-major collegiate and our cute bartender. The team was also in good form going into Showdown, having just finished second in the Brainbuster game.

Putting all superstition aside, the good performance in the Brainbuster usually connotes a team that is communicating well and playing without being distracted by the hubbub in the room, which can be quite noisy some nights. So it was with high spirits that we rolled into the…

Worn-up Round

1. A person who is overfriendly would be called a: BACKSLAPPER. {CHILL}
2. Rideau Canal connects these two cities: OTTAWA – KINGSTON. {BLZBUB, who then wondered why the Canucks would need a canal to connect to Jamaica.}
3. Chiaroscuro and gouache are terms most associated with: PAINTING. {DUFF, who sword-fought off the meatheads who wanted ‘Brazilian cooking’ to be the answer.}
4. What leader issued the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685? LOUIS XIV. {DUFF.}
5. An interrogative sentence always ends in a: QUESTION MARK. {JAX.}
6. Which of these national parks is located in Australia? GRAMPIANS. {We got lost in the Outback and couldn’t find this answer.}
7. Bronze is an alloy that usually contains about 12 percent: TIN. {SCOOTR.}
8. Johannes Brahms’ works include ‘Variations on a Theme Written by ___, Opus 35.’ PAGANINI. {DUFF.}
9. This novel by Thomas Hardy was first published in book form in 1895. JUDE THE OBSCURE. {But not so obscure that DUFF couldn’t call it.}
10. The tragus, concha, and lobule are parts of the human: OUTER EAR. {WALACE let us hear this answer.}

Other than not knowing the location of the Grampians, the team did excellent work on this round. It is certainly gratifying to see the success from the prior game carrying over into Showdown. The team average is 4500 points. Now we move on towards what is typically our least successful round, the…

Ground-down Round

1. The Torre Velasca and the Pirelli Tower are skyscrapers in this European city: MILAN. {SCOOTR drove us to this answer.}
2. Tradition has it that this apostle wrote 13 of the books of the New Testament: PAUL. {DUFF}
3. Trading systems that rely heavily on complex math formulas are called ___ trading. ALGO. {BLZBUB expected ‘quantitative’ and used that guess to key in upon ‘algorithmic.’}
4. Durendal is the name of the sword of this legendary Medieval warrior: ROLAND {HEBEGB with the call, confounding BLZBUB who though Roland used a Thompson Gun.}
5. The Mountain ___ is considered a living fossil. BEAVER {We played a safety 5-way split here.}
6. It doesn’t sound like it, but this city was named after Charles Pratt of England: CAMDEN. {SCOOTR. Two-thirds of the team went to Camden, while one-third got stuck in traffic in Hackensack. Gov Christie, can you help us?}
7. John B. Stetson designed in 1865 what we know as the ___ hat: COWBOY. {JAX & the Greek chorus.}
8. The controversial drug propofol is designed to be used for: SEDATION. {WALACE & SCOOTR collaboration.}
9. The Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives citizens the right to: HAVE A TRIAL BY JURY. {DUFF was the fairest.}
10. Defender of the ___ is one of the many titles bestowed upon British monarchs: FAITH. {The good faith answer was bestowed upon the team by SCOOTR.}
11. Porchettiamo is an Italian Festival devoted to porchetta, a: ROASTED PIG. {Chef KURGAN made the tasty call.}
12. What in the world is a Kaon? SUBATOMIC PARTICLE {BLZBUB with the pre-call, thanks to a course taken at U.T.S.I.}

This round went stunningly well. The team had trouble on only 2 of the 12 queries. The team average now sits at around 16,100 points.

Scatology Round

S1. Philosophers v WORLD WAR II
The sinking of the USS Hammann occurred at this World War II naval battle: MIDWAY. {The toss-up choice was Leyte Gulf. Unfortunately, a player called ‘Midway’ as an elimination.}

S2. Reptiles v NFL MASCOTS
The mascot of the Tennessee Titans is a guy dressed up in a ___ suit: RACCOON. {WALACE made this call, making us wonder if he is a Furry.}

S3. Current writers v WORLD GEOGRAPHY
Little Duck, Boca Chica, and Wisteria Island belong to this island group: THE FLORIDA KEYS. {BLZBUB.}

S4. NFL MASCOTS v Philosophers
Two blue anthropomorphic birds named Blitz and Boom serve as mascots of this NFL team: SEATTLE. {SCOOTR}

S5. WORLD GEOGRAPHY v reptiles (fuzzy-venomous?)
At 3,213 feet, Mt. Davis is the highest point in: PENNSYLVANIA. {BLZBUB, gamely trying to fight off calls for Wales and nearly failing.}

S6. WORLD WAR II v current writers
C, D, and K were the three major categories of U.S. ___ during World War II: RATIONS. {BLZBUB, who is old enough to have suffered through a few of these while in training for the U.S. military, got this one.}

The team went 4 for 6 completely correct, while settling for splits on S1 and S5. The team average is now about 21,050 points. If we continue at this pace, all of our competitor locations will soon have a…

Frightening Round

1. 165 Eaton Place is the address of the main location on this classic British TV show: UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS. {MEERA}
2. Which Louisiana city is farthest north? SHREVEPORT. {CHILL}
3. Last week’s debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was held at ___ University: HOFSTRA. {WALACE & SCOOTR}
4. Which of these minor league teams actually exists: BILOXI SHUCKERS. {???}
5. ‘American Tunes’ is the final album by this legend of popular music who died in 2015: ALLEN TOUSSAINT. {CHILL}
6. It is an area for walking or driving along a shore: ESPLANADE. {Greek chorus}
7. The latest Star Trek movie is set on a mysterious planet called: ALTAMID. {No one of our generation actually wants to know what J.J. Abrams put into his crappy Star Trek reboot}

The team slumped on this round. We missed both F4 and F7. The team’s average after this round was a disenchanting 25500 points.

Py-Ram-It Round

P1. The fleshy fruit of plants of the cucurbita family is known as:
SQUASH. {JAX took a big bite out of this one for us. She pre-called this answer.}

P2. William Rosecrans and Braxton Bragg were the opposing generals at the Battle of:
STONES RIVER. {CHILL. The only other Civil War battle on the list was Antietam.}

P3. The end of this novel has the title character travelling across the Pyrenees Mountains: Choices: Silas Marner, Billy Budd, Tom Jones, Martin Chuzzlewit, and
ROBINSON CRUSOE. {A 5-way was the only call heard around the table.}

P4. Early Celtic civilization built its wealth on this activity:
Choices: enslaving neighbors, mining salt, herding sheep, raiding seaports, and serving as mercenaries. A: MINING SALT. {BLZBUB called this answer, but could only get a 2-way with raiding seaports called for the team.}

P5. Most ___ used by professionals are made from African hardwood or African blackwood: Choices: violas, tympani, pianos, clarinets, and French horns
CLARINETS. {MEERA tooted our horn.}

The team regressed to our mean, scoring 3 correct, one 2-way, and one 5-way split. The confusion on P3 is attributable to our advanced ages and foggy memories of books read 40 years ago. P4 was just a straight out bet on what two different people thought was the best answer.

Only three boxes cleared this round with 5 for 5 correct. A full 13 boxes finished at 4 for 5 correct. The team average after this round was 36,250 points.

FINAL TRAGEDY
Topic: ANIMALS (of the gawd-damned-pink-fuzzy-venomous variety, no doubt)

Which animal’s diet consists mainly of termites and insect larvae?

1. Gecko
2. Prairie Dog
3. Aardwolf
4. Hyena
5. Capybara

The order of the eliminations was 2, 1, 5, and 4, leaving #3, AARDWOLF, as the correct answer. Prior to the choices appearance, JAX suggested anteater, and HEBEGB suggested aardvark. This steered the team towards aardwolf. CHILL made the decision to call the whole team onto this answer. After that it was only necessary to explain why gecko and capybara had to be incorrect. However several of the boxes that entered the Final Strategy in the top six dropped out while this discussion was ongoing.

The top individual scores for the night were 58642, 57769, 50788, 49014, 48327, and 47997.
The team average score was 52,089 points.
The team’s ranking was FIRST Place. The team was ecstatic with this result. Most had assumed the points lost on the Frightening and Py-Ram-It Rounds would cost us positions in the rankings. Congratulations to all the wetware-only teams.

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

A fine play by DUFF on W8. Paganini is indeed the correct answer, but Haydn was a distractor, and the orchestral work themed by Haydn (or so Brahms believed) gets exponentially more air time. If I had written the question, I might have asked, Which composer's 24th caprice inspired piano works by both Brahms and Rachmaninoff? I for one was not prepared for a misdirection in the Warm-Up Round.



Showdown players might not be the right demographic for this question. When I asked the other eight players at the Tailgate whether any of them were curious enough about this movie to see it, all I got was blank indifference. It was like looking into a mirror, the image split eight ways.

S4: Philosophers: Who of the following believed numbers were the fundamental property of both the material and spiritual worlds? Pythagoras, with no serious distractors.

In addition to the usual request for the alternate category (altergory) questions, the team would like to hear about which questions tripped up your team for this game.

Collectively, we have been speculating which questions were the toughest, but would like to hear some real-world evidence.

Thanks again for all of your continued support of the SHOWDOWN thread.

BLZBUB aka Ken Z.

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

OKAY...big oopsie in this recap
I forgot to give the answers to GD 5 and GD 12.

GD 5. The mountain BEAVER...

GD 12. What in the world is a Kaon? SUBATOMIC PARTICLE. {It is a type of meson originally called the Kappa Meson (if I recall correctly), and represented in Feynman diagrams with a "K," hence the contraction "Kaon." The mesons were hypothesized to have two quarks, while the baryons (including the proton & neutron) are composed of three quarks.}


Thnaks to Jerry for pointing out this omission.

BLZBUB aka Ken Z.

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