This contest was streamed from Colorado, where Ben Kitchen is a grad student. It was delayed because wildfires in the state forced the University to open later than expected this semester.
Lots of thrills and spills in last night's Williams Trivia contest.
I would like to call special attention to the EXCEPTIONAL song matching. It was one of the funniest, cleverest and useful-est sets of song matches for any contest I've ever played. I make that statement with revolting experience, as this was my 75th consecutive game.
If you match a dildo question with Steely Dan AND they're singing "Peg," you've won my heart forever.
--Des
Agreed. In addition to that one, I'd also like to nominate two others.
The glory hole question, matched with "I'm Gonna Love You Through It" by Martina McBride
The Wonderbra question, matched with "You Raise Me Up" by Josh Groban
Honorable mention:
The question about the Norwegian porn group FFF, matched with "Norwegian Wood"
Oh, please.
Best (ever?) match was the #_LITfest with "still haven't found what I'm looking for".
If you don't get it, you don't get it.
To the Williams College Trivia Contest community, and especially to "Death By Chocolate Charles Guiteau":
We here at "Somehow, You Made It Worse" wanted to drop a quick note to say how much we appreciated Friday's Contest!
We particularly enjoyed the music, and the clever tie-ins between the music and the questions. Hilarity at team headquarters ensued when the Contest seemed to take a decided turn toward the off-color in the final hours. We were absolutely howling with laughter learning about British Columbia's official guidance for avoiding coronavirus, or the olfactory pleasures of the "Corinthian" tanning industry of Newark, New Jersey.
Our hosts, Allie, Lexi, and Ben, were a blast to play for. A big part of what made the Contest so enjoyable this time was the inclusiveness of the hosts. We're relatively new to this Contest (this was only our second time playing) and they were patient when we had questions about the rules, and they were very attentive and seemed like they were enjoying themselves. Trivia is supposed to be fun, and I think they showed that that expectation extends to the people running the Contest, too!
We also enjoyed the challenging hourly Boni, and were delighted by the hour of cocktail recipes.
All in all, the Contest was a joy to compete in. Congratulations to "Poker? I Hardly Know Her" for a well-deserved win!
Thanks again to "Death By Chocolate Charles Guiteau!" and the Williams College Trivia community! We're looking forward to seeing you all again in May!
Now that the questions are posted, I'd like to thank Ben and co. in Death By Chocolate Guiteau. We had lots of fun playing this one. Well done enduring the tech issues that plague all Trivias--it takes gumption to have to improvise all of that on the fly.
Seconding what everyone's already said about the song-matching. Really high-quality stuff there--and no one's even mentioned the super-dark "Parents Just Don't Understand" clue for the Menendez Brothers! I also wanted to call out the additions to the canon of nutty Trivia songs, like "Please Don't Sit on the Plexiglass Toilet," "Has Been," and "When You're In Love, the Whole World is Jewish.". There were also a noticeable amount of repeating artists, but if it's the Beatles and Bruce Springsteen, that's not that horrible. The first half's questions were maybe a little sports-heavy (one stretch had seven out of nine questions be sports, which was maybe a bit much), but maybe that balances out a dearth from some previous contests. The questions on their own merits were generally pretty solid--I liked the Trout/Salmon bit, Fing for Forests, and the bit about the guy who was the inspiration for "Rich Girl," to name a few.
We didn't get the Ultra until the end, but Laurie was kicking herself for not getting it on Imagine Dragons, and we definitely should have made the connection by Jon Heder and Orson Scott Card. Ah well--that's a fair one, and it looks like some folks did come up with it early on, which is the desired result.
The first four hour bonii were all very high-quality. The self-portraits one was a legitimately original idea: I'm not sure I've seen that as a theme in any trivia contest I've done anywhere, especially with the variety of subjects, and it was fun to puzzle a bunch of those out. Supervocalics and That Thing... I don't think have been done in Trivia, and they're both sturdy concepts. There was a lot of fun stuff like writing out all NBA champions by year and all the lyrics to We Didn't Start the Fire for the former, and any quiz like the latter that has questions on The Woman in White and Angels in America is fine by me. The classical music sample audio bonus was also a really clever theme, too (especially the all-Pachelbel-progression section)! We were mad at ourselves for not doing better than we did, but it seems like that was a toughie for everyone. The second half's bonii were fine, if not quite as inspired conceptually. What happened with the audio section on "The Joker", by the way? That seemed like it would be a really fun one (excepting the caveat below), if we'd had the audio rather than the answers.
The Taylor Swift mega bonus was a phenomenal achievement--60% bigger than the gargantuan Wizard of Oz bonus from '04, which had been the gold standard of huge audio enterprises to this point. I only wish we'd been able to appreciate it more. Some other folks have commented in the past that audios (while maybe my favorite trivia bonus type) are inherently somewhat disruptive to the rest of the Trivia listening experience. A one-hour disruption can be a little tough: trying to manage it for all eight hours (including an hour while there's a second audio happening) was challenging.
On that front--I may be in the minority on this one, but I'm wondering how much the Zoom rooms are useful to other teams. Basically, at this point in contest history, you're trying to pay attention to a) the radio stream, b) the Zoom chat, c) the IRC window, and d) multiple browser tabs for the bonii you're working on (which may also have an audio component). That's a lot of media streams to manage at once. Our plan going forward is to play without the Zoom room, as it's the only optional one; obviously, if other people feel differently, that won't affect us, but if they don't, maybe that's one less ball for the running team to juggle.
Anyway, thanks again Guiteau, and good luck for May to Poker!