8th Annual Brainbuster Cup

ANON · **Joined:** Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:59 pm **Posts:** 2232

Brainbuster, indeed.

Kudos to the content team at Buzztime for making the first week of the Brainbuster Cup a challenging one. As near as I can tell, that game had the lowest winning score on record, including games from New Year's Day, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day (not counting a game after the lockdown in March 2020 when only a relative handful of locations were open).

As a result of this, no team was able to jump into a commanding lead, and there are a number of teams bunched together toward the top. See current standings for the tournament here:

https://ntn.donrdenton.com/tournament.php?KeyCol=15

Thanks, as always, to Don Denton for generously giving his time to creating and maintaining the tournament standings page.

As all teams get to drop a low score, everyone is still pretty much in it. Good skill to everyone this week!

BUD · **Posted:** Wed Apr 13, 2022 9:40 am

Another fairly tough set of questions, little better than last week, 2 more than last week were known to our team of 2 on 5 boxes. Was that more inline with recent game difficulty levels?

Congrats to the Red Fox Fellowship again, Primetime and Alien Bar took the top 3 in the tourney. I saw 10 of the 12 teams in the top 20 including SGP. (staying out of last place for now)

No game next week because Passover begins on Friday.

Busted Brains again!

ANON · **Joined:** Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:59 pm **Posts:** 2232

Here are the current standings for the Brainbuster Cup:

https://ntn.donrdenton.com/tournament.php?KeyCol=15

As always, sincerest thanks to Don Denton for creating and maintaining the tournament page. The Fellowship has opened up a lead, but the fight for second place is pretty intense. Speaking of which...

As I was going through my correspondence in the run-up to the aborted 2020 tournament for another reason, I ran across something I had forgotten. The original plan was not only to award the trophy to the winner as usual, but also to award literal silver and bronze medals to the second- and third-place teams (well, not literal silver or bronze, but literal silver-ish and bronze-ish medals). I see no reason why we shouldn't follow the original plan now, so consider this a formal announcement that actual pieces of hardware will be given out to the teams that finish on the podium.

Good skill to all this week!

BUD · **Posted:** Mon Apr 25, 2022 5:00 pm

Tomorrow, back to the most impossible game there is in the BT line up. Can anyone beat the fellowship at the Red Fox?

ANON · **Joined:** Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:59 pm **Posts:** 2232

Before the usual update, I would first like to congratulate Danny K's and Lighthouse Tavern for knocking The Fellowship off its Brainbuster perch last night--kudos!

That being said, The Fellowship still holds a lead in the tournament with two weeks to go. There is a real knock-down, drag out fight for the silver and bronze medals, though--five teams bunched within 1,200 points of each other, and only 21 points separating 3rd and 4th after dropping low scores:

https://ntn.donrdenton.com/tournament.p ... &KeyCol=15

Thanks, as always, to Don Denton for maintaining the tournament page.

Good skill to all this week!

BUD · **Posted:** Thu Apr 28, 2022 4:07 pm

What day of the week did the Music Die?

Merkin · **Joined:** Sat Apr 27, 2013 12:16 am **Posts:** 772

BUD wrote:

ANON wrote:

It looks like we'll have an even dozen for our first player-run tournament in 2 1/2 years:!

Well, not exactly Anon. We did have the player run Mudee Thur SIX tournament in Sept ‘20 and again in Sept ‘21. I don’t really remember who won both of those. The Red Fox failed to play in ‘21 so maybe it didn’t really happen. :mrgreen

Thanks Bud

ANON · **Joined:** Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:59 pm **Posts:** 2232

Week 4 of the Brainbuster Cup is in the books, and it looks like it is a three-horse race for #1:

https://ntn.donrdenton.com/tournament.php?KeyCol=15

Thanks as always to Don Denton for maintaining the tournament page.

As you can see, although only three teams have a mathematical chance to win, the competition for the other (actual!) medals is intense. Only four teams are mathematically eliminated from silver, and only two teams are mathematically eliminated from bronze. It should be an interesting week.

Good skill to all in the final week!

ANON · **Joined:** Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:59 pm **Posts:** 2232

While there was not a lot drama regarding the top spot in the first post-COVID Brainbuster Tournament, there was plenty of drama surrounding spots 2-5.

The Fellowship did not do particularly well on Tuesday, but they did well enough to squeak ahead of Stained Glass Pub by 24 points for the gold medal for the night and the tournament victory. Before dropping low scores, here are the cumulative point standings for the tournament:

58,300 The Fellowship
49,477 Lighthouse Tavern
49,156 Danny K's
49,076 Teaser's
47,471 Alien Bar
46,913 Primetime Sports
45,832 Phat Turtle BBQ
43,343 Stained Glass Pub
42,378 Time Out West
40,717 Wallaby's
34,005 Grumpy's Too
32,639 Torrey Pines Pub

As you can see, only about 400 points separated the teams from 2nd to 4th place, with Lighthouse just a few hundred ahead of Danny K's. But of course, the only totals that matter are the ones after dropping low scores. Two things are evident from these scores: 1) The Fellowship clearly likes nice, round numbers, and 2) There were some shakeups in positions 2-5:

48,000 The Fellowship
42,318 Danny K's
42,215 Lighthouse Tavern
40,376 Alien Bar
40,162 Teaser's
38,804 Primetime Sports
37,777 Phat Turtle BBQ
36,652 Stained Glass Pub
35,774 Time Out West
33,474 Wallaby's
30,945 Grumpy's Too
27,090 Torrey Pines Pub

In a real barn-burner, Danny K's sniped the silver medal away from Lighthouse Tavern by only 103 points, and Alien Bar jumped past Teaser's for the 4th-place spot by a little more than 200 points. Congrats to all of them, and to Grumpy's which achieved its stated pre-tournament goal by not finishing in last place. (For the complete tournament standings, check out the tournament page on Don Denton's site: https://ntn.donrdenton.com/tournament.p ... &KeyCol=15 . Thanks as always to Don for maintaining the tournament page.). Will the representatives of Danny K's and Lighthouse please contact me with mailing information for your Silver(-ish) and Bronze(-ish) medals? Please also include any special engraving instructions regarding your team name, if any.

So that's a wrap for the 8th (nearly-)Annual Brainbuster Cup. I would like to take this opportunity thank each and every team for choosing to participate. It has been a rough few years for the Buzztime faithful, so it is great to have actual tournaments again like in The-Before-Times. Here's hoping that next year's field will be even bigger than it was this year. With the McCarthy Cup in progress, the Sandbag Tournament slated to return this fall, and I'm guessing another SIX tournament in the works, it looks like Trivia-dom is beginning to get back to something vaguely resembling normality. Thanks again to all the participants, and consider this an invitation to other locations to get your teams together and join the fun the next time a tournament rolls around.

Last, but certainly not least, as tournament commissioner I would be remiss if I did not officially congratulate and thank the awesome team it has been my great honor and good fortune to play with these last 18 years. Congrats to The Fellowship for the win, and thanks for making every Tuesday fun for almost two decades.

Until next year,

ANON

BUD · **Posted:** Wed May 25, 2022 4:18 pm

Congrats on the win Anon and all the minions at the Red Fox. Convincing win without much of a challenge.

It seems now that the Brainbuster Cup is over BT went back to some much easier questions for this game. Again reinforcing my thought that BT does step the level of questions up for the player run tourneys. We will see if that happens yet again in Sept when the Mudee Thur SIX tourney starts.

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8th Annual Brainbuster Cup

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