Carter, Craig and Lamb were the core of the team in future contests. But the Linguists agree they would never have come close to winning had it not been for their fortuitous merger with The Knights from Ni. The Knights and Linguists joined in time for the Spring 1980 contest and this development, plus the addition of music maven Athos Bousvaros '81 around the same time, put the team over the top.
The Knights of Ni were a Prospect House team dating back to the mid-70's that had routinely finished in the Top Ten over the previous four years. Their performance improved from 8th to 5th to 4th to 3rd place between 1976 and 1978. But in an era of uberteams like Alphabet Soup, Buda Bear, Maximus Drott and Bomo, they'd never been able to make the final leap into the winner's circle.
By Spring 1978, the Knights had several contests under their belt, and with a combination of players from the Classes of '78 and '80, made their biggest push ever. Alas, they finished 3rd, the '78 students flew the coop, and the franchise fell out of the Top Ten for the first time in several years that December. The surviving Knights did rebound thereafter, but only to a fifth- place finish in Winter 1979. The 4th-place Cunning Linguists, playing just their third contest, were one slot higher.
With Prospect House now fielding two competitive teams, the next move was obvious. Using the math peculiar to Williams Trivia that 4 plus 5 might equal 1, the two groups combined forces the following May, and the elusive championship was theirs at last. The Cunning Linguists (ahem) licked the competition in a reasonably close three-way battle over previous semester's contest hosts Alphabet Soup, and Giga (who would soon morph into two-time winners Phasers on Stun).
However, the mostly-Class of '80 Knights graduated right after finally winning the contest, and the then-junior Linguists don't recall their being around to help run things the following December. Bousvaros, on the other hand, was integral, pretty much doing all of the music. The team received some complaints about their music being "too easy"-- an unsurprising reaction, given the Linguists' opinion that recent contests had appealed to too narrow an audience. A conscious decision had been made to choose more mainstream tunes. (Hmmm. Complaints about the music? The more Williams Trivia changes....)
After clawing their way to trivia nirvana in 1980, Cunning Linguists "was out of steam," and did not compete in a heavy-duty way again.
Chris Lamb '82 recalls/rebuts: "The reminiscence you have from Rob Kent is right about "it's on the tip of your tongue" (which in my view almost redeems the team name), but I am almost sure he is wrong about the challenge trivia. I remember participating in challenge trivia once as a competitor, but am pretty sure we didn't include it in our contest. If I could take credit for it, I would, because I think it was a pretty good idea.
I do, however, remain bitter about the way our challenge trivia question was treated. I came up with a question that asked what television shows the first four Charlie's Angels were regulars on before they were Angels, but the team running the contest refused to even try to answer it because they deemed Charlie's Angels unworthy of trivial inquiry. (I maintained and still maintain that the question is not about 'Charlie's Angels,' but rather about other 1970s TV shows.)"
Dan Carter '82 describes the formats of the Linguists' SuperBoni: "The consecutive clues contest was a 'fill in the blanks' where the answer to one was a fill-in for the next, something like. . .
1. The notorious feature of Fenway Park is __________(a)__________
2. The Marvel super hero best described as __________(a)__________ had an alter ego who was played by __________(b)__________ on television.
Etc. It really didn't work that well.
The second one, the Sexist SuperBonus, was the big hit. One was given names of women and men from various genres. When last we saw them, they weren't yet married (or didn't even have a relationship yet), but if they did get married and the woman took the man's last name, her name would be. . . Snow Charming, Phoebe Everett, Maryjane Parker, etc. You had to give the full names of each, and where we saw them last.
I remember that we got some sex scandal confused and paired up a congressman with the wrong woman, so we had to give credit for any answer. However, I don't remember the congressman or the scandal. Just goes to show you. Someday, we'll all be saying "Monica Who?"
Chris Lamb '82 adds:
"The night we ran the contest is more or less a blur. It was my second straight all-nighter. I remember playing a set of John Lennon music at the 4:00 break because he had been killed the night before. And I remember judging the action trivia that required people to come down and perform bokomaron (two people touching the soles of their feet together from "Cat's Cradle"). Sheila Walsh '83 (now Sidney--an actress best known for her regular role on the short-lived John Ritter show, "Hooperman") came down to the station and did the bokomaron with tights on, and I gave her a hard time because her feet weren't bare. When she asked for scissors to cut her tights off, I relented and gave her full credit. She then offered that she would do anything to win the contest, even sleep with the head of the Cunning Linguists-- to which I responded that, regrettably, those sorts of arrangements had to be made prior to contest night.
(NOTE: Tragically, Sheila's team did not win.)
Looking back at the contest, I can't claim to be overwhelmed by the quality of it, but I think we did a few things well. I like some of the action trivia, and I think the music was very well done. I can't defend what seems to me now (and may even have seemed to me then) to be an over-emphasis on Steve Martin, "Saturday Night Live," and Looney Tunes. I am also somewhat chagrined when I think about how we never bothered to fact-check many of the questions that we wrote off the top of our heads. To this day, I can't really say I am 100% of the answers to some of the questions I contributed."
(Incidentally, here's the ill-fated "Charlie's Angels" answer: Farrah Fawcett was seen on "Harry-O"; Kate Jackson appeared on "The Rookies"; Cheryl Ladd honed her acting chops on "The Ken Berry "Wow" Show"; and Jaclyn Smith popped up on "McCloud."
The consecutive clues answers are: a) The Green Monster; b) Bill Bixby. Presumably, "c" had to do with "The Magician" or "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" or "My Favorite Martian," and so on.
The three "Sexist" pairings were Snow White and Prince Charming, from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"; Phoebe Figerlily and Professor Harold Everett, from "Nanny and the Professor"; and MaryJane Watson and Peter Parker of "The Amazing Spiderman." Some other love matches are listed with the Super description.)