New Scaratings

Thanks, TIMUR! And thanks to you for the thankless job of running the tournament.

To our friends in the K-zoo Krew: We would like to express our sincerest best wishes. I will never forget your hand-delivery of both the McCarthy Cup and the Sandbag Trophy to our team the year after you swept them both.

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

Best wishes back to the Fellowship from Kalamazoo. I was part of the team that delivered the Sandbag trophy; it remains a highlight of all my years playing this game.

Update on Showdown Technical Problems

Followers of this site and others are no doubt aware of technical problems with Showdown the last two weeks that interfered with play at Teasers Chicago and other locations. In each of the last two weeks, at Teasers and (most?) other locations, the screens containing the questions remained on the blue Buzztime introductory screen. Only by rebooting the entire location wi-fi did we get partial games, joining after the first round. This problem had more effect at locations with 'old' play makers, as locations with new tablets (such as Walsh's locally) could play the game normally as the questions appeared on the tablets. This glitch has interfered with Showdown on Tuesdays and Spotlight on Fridays (a separate glitch has been interfering with Pulse on Monday).

All of this had implications for Teasers and others in the current McCarthy Cup. Despite the difficulties, at Teasers at least, we made it into the Sweet 16 playing tonight. We considered moving operations to another location with tablets, but at least two members of the team were wedded to playing at Teasers come what may. This then led to me at least nagging Buzztime for a resolution.

Buzztime reported that the screen freeze was due to a 'firmware upgrade' that froze the screens for Showdown and Spotlight (although not for Six). As of this Friday, the opening of Spotlight showed new advertising and introduction screens and Spotlight worked normally at all Chicago locations checked (both with tablets and play makers). A separate problem remained at the end of Spotlight where the system rebooted itself and all tablets had to be logged in again in order to play Trendalicious.

Buzztime Help Desk confirmed all this yesterday, stating in their view the Showdown/Spotlight freeze had been corrected, but that there remained a reboot issue that could occur between games, most likely before Trendalicious and/or Glory Daze.

With all this, Teasers will play at Teasers tonight (against Big Guys) and will hope for the best. Anon would say good skill to all and I will add that may all 16 teams perform tonight based on skill and perhaps luck but that the system will work well everywhere.

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Merkin

Mad River suffered another freeze just before Showdown tonight. This time, we rebooted right away, and lost only four questions in the first round. We didn't see tonight's opponent in the top fifty, but it's tough to have to compete against another team AND Buzztime.

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“When I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy . . ., I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws.” --de Tocqueville

Some of us at Mad River lost six or even eight questions in the first round, because when we re-logged in, we found ourselves playing poker, and had to repeat the process. I suggested that we just automatically reboot at the end of Brainbuster for the rest of the McCarthy Cup tournament, but now we seem to have a Brainbuster tounament starting as well.
XT

yesterday was the first time we experienced that problem at west park station. by the time we got the reboot completed we lost the first round. truthfully it made no difference as we knew nothing in the countdown round. it does not seem that this issue is actually fixed.

good luck to danny ks. i hope you guys win. i always figure if you are going to lose, lose to the champion.

We had the screen freeze again at Red Fox. The problem is definitely not solved.

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

The screen also froze at BWW-Kalamazoo.

I've gotten last night's results from the Buzztime site, and there are a couple of zeros (Houlihan's and Tailgate). If anyone knows what happened with those locations, please let me know. Thanks.

The Tailgate Sports Cafe (#15 seed) has been off-line for several days, but none of the Showdown players knew that until last night.

I decamped for B-52, where I played solo, but could only scrape up a 42K, and so would have needed considerable help to mount a challenge against BWW-Crystal City. All I can do is offer an apologetic shrug. TIMUR's group probably deserved a first round bye anyhow.

When we arrived at Houlihan's (Westbury) we were unable to log in to the Buzztime games. After a reboot we were able to log in, but unfortunately we had a repeat of last Tuesday's game.

So I guess our 63,750 doesn't count?

VULTUR

VULTUR - That truly sucks. We at Time Out West were looking forward to competing with you, despite being down one of our key players. We thought we did pretty well, but when we did not see you in the top 50 we wondered if you had an issue or just blew the last question.

Not sure what they will do from here, but you definitely got a raw deal. We wanted to win, but not like this.

Hammer

I noticed those individual scores & no bar score & wondered if that was some kind of glitch.

RAY J.

Thanks Hammer. It seems like there were a few locations affected by similar issues. I know a glitchy week was allowed to stand in the seeding period but maybe the ability to drop a score influenced the tournament hosts when faced with that decision.

Of course, we are hoping the game gets tossed and we get to try again next week. If not, good luck the rest of the way!

We had it the other way around. Our leaderboard showed our bar score, but not our top player score. Which was a 6 way tie

VULTUR, could you confirm exactly what happened with y'all last night? I see you did put up a BrainBuster score--was that also a repeat, or did something happen between BB and Showdown?

--Rick

When the first 3 of us arrived at Houlihan's and attempted to log in to the game, there were 2 icons showing, "Games" and "Jackpot Trivia", neither of which is the gateway to our desired games. We restarted our tablets, but that did not change anything. By then a couple more players arrived and we tried restarting a few more tablets with no luck.

We got the manager to do the reboot. After the reboot we had the more familiar array of 4 icons, where the second from left is the correct link to get in. We logged in just as the 7:00 (EDT)Countdown game was ending.

Sports was next. Unfortunately the Sports game was a repeat from about a month ago. At this point we did not know if the issue was system wide or local. However, Brainbuster was definitely not a repeat, so we figured we were OK.

Then we got the Showdown repeat game. After that, Glory Daze was OK. After that, Countdown was a repeat. So starting with Sports the pattern was repeat game, new game, repeat game, new game, repeat game.

So, I'm not sure whether the various mishaps of last night constitute a "system-wide" outage as per the official rules. But there were an awful lot of things screwed up in an awful lot of places, and very few matches that featured both teams playing under normal circumstances. Ergo, I'm going to declare last night a mulligan, and we will re-play the Round of 16 next Tuesday. I ask teams that have been affected by mayhem to have alternate locations in mind, or try to implement the fix that apparently worked for Teaser's; otherwise, we'd kind of be moving into "fool me twice, shame on me" territory.

This will push the final into Passover--once we get there, we'll see if that creates a problem for either of the two finalists.

I do apologize to last night's winners, who will have to do it all over again, but I share Time Out West's sentiments in that I have no desire to win in walk-overs. We'll see if my teammates feel similarly when I tell them (unlike ANON, who seems to consult with his team on issues like this, I'm running this tournament pretty much as a Ricktatorship).

As with last week's post, I ask someone to please share on Facebook, BadBart, or any other relevant fora out there that I am not part of. I will reach out to Stained Glass, in case they are not on any of those fora, to see what happened to them this week (it appears they had only one player, but it's possible everyone else left because of a system error there as well).

Here's hoping that the last (I hope) four weeks of the tournament run more smoothly than the first five. Good luck, good skill, and good system performance to all next week.

--Rick

Thanks for the update.

As for Passover, seders fall on Fri/Sat April 19/20 this year, so there should not be a direct conflict.

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Merkin

So Dannyk's beats West Park by 15+, but it means nothing. They missed the first round (5000+2500 max) and we have to beat them again. This just seems wrong.

I would agree with HHHHH`s post. I know that we dont want to be bad sports but I think a member of their team actually said it wouldnt have made any difference. Also what would happen if their system goes down again?

I'd like to make this a more general question: what if we have another Tuesday like last Tuesday. What makes a Tuesday "like" last Tuesday. If, say, two teams have a problem next week, is it another postponement, or is it just tough luck? Is it unreasonable to suggest that if this problem continues to happen, that it might be best to postpone the completion of this tournament until it doesn't happen any more?

So, I'm a member of the Time-Out West team in Hanover Pk., IL.
I feel that we had a pretty good game this week.
This is a copy of my e-mail sent to Merkin:
AND IF WE DON’T NEED A MULLIGAN?
WHAT IF OUR SCORE IS WORSE NEXT WEEK?
CAN WE KEEP THE BETTER OF THE 2 WEEKS SCORES?
"INQUIRING MINDS”!!!
(Just trying to stir things up a little bit.)

RAY J.

From the official rules of the tournament, posted at the start of the tournament:

Should Buzztime have a system-wide repeat game (or other disruptive glitch affecting much or all of the system) during the tournament, that week’s scores will be ignored and the tournament will be extended by a week

I think this "disruptive glitch" did affect "much or all of the system." It wasn't just a localized problem.
XTRAIN

I recommend that every location affected by the tech problems in any way call the Buzztime Help Desk. It seems to have helped Teasers (at least temporarily) and it will demonstrate to them the widespread nature of the problem(s).

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Merkin