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 Post subject: BrainBuster 5 January 2016--Anagram Question
PostPosted: Wed Jan 06, 2016 12:50 pm 
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Thanks to the content team for the anagram question on BrainBuster last night. I may be a gas bag nerd, but I take some delight in knowing that Spectators, Milano's, McGillacuddy's and a few other similar teams had to read that question and its clues.

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 Post subject: Re: BrainBuster 5 January 2016--Anagram Question
PostPosted: Wed Jan 06, 2016 1:30 pm 
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Yeah, good and appropriate question. Pretty sure they've used it in BB before though. But it's nice to haul it out every few years.


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 Post subject: Re: BrainBuster 5 January 2016--Anagram Question
PostPosted: Wed Jan 20, 2016 5:27 pm 
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 Post subject: Re: BrainBuster 5 January 2016--Anagram Question
PostPosted: Wed Sep 21, 2016 1:58 pm 
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I remember squinting at this question through four year old lenticular trifocals, while trying to get my 64 year old brain to do an elimination on a question too easy by half if not timed. So you may imagine my dismay to find this mini-thread a few days later. As I was, at the time, the highest scoring Brainbuster player on the network, I wanted to offer a rebuttal, but had no means to do so.

Doubting ANON's premise, I resorted to Buzztime's statistically rich website and discovered, not altogether to my surprise, that not a single player from any of the aforementioned borg sites were ranked among the top 100 players in Brainbuster. Is this still true? Sadly, no, but the creep, if you'll forgive me, has been very slight.

So how does one land a five figure score on one of our beloved 15 question quizzes? Simple. You know one third of the answers, correctly guess a couple more, and accept the correction provided by the clues on the remaining eight questions. Voila! I can attest to this, because that's the level I've been playing to, of late. My luck ran out last winter, and my average now is barely above 10K.

The string of 13's, punctuated by the occasional 14, which I enjoyed last autumn had a precedent. Two years earlier I had a similar string of successes playing as MICE, which also enjoyed a several-month run at the top of the Brainbuster rankings. Now that I've been through two of those cycles, playing in a group of 1-5 players, I'm in a position to say, that if the content crew is writing questions which I can answer, then so I shall. And if the content crew has swapped out my Fairy Godmother, whomever she may be, in writing such questions as I can answer, well then, by golly, I'll just swallow my 9.2's until she rotates back onto Brainbuster.

Of course smartphone technology keeps advancing, so this may not pass as an eternal verity. But sorry, ANON, you were wrong on both counts. Nobody has been successful cheating at Brainbuster; and if someone were in fact so desperate, a single flub wouldn't be noticed, leave alone swing the balance of a game. Whether anagram questions can do anything to correct a defective moral compass? In the absence of common sense, probably not.


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 Post subject: Re: BrainBuster 5 January 2016--Anagram Question
PostPosted: Wed Sep 21, 2016 4:04 pm 
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GONE D wrote:
But sorry, ANON, you were wrong on both counts. Nobody has been successful cheating at Brainbuster; and if someone were in fact so desperate, a single flub wouldn't be noticed, leave alone swing the balance of a game. Whether anagram questions can do anything to correct a defective moral compass? In the absence of common sense, probably not.


The same week I posted this, I looked at the Buzztime HOF for BrainBuster to check it out for sure, and saw that people from the the main Showdown borg teams (except, unfortunately, Milanos) were indeed playing that game--so it turns out that they did see the question in question.

Of course, I did not suggest in the original post that anyone on those teams were successful in borging BrainBuster, I was merely saying that I was tickled that they were forced to read the question and its answers.

We can agree, though, that such a question is unlikely to change the behavior of those teams. I was just pleased that Buzztime was actually calling them out in a very public (and amusing) way.

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 Post subject: Re: BrainBuster 5 January 2016--Anagram Question
PostPosted: Wed Sep 21, 2016 5:49 pm 
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GONE D wrote:
Of course smartphone technology keeps advancing, so this may not pass as an eternal verity. But sorry, ANON, you were wrong on both counts. Nobody has been successful cheating at Brainbuster; and if someone were in fact so desperate, a single flub wouldn't be noticed, leave alone swing the balance of a game. Whether anagram questions can do anything to correct a defective moral compass? In the absence of common sense, probably not.

As I've said many times, the use of reference material during trivia is not cheating. The ethics of such is naturally a totally different matter.

I can point out several teams that use aids during Showdown that can't break an egg without such as BrainBuster. But if you think nobody can successfully borg BrainBuster, I could arrange a demonstration. Because it's not difficult with the correct skill set.


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 Post subject: Re: BrainBuster 5 January 2016--Anagram Question
PostPosted: Wed Sep 21, 2016 11:26 pm 
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Lotsa Posta

Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2016 9:33 am
Posts: 710
-BO- wrote:
the use of reference material during trivia is not cheating


I disagree. Periodic tables folded into purses, lists of Chinese dynasties or French kings, and the taxonomic tree included.

-BO- wrote:
I could arrange a demonstration.


While I'd love to hop on I-35 on Monday morning to arrive in Dallas in time for Tuesday Brainbuster, my first-hand witness of your success would be inconsequential - as opposed to the accusation of cheating, which must be backed by eye-witness report. Personally, I'm happy to offer you a free pass to borg, experimentally, to prove your point. ANON? Anyone else? So far from being opposed, I'm in favor of BO's borging on a date which he specifies. I think this would be a fun experiment, despite there being no experimental control. I mean, BO is a 99th percentile player. The borgs, as a rule, are not. So I presume BO would enter better keystrokes on a state-of-the-art device. And he's perfectly capable of winning Brainbuster without the cheat. But damn! This looks something like a called shot.

ANON wrote:
I was tickled that they were forced to read the question and its answers.


It went over their heads. Their frustration is reserved for questions phrased as, "Which of the following is/is not a member of the set?" And since only Doctor Fate and High Flier (to name names) are making any kind of a splash, and since neither of them is seemingly capable of answering more than half the quiz - let me reiterate that I was forced to read the question and the drop-down box, and it gave me a headache.

BO, I'd love it if you proved me wrong. I say go for it!


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 Post subject: Re: BrainBuster 5 January 2016--Anagram Question
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 7:44 am 
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GONE D wrote:
While I'd love to hop on I-35 on Monday morning to arrive in Dallas in time for Tuesday Brainbuster, my first-hand witness of your success would be inconsequential - as opposed to the accusation of cheating, which must be backed by eye-witness report. Personally, I'm happy to offer you a free pass to borg, experimentally, to prove your point. ANON? Anyone else? So far from being opposed, I'm in favor of BO's borging on a date which he specifies. I think this would be a fun experiment, despite there being no experimental control. I mean, BO is a 99th percentile player. The borgs, as a rule, are not. So I presume BO would enter better keystrokes on a state-of-the-art device. And he's perfectly capable of winning Brainbuster without the cheat. But damn! This looks something like a called shot.


While I appreciate your commitment to empiricism, it seems that you are unaware of large quantities of data that already exist. For much of the period from the late 90s to the late 00s, BO's team used computers on Tuesday nights, and received very high scores as a result. It was actually something of a cause celebre in the small pond of NTN/Buzztime devotees at the time.

As many of the denizens of this board (and its predecessors, the old Buzztime Forums and BadBart) already have the better part of ten years' worth of evidence that BO's team can borg quite successfully indeed, I don't think you will find too many takers among long-time players for your proposition. The experiment has already been done.

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


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 Post subject: Re: BrainBuster 5 January 2016--Anagram Question
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 12:16 pm 
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Lotsa Posta

Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2016 9:33 am
Posts: 710
ANON wrote:
The experiment has already been done.


I would like to see it repeated. My better angel (if I may return to a previous motif, Kevin) informs that I'm full of bad ideas. This might be one of them.

Congratulations to BO for reforming himself.

There's a local trio (TIARA, HOBBES, EAGLE) which have historically won many Showdowns as individual players (lacking a quorum for a site score) through Tiara's laptop. Lately this group hasn't been scoring nearly as well. I'm uncertain whether they have reformed, or whether the wifi at B-52 has been so stuffed as to make rapid response more difficult. Historically, they haven't bothered to play Brainbuster. B-52 is surrounded by hotels (last exit from US 52 south of the I-494/I-694 loop), and it does a fabulous mid-week dinner trade. Although I'm never there on Tuesdays, on Wednesday and Thursday it's not uncommon for 100 people in the one large room to be more or less simultaneously punching buttons on their smartphones.

A few years ago (well before I'd heard of NewScaratings) I was playing Showdown at the Tailgate, and after a particularly sweaty Pyramid, I made the observation regarding, let's say, Question #3, "At least it wasn't googleable."

Another player disagreed with me, and to prove his point, while I recited the question and another player timed him, he entered 16 keystrokes on his phone and flashed the answer in my face in under seven seconds. This kind of timing is just fine for the low-hanging fruit in the Warm-Up and Pyramid in Showdown, but too slow for a quiz run on the Countdown engine, such as Brainbuster.

If BO agrees with you, that my invitation is a Pandora's Box which ought not to be opened, he is unquestionably taking the high road, and with that I cannot quarrel. While questions of gameplay ethics fascinate me, I don't in fact need to know why BO can google Brainbuster but other players, accused of such, all seem to be...not very good at it.


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 Post subject: Re: BrainBuster 5 January 2016--Anagram Question
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 4:28 pm 
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GONE D wrote:
Another player disagreed with me, and to prove his point, while I recited the question and another player timed him, he entered 16 keystrokes on his phone and flashed the answer in my face in under seven seconds. This kind of timing is just fine for the low-hanging fruit in the Warm-Up and Pyramid in Showdown, but too slow for a quiz run on the Countdown engine, such as Brainbuster.

Nope. It's not too slow. I've personally googled an answer in the Countdown round of Showdown in time to get 1000 points on my 4 boards. Same with the final question in the Lightning round.

Quote:
If BO agrees with you, that my invitation is a Pandora's Box which ought not to be opened, he is unquestionably taking the high road, and with that I cannot quarrel. While questions of gameplay ethics fascinate me, I don't in fact need to know why BO can google Brainbuster but other players, accused of such, all seem to be...not very good at it.

To clear up a few things about the history of references.....

In the early 90's, many top teams used paper references. Dictionaries, almanacs, periodic tables, whatever. In the right hands in every round, they were effective as well. Later that decade the National West Covina team began the "borg wars" where quite a few of the top teams engaged in electronic referencing. At that time these were accepted practices. This changed as we got into the mid-2000's as many teams stopped the practice and the word "cheating" was used frequently. Eventually, all top teams stopped using references. Then with the advent of smartphones, it started up again. But this time with random ragtag teams who still use to this day.

So why are the googlers so poor? I tend to think that a poor trivia player just doesn't know how to properly parse a trivia question. If they knew how to, they would be better players without references. Also, a laptop works infinitely better than a smart phone. And most of today's borg just use smartphones.

I have zero interest in borging in a team setting. Showdown is harder than it used to be but the questions are just as simple to reference. I think that if we did borg for a year we might win 40 games. There will be an occasional game where there's a key question that is google resistant, but overall it would get very boring very fast.

There is one experiment I'd love to try. Play Showdown solo with a laptop and six boards. I'd have to create six new handles though: 1 of 6, 2 of 6, etc. Jeri Ryan can be my witness.


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 Post subject: Re: BrainBuster 5 January 2016--Anagram Question
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 7:20 pm 
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Lotsa Posta

Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2016 9:33 am
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If you can google the final question in the Lightning Round, well then, BO - I rest your case.

One of the local players here, DSHBAG, used to pursue the game avidly. Finding himself in SoCal, he dropped into The National an hour before Showdown and requested a playmaker.

"Can't have one, they're all spoken for," he was told. "But you can help out on the reference team." Yikes!

I played 15 years, maybe a thousand games per year, without thinking to join Players+. Then RUGCAT, all 6'8" of him, twisted my arm. There are, apparently, more levels of competetive ardor than are dreamt of in my philosophy.


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