New Scaratings

Does anyone know what week it was a repeat from?

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Buzztime is a company full of dumbshits.

That explains the super high scores I guess but I rarely miss a Six and didn't recognize the game. Was it perchance an April Smartest Bar offering? Didn't play those.

The game was on the easy-ish side but not so easy as the full screen of 60+ scores would suggest. I've certainly played the game enough to have a feel for how scores should go. Either it was a repeat for some and not others or it must have come from April SB.

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Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

I did not recognize any repeat questions, and during the game thought there were a few moderately challenging questions, although last Thursday's regular Six was tougher, particularly the final round.

-- RWM

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

I used to think Lewser was being too hard on NTN, but after Monday night's fiasco I think he is too kind to NTN. The Monday night game might not have been the most difficult, but nobody that was playing at Demoris had ever seen those questions before.

I am not commenting on lewser or his posts. I can say that I'm disappointed in the lack of difficulty of the questions in Smartest Bar, but I won't go so far as to label it a "fiasco". To me a fiasco would be a repeat game or erroneous answers, neither of which I observed this past Monday. Hopefully next week the questions will be more of a challenge.

I still recall a few years ago when I soloed a Six game where I got a zero on four of the Final Round questions, and scored around 1400 points for the entire round for a game total of barely 28K. It was the most brutal game of Six I had ever played,but that would be something one should expect for something entitled "Smartest Bar". Seriously, I think it should be challenging enough that a team could have a bar average in the mid-40's and yet see their bar in the network rankings.

-- RWM

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

WTF? Monday's game was a repeat!! Just like the first game of the June qualifier.

So with that tidbit of knowledge does the word fiasco work for you now?!?!?!

But the problem is several reputable players have said it was not a repeat for them. Repeats for a portion but not all bars are far from unknown. Not everyone's experience is identical. A quick check of my stats show I have missed 6 Six games in the last six months. So it's either one of those - a 10% chance - an April Smartest Bar, or a non network-wide repeat. The latter to me is more likely, but it's definitely one of them. I had never seen a single question before; an experience reported by several others in this fairly sparse recent thread. I am in no way worried about BT's decision to kill the scores - ours were decent at best and we ranked worse than I would normally expect to - but it's far from clear that this was a consistent, system-wide repeat.

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Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

I don't disagree with any of that. But it's obvious there was a major issue with BT's biggest promotion of the year. That certainly qualifies as a fiasco, don't you think? It just bothers me when a regular player on a decent team wouldn't refer to it as a fiasco. If a regular isn't bothered by that, the average player will just go along in complete ignorant bliss.

I've played every Smartest Bar game this year (in fact every Smartest Bar game of the past three years) and identified the June 3 game as a repeat of the April 1 game after 2 questions.

What I saw August 5 was not a repeat of anything I've seen before and between here and Facebook (where I can read posts but not replies to posts) it has seemed unanimously reported as a fresh game to the eyes of the reporter.

Buzztime's explanation is as unsatisfactory as its present and as unclear as its future. They are as entertaining as a train wreck.

The below quote is how NTN responded to my complaint on Facebook.

Hi John, some of the sites received repeat content from a previous game. We're sorry that the error occurred, but we hope everyone can get together for a trivia night again!

Like I said, 'Buzztime is a company full of dipshits.' Nothing more needs to be said!!!

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Buzztime is a company full of dumbshits.

& from Calgary checking in ... long time lurker, first post, so please be gentle ...

Am I being paranoid, or is there something decidedly fishy about this whole situation? Back when they fucked up in June, they sent an email out the very next day apologizing and explaining the situation. (They called it a "snafu", which is pretty amusing; I wonder if they know what that acronym stands for?)

This time, there's been no email, and no announcement on the Buzztime.com site (although they have changed the dates on the rules page). All they've done this time seems to be that one fairly brief Facebook post. Now, way back when they shut down the official forums, BT swore up and down that players would never have to sign up to Facebook or Twitter in order to stay informed about the games ... so why break that promise now? (And incidentally, kudos to whoever posted the link to that Facebook post. I don't see how I would have known the story otherwise.)

Reading through the replies on that post, BT's story seems to be changing. At first, the scores were being dropped "due to repeat content". Then, as people started protesting that they didn't think the game was a repeat (and so far as I can tell, not one player has yet confirmed that they got a repeat or partial repeat game), they started saying that "some bars" were served repeat content. But they won't say who, or how they knew this, or even whether the affected bars were among the 80 finalists.

They keep insisting that because these mystery sites were served repeat content, they need to drop the scores to "keep a level playing field" -- but surely, just the fact that some sites were served different content should be enough reason to consider the playing field uneven. Why do they keep harping on the repeat aspect?

Sorry for going on at length -- I guess I should just write this off as another in a long line of Buzztime cock-ups. But I do think there's something more to the story here ...

&

ampersand, both my wife and i got e-mail messages yesterday entitled 'we spilled some beer' that indicated that there was a repeat problem and the scores would be dropped. the message did not give a detailed explanation. however, i am hard-pressed to come with any conspiratorial reason for this other than a typical buzztime snafu (intending its original meaning here).

i think that they made the wrong choice and i posted on facebook that they should reconsider. i can assure you buzztime has never taken my advice on anything though.

Okay, thanks for letting me know that at least some players got emails. And it shouldn't surprise me that some players didn't: Last week I got 2 emails from BT, one telling me that my home site (Rembrandt's) was in the finals for Smartest Bar, and one telling me it wasn't! (We've got the trophy sitting on the bartop, so I'm pretty sure we're in ...)

&

I'm starting to believe now that repeat game situations at individual sites can be created by any ordinary player who has the procedural knowledge, for any game they wish, at any site they wish, at any time they might desire the chaos of one.
What might be new is that Buzztime has upgraded their ability (or their motivation) to detect them and investigate.
June 3 was systemwide, and that's Buzztime's fault, but August 5 was clearly not systemwide or even any significant portion of systemwide. A cool scenario here would be that an investigation is in progress.

Golly, Ampersand! I don't think there's a conspiracy, just normal BT incompetence. Judging by the rest of your post, thought, you'll fit in just fine around here! Welcome to the boards.

During tonight's SIX: match the suspended baseball player to the team:
Jesus Montero Mariners
Jesus Montero. Mariners
Nelson Cruz. Rangers
Some douche. To it doesn't matter

Fucking nitwits at Buzztime!!!! I swear top to bottom the company is dipshits!

I really don't want to use the word retards, but I am having trouble finding an adjective that fits better.

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Buzztime is a company full of dumbshits.

World's smartest bar is a mute point as long as it is on a Monday night when there are 2 perfectly good "SIX" nights on the lineup

Heh. I hope I didn't sound like I thought there was some sort of eldritch cult / alien snakepeople / Elvis-is-alive shenanigans afoot at BT headquarters. I'd guess it's more along the lines of someone at BT noticing the unusually high scores on Monday, jumping to the (admittedly justifiable) assumption that they'd screwed up again and sent out repeat content, and immediately announcing that the scores were to be dropped without investigating further -- or some similar mistake that they're trying to cover up with their vague "some bars got repeat content" story. So, yeah, just normal BT incompetence.

&

The other elephant in the room is that if Monday is indeed "Smartest Bar" competition, why does it seem that the Monday games are easier than Weds or Thurs?

Whats great about the Montero match is if you didn't put the right Montero with the right Mariners you got them both wrong. Happened to a player that night.

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You can really taste the goat!

So what are the odds of another mishap tonight? Can I go ahead and place my bet?

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https://www.buzztime.com/players/profile/rt/8915269

Our shit locked up, All cell phones and tablets for the rest of the game, fuck Buzztime!

Why do I keep bothering?

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Buzztime is a company full of dumbshits.

Last night saw Rembrandt's do an amazing job of imitating a gopher trying to cross the Trans-Canada on a long weekend
We were doing perfectly fine until the last round, then *THUMPITTY-THUMPITTY* under a several-axle big rig of questions, and that's all she wrote

Congrats to Mezzanine on their first place, both yesterday and overall! (I'm pretty sure you folks would be winning with the August 5 game included, too)

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/°v°\ • Every time Linux boots, a penguin gets its wings
I'm a solipsistic conspiracy theorist. I'm sure I must be up to something, and I won't stop until I find out what
Why not downgrade Plutonium to a dwarf element?

Our performance was also reminiscent of roadkill. I told my teammates that I would show up next Monday regardless, but I suspect it may be a solo after last night's less than graceful dive. We also were doing all right until we were hit by the Final Round Semi.

-- RWM

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."