New Scaratings

As paraphrased from the notes in my crossword margin. Answers below and distractors provided (alphabetically) when I bothered to write 'em down, so you can play along

1) What is Romania's dominant religion?
2) All of these nations border Romania except: (Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldova, Slovakia, Ukraine)
3) The currency of Romania is the new _____ (Dinar, Euro, Forint, Hryvnia, Lei)
4) What former leader of Romania was overthrown and executed in 1989?
5) This U-shaped mountain range crosses central Romania:
6) "Dracula" is a derivative of the Romanian word for:
7) Iolanda Dalas is the only woman (person?) to win consecutive gold medals in this discipline:
8) Romania's population is about how many people? (10 million, 20 million, 30 million, 40 million, 50 million)
9) Located about 10 miles NW of Bucharest, Romania's largest airport is named after:
10) ______ Castle in Transylvania is nicknamed "Dracula's Castle"
11) Tuica is a revered Romanian type of:
12) Constanta is the location of Romania's largest:
13) In Bucharest, the Athenaeum is a landmark:
14) If you wanted to tell a Romanian you really liked them, you would say:
15) The Romanian flag is a tricolor of Blue, Yellow, and ______

1) Orthodox Christianity (Roman Catholic may have deceived a few people)
2) Slovakia
3) Lei
4) Nicolae Ceaucescu
5) Carpathians
6) Devil
7) High jump (she won it in 1960 and 1964)
8) 20 million
9) Henri Coanda
10) Bran (castle)
11) Plum brandy
12) Port city
13) Concert hall
14) Te iubesc (one other answer included the pronoun te. Of course, I picked that one)
15) Red

An enjoyable game with well-mixed questions, both in terms of subject and difficulty

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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?

I played last night at Adams Mill, where one of us had researched the Topix and was looking forward to playing, and another one of us had just returned from vacation, having visited Romania. Therefore we actually thought the questions were rather easy, except for the one about the two-time Olympian, which nobody knew. Had someone known the answer to that we would have had a 15K bar average; in fact all eight of our boxes (from four players) would have been perfectos.

It is weird to see the breakdown by state. Only 10 scores from Connecticut, and eight of them had top-11 scores, all from the Mill.

Speaking of Romania, did anyone see the offbeat news item about the former elementary school teacher? Now that would be a great Abused News question were they to ever bring that game back!

-- 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...."

Congrats to Adams Mill on the win last night. When we saw that Adams Mill beat us 14.2 to 12.5 (2nd East) we knew someone had inside knowledge of Romania or studied well. Nicely done.

We were slow on Devil, High Jump and Henri Coanda.

Back in the days of Passport 4 or 5 of our players would have read up on Romania but not anymore. The 1/2 hr topix just aren't the same as the good old 1 hr Passport games. Maybe I'll read up on whatever the next geography Thur topix is.

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BUD - Stained Glass Pub Silver Spring MD
OC BUD - Grotto Pizza DE near Ocean City MD

LET'S GO ....Caps and Os!!!!

Congrats to TWIT and my Home site Adam's Mill, I figured Al (Twit) would do well in that game since he just vacationed there, he tried to talk the regular team into going, but we were all trivia'd out for the week after not so stellar Tues. and Wed. night outings

I disagree with the good balance comment. For anyone who invested an interesting 15 minutes reading the Wikipedia page it was 13 gimmes, one that took a bit of intuition, and one utter guess. In the penultimate case incidentally the Q had two errors: the name Dracul was given to Tepes' father not him (he used the diminutive version) and it actually means "dragon" or "serpent" but came later to be associated with the devil. The utter guess of course was in picking the right one of Romania's dozens of gold medalists in obscure sports of a half century ago to commit to memory. Not worth the effort.

This seems to be the pattern for recent Topix, where at the top end of the scale it comes down to who guesses the one stinker that was at best tangential to the topic at hand. There are a huge number of questions that cannot be found from scanning the lead Wikipedia page, that are interesting, and that are actually about Romania itself that could have made it far more separated, far more fair (and I say this as one who HAS guessed the one stinker far more than most players so please spare the sour grapes BS), and much more balanced. What's wrong with say 6 gimmes to keep the low end interested, 4 that take a bit of random knowledge or reading, 3 for the Wiki skimming folks (but not just from the top paragraph!) and 2 that actually take some real education, but are actually about the country?

I mean just from memory what about the last 5 (of the above, not concentrated as Q11-15) being

What is the name of Romania's "most beautiful waterfall in the world"?
What is Rope Street in Brasov famous for?
Which statue in Bucharest's University Square is NOT of a scholar or scientist?
Which Romanian city is called/signposted Kronstadt by the German-speaking minority?
Voronet, named for a monastery, is a particular shade of what color?

All things that are not gimmes but relatively achievable in reasonable knowledge of or reading about the actual country itself, and it wouldn't just be who guessed, or happened by wild happenstance to come across, the one Topix Stinker this week.

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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.

Like, who gives a fuck what an old fat former weightlifting wanker Thinks...

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Buzztime is a company full of dumbshits.

Ah more intelligent commentary and Wildean wit from the peanut gallery...

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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.

Some comments...

To BUDS: Actually, your site was not just 2nd in the East. They were 2nd, period. In fact, the top 10 locations were all Eastern sites. (I have a tongue-in-cheek theory as to why the East dominated on this game...)

To richte09: (Does that mean there are eight more of you? That's okay; there are 740 more of me. ) Since Tim undoubtedly talked you and Al into playing the NFL Topix a few weeks ago, you and Tim should have joined for Romania. I went instead because (a) it was the type of Topix that Al and I would have played well as a team, and (b) I hadn't been to the Mill in well over a month. The fact that Al had been to Romania doesn't surprise me, but it was definitely a plus. I really expected just two people playing five boxes, but I texted my regular teammate Dave just in case, and he joined us as well. With Tom/BIFF and Dave/GORDON, we were a formidable bunch who also was #3, at least in the East, in Six.

To Rhino: I partially agree with you. Although it was (mostly) an easy Topix for us, the fact that the 11th bar average in the East was less than 8000 points means that most players found the game far less than easy. I do agree that there should be a number of questions that cannot be found just by reading one Wikipedia page, and I also think that the High Jump question was a real stinker, and is better suited for a trivia game on obscure Olympic feats than a game about Romania.

To pengwn: Thank you for your write-up. I mostly agree that it was a great game, but there was no way I'd remember all 15 questions with their answers.

And to lewser: My theory as to why the East dominated Thursday's Topix: You scared them away from the West!

Finally, on my first post on this thread, I alluded to a weird news story about Romania that I heard just a few hours after the Topix game had ended. Below is a link to that story. Happy Halloween.

link

-- 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...."

To richte09: (Does that mean there are eight more of you? That's okay; there are 740 more of me. ) Since Tim undoubtedly talked you and Al into playing the NFL Topix a few weeks ago, you and Tim should have joined for Romania. I went instead because (a) it was the type of Topix that Al and I would have played well as a team, and (b) I hadn't been to the Mill in well over a month. The fact that Al had been to Romania doesn't surprise me, but it was definitely a plus. I really expected just two people playing five boxes, but I texted my regular teammate Dave just in case, and he joined us as well. With Tom/BIFF and Dave/GORDON, we were a formidable bunch who also was #3, at least in the East, in Six.

I don't know what 740 of you means , but anyways just for the record in response to your previous comment we do have lives and families and other things we like to do other that trivia (Yes believe it or not), plus I was exhausted after a hard weeks work which played too in my decision not to play. We do not frequent thursday nights very often as you know, Tim and I are not big fans of the thursday lineup and we get our SIX fix on Wed. night, and we just prefer the Tues. & Wed. night lineup. Al on the other hand is a 5 night a week habitual player, he has his routine which we applaud him for. Tim and I both said we were long shot maybe's to come out and play Thurs., I was close to doing it but was just too tired. We usually only go on Thurs. when there is a TOPIX we want to play which have been few and far between. And Al usually skips TOPIX and leaves early if it is something he doesn't like. Tim wanted to come out and play NFL, and thought it an interesting TOPIX (until I blew the Dallas Cowboys question),we were there so Al played the game with us. Plus knowing you would probably be there also factored in our decision too, just wasn't in the mood to deal with you. And we all know why you came to the Mill because you knew Al was playing and that he would nail that game, so please don't lecture on why we didn't play, even Al knows the ansewer to that one And by the way, the "Mill Rats" are a formidable team with our regular team in place too, Nice chatting with you again and have a great day