| 257 | Oh No, Bette Midler! | |
| 252 | Huh-Huhhh-Huh-Huh-Huhhhhhh!!! | |
| 223 | A Gaggle of Small-Nosed Love Wenches | |
| 186 | Shiny Happy Tupperware of Doom | |
| 176 | Shallow End of The Gene Pool | |
| 173 | Department of Wood Technology | |
| 167 | We're on a Mission From God | |
| 135 | My Foot Hurts (two-person team!) | |
| 85 | Scatalogical Palindromes | |
| 60 | 12,000 BTU of Raw Cooling Power | |
| 54 | Captain O and His Crusher Posse | |
| 14 | Not This NAFTA | |
| 6 | Paul and Mike Bunnyman Wish They Were Here | |
| 5 | Berghead and Comp Scum-Guard (?) | |
| 2 | Leo Gorcey Loves My Hot Cheese Stick | |
| 2 | Ugly Bags of Mostly Water | |
| 2 | Sea of Green Phlegm | |
| 2 | Marc Loves Amy | |
| 2 | Bring Me The Head of Ted Benson | |
| 2 | Master, Master | |
| 2 | People As Far Away As Humanly Possible From Jon Young | |
| 1 | A Bargain Castration Knife is No Bargain | |
| 1 | Kentucky Fried Desmond |
Despite the desire for every contest to come down to a neck-and-neck horserace (with 3 or more necks if possible), it doesn't typically happen. The standard result is for one team to emerge by the second scoring update, and incrementally increase its lead by inches against tough competition, or by chunks if the field is thin. But the 55th contest featured a battle that grew tighter, not looser, culminating in a legitimate, old-fashioned come-from-behind win by "Oh No, Bette Midler!" Some specific numbers and stats exist to give a sense of what happened, and how.
As it shook out, the two top teams playing Purpose of the Military's contest in December, 1993 were clearly "Oh No, Bette Midler!" and "Huh-Huhhh-Huh-Huh-Huhhh!" Oh No, Bette Midler! won the contest with 257 points, five more than Huh-Huhhh-Huh-Huh! The third-highest team, "A Gaggle of Small-Nosed Love Wenches," was about 30 points back. No other team got 200 points. So, who were these top two combatants?
Oh No, Bette Midler! was the ongoing entity known as "The Currier Ballroom Team" (despite the fact that they didn't actually PLAY out of the Currier Ballroom by 1993). They were coming off a win in Winter 1992 as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun to Be With." And after running their Bette! contest, they would win again in their NEXT opportunity, as "Can't....Do....Plaid... (thud)." (They had won before this 1992-94 stretch, and would win after it, too.) But with three Winter wins in a row, they were easily the dominant team of the early 1990's.
Huh-Huhhh-Huh-Huh-Huhhh!'s story is slightly more complex. After slowly accumulating on the Python team in the late 80s/ early 90s, the "outside" New York-heavy faction of the Python team decided to continue competing for 1st place past the "Play to Win and I'll Kill You" second-place debacle. Joining what remained of the "Phasers on Stun: the Next Generation" team in May, 1992, the amalgamation won that contest (Phasers: TNG's second in their only two tries). By the time the Phasers: TNG on-air contest rolled around in January, 1993, other teammates had departed. And by the time the team returned to competition that May, the overall squad was down to 12 or 14 players. In Spring '94, they would win Oh No, Bette!'s contest. Two years after that, they would join together to win as "We Make Holes in Teeth!"
Neither team did historically well at all in the Winter 1993 contest, since a perfect score would have been more along the lines of 375 points, not the 250ish totals seen here. This was one of the poorer performances by a winning team in terms of "possible points claimed."
This period in Trivia is now considered a little moribund in that the same two or three teams mostly handed the trophy back and forth a lot. In fact, these two teams (or permutations thereof) would win each other's contests six times between 1990 and 1994, while only playing against each other twice. Those two contests were decided by a combined eight (or officially, six) points. Of course, times wouldn't always be so free and easy for these two squads. Little-noticed in fourth place was the debut of "Shiny Happy Tupperware of Doom," a freshman team which would eventually throw their weight around big-time.)
Sometime after 1 AM, the first scoring update showed Huh-Huhhh! with a 36-29 lead over Oh No, Bette! By 4 AM, they'd increased it to 119-107.
How did this happen? Well, Huh-Huhhh! edged Bette 21-20 in the first three Hour Boni, and Bette held a 12-11 advantage in the first three Actions, thanks to their 5 in the 2:30 "Princess Bride" sketch. In other words, the two teams were dead even in the outside elements, so Huh-Huhhh-Huh!'s lead was entirely built on questions and songs, to the tune of 3 points per hour more than Bette!.
However, neither team knew that the 12-point Huh-Huhhh! lead was illusory. Because turned in by 4 AM, but not yet graded, were Hour #4 and Super #1. Bette beat Huh-Huhhh! in the 3 AM Royal Family Hour 8-6, and lambasted 'em 19-12 in the first Super, Political Embarrassments. Even as the radio announced a 12-point lead for Huh-Huhhh!, it was already down to three.
Hour #5 and Action #4 did nothing-- the teams tied at 7 and 4, respectively. Bette picked up two points in Hour #6, 7-5. But Huh-Huhhh!'s philosophical debate on the DH rule was judged one point better than Bette's, 4-3. Ten of the twelve points were gone.
From this point forward, Bette really kicked their operation into gear. Meanwhile across town, the Huh-Huhhh-Huh'ers were struggling to hang onto their lead. Their struggles would not succeed.
Hour #7, an all-Broadway audio, was a Bette bonanza, 9-2. The last Hour Bonus, Weird Al-Tom Lehrer, was a 9-5 victory for Bette. Bette!'s second and third 9's came at just the right time. (Neither team would get a 10 in any Hour Bonus.) With Actions #6 and #7, Bette! picked up another one point apiece. Those four tests had given a 13-point jumpstart to Bette!'s cause.
The sudden surge in the Midler score can be traced to a second half of boni that steadily played to the Currier Ballroom's traditional strengths-- Literature, Weird Al, Broadway-- while moving away from topics that have been the team's bane (Sports, Politics). Though almost certainly not intentional, this was the perfect design for a come-from-behind Ballroom win, overcoming even their notably poor performance on phones.
Not known at the time was that Huh-Huhhh! had solved the Ultra early while Bette! hadn't, giving them 5 points to Bette!'s eventual 1. And Purpose o'Military also featured something called "Berger Boni." Periodically, "instant" bonuses are offered that usually involve credit to the first team to bring an item to the station, or some other feat. One Berger Bonus involved making a sculpture out of bubble gum; another asked teams to write the most complicated math problem they could onto a cigarette; a third offered a point to whatever team brought down the most human hair. Even when the concepts are okay, they don't usually work too well. In this case, Huh-Huhhh! was able to score two unanswered points to Bette's zero.
But it was the second Super Bonus, Literature, where Bette dropped their A-bomb on the beleaguered Huh-Huhhh! bunker. They scored their second 19 on the bonus; Huh-Huhhh notched a truly pathetic 4, the lowest score of the eight teams still competing."
This led to members of Purpose of the Military verbally accusing Huh-Huhhh! of throwing the contest over the air. This was a double blow to Huh-Huhhh!. They certainly knew how badly they'd blown it while handing in their sorry-assed Literature Bonus, without hearing another team taint their incompetence with an implication of chicanery. Ironically, the only reason Huh-Huhhh! existed as a separate team at all was due to ex-teammates NOT playing to win a few contests earlier. More unfortunate still is that the remarks unfairly took some of the edge off a breathtaking Oh No, Bette Midler! win.
Still, in an atmosphere where the sordid "Play to Win" scenario had just leaked into view, Military's suspicions (though untrue) were not utterly without foundation. Consider that even a mediocre 10 out of 25 on the final Lit Super would have handed the contest to Huh-Huhhh!. (In Huh-Huhhh!'s defense, five of the eight teams languished in single digits on what was a ridiculously long and difficult Super.)
In fact, this'd be a good time for......
The Super #2 Literature Scores!
19-- Oh No, Bette Midler!
13-- Shiny Happy Tupperware of Doom (launching them from 6th to 4th)
12-- Gaggle of Small-Nosed Love Wenches
8-- Scatalogical Palindromes
8-- We're On a Mission from God
6-- The Shallow End of Gene Pool
6-- My Foot Hurts
4-- Huh-Huhhh-Huh.
Was it a popular Super Bonus? The fifth-place team, The Department of Wood Technology, didn't bother handing theirs in, even though they were still an active team at 8 AM.
Anyway, the Literature Super was just one element that cost Huh-Huhhh! the title. There were two other boni-- the other Super (Political Embarrassment) and the Broadway show tune audio-- that by themselves provided Oh No, Bette Midler! with more than their eventual victory margin. And of course, if Huh-Huhhh! had gotten one more point in alternating Boni, plus one additional on-air question, well, THAT would have clinched it. Or fill in any six missing points from anywhere, and the result is the same. Still, the drama of a 15-point swing in the second Super at 8:20 AM is hard to ignore.
Remarkably, Huh-Huhhh! lost a colossal THIRTY-SEVEN Bonus points from the 4 AM score update onwards. And yet, Purpose o'Military's almost-final scoresheet told a surprising story. With everything tallied except the second Super and the last Action, Huh-Huhhh! still LED the contest, 246-235. In other words, despite being outscored 79-57 in Boni to that point (with that 19-4 Lit blast still to come), and 23-22 in Actions, Huh-Huhhh! was WINNING by double digits.
Six of Huh-Huhhh!'s eleven points (a 7-1 lead) came from the Ultra and the Berger boni, leaving a five-point margin. That meant that Huh-Huhhh-Huh-Huhhh! outscored Oh No, Bette Midler! by a monstrous 28 points in songs and questions. Over the night, Huh-Huhhh! got in the vicinity of 80% of the on-air points; Bette! was down around 65%.
This disparity is one rarely seen (or at least rarely noticed). Huh-Huhhh! earned a better score than Bette! in just ONE of the 10 Boni, Sports, and tied another (a video Movies one). Bette! squashed Huh-Huhhh! like a bug on the rest, outscoring Huh-Huhhh! by 3, 1, 2, 2, 7, 4, 7, and 15 points. Meantime, Huh-Huhhh! was wiping the floor with Bette! on the phones, by 12 points in the first half and 16 from the break on. (Actions were a small Bette! advantage, 26-24, and were more than erased by Huh-Huhhh!'s Ultra score.)
It's not unusual for the second-place team to outdo the winners in some category; in a close contest, it's almost mandatory. But for a contest to be undecided until the last bonus, yet have Team A so starkly outperform Team B in one area while being trounced in the other, is truly an anomaly.
HEAD-TO-HEAD SCORES:
Hour #1 (Bizarre)-- BETTE 9, Huh-Huh 6
Hour #2 (Sports)-- Bette 5, HUH-HUH 9
Hour #3 (Foreign audio)-- BETTE 6, Huh-Huh 5
Hour #4 (Royal Family)-- BETTE 8, Huh-Huh 6
Hour #5 (Movies video)-- BETTE 7, HUH-HUH 7
Hour #6 (Puzzle page)-- BETTE 7, Huh-Huh 5
Hour #7 (Broadway audio)-- BETTE 9, Huh-Huh 2
Hour #8 (Weird Al-Lehrer)-- BETTE 9, Huh-Huh 5
Super #1 (Politics)-- BETTE 19, Huh-Huh 12
Super #2 (Literature)-- BETTE 19, Huh-Huh 4
Action #1 (Peer health talk)-- BETTE 4, HUH-HUH 4
Action #2 (Who's On First?)-- BETTE 3, HUH-HUH 3
Action #3 (Princess Bride)-- BETTE 5, Huh-Huh 4
Action #4 (Antioch date)-- BETTE 4, HUH-HUH 4
Action #5 (Philosophers/DH)-- Bette 3, HUH-HUH 4
Action #6 (Caddyshack)-- BETTE 4, Huh-Huh 3
Action #7 (Beavis & B-H)-- BETTE 3, Huh-Huh 2
Ultra Bonus-- Bette 1, HUH-HUH 5
Berger Boni-- Bette 0, HUH-HUH 2
On-Air Questions & Songs-- Bette 132, HUH-HUH 160