This contest was run by an undergraduate team out of WCFM, and was won by another undergraduate team. Everyone was happy about that!
Otherewise, this contest was marked by a remarkable lack of technical difficulties, compared to recent years. There was one bonus where the submit button didn't originally appear, but that was the worst of it. There was no dead air, and the grading was done remarkable fast. That was partly due to boni being shorter than usual. Since few teams have been able to finish all the trivia in a contest for a long time, there were no complaints about making boni shorter. Cudos to Poker for the change.
Well, I flew to London today, so last night I only played for the first five questions, enough to check the box that I played in my 53rd contest. They were fine questions, and thanks to Mira In The Chat Box for faithfully recording my mostly correct answers. Always nice to hear "House of the Rising Sun" by the immortal Eric Burden and the Animals!
It looks like a student team won? Fantastic! Well done, Masters of Subduction! And you've got 7 months to prepare the best contest ever! You'll probably get advice on how to run a contest, but....the only rule that really matters is.....you have to play "Five O'Clock World" by The Vogues at 5 AM. Because...its a five o'clock world when the whistle blows, no one owns a piece of my time! A da lay ee ee!!!!
Poker...you did that....right???
So, I got 8 points for my night's labor, meaning that BOMO has now scored 6,316.5 points in the contests that I have played.
Best to all and see you in January!
Tom from BOMO
Congrats on your remarkable streak, Tom! I jumped in for an hour to grab a few points for our long-running team, as well. Most of the team happened to actually be in Williamstown but were there to sing at Wayne Wilkins' dad's memorial the next morning, so not exactly an opportune trivia time.
I'm so glad that a Williams team ran it from 'CFM and that another Williams team won. Non-Williams teams from all over deserve thanks for keeping the contest going in the dearth of Williams interest over the years, but I hope it continues to regain popularity on campus to keep the tradition alive.
Great job "Poker..." and congrats to "Masters." I hope we have our full cohort together for the next competition. Until then, be well.
Hi All -
I am working through the On-Air questions from the last contest, adding notes. When I Google "macy's parade first video game character", I get a number of hits saying that Sonic the Hedgehog was first, in 1993. But when I Google "macy's parade pac man", it seems clear that Pac Man appeared in the parade in 1985.
Can anyone resolve the contradiction? Trivia integrity is at stake!
-Mark
More confounding yet, many O.G. floats such as Felix the Cat, Mickey Mouse, Pinocchio, Superman and Popeye have all starred in their own video games.
--Des
Of course, Charlie Brown and/or Snoopy/Woodstock put them all to shame...
For what it's worth, the Guinness folk give credit to Sonic so if you want you can appeal to authority and add in (as an editor's note?) an "according to Guinness" qualification.
None of the sites which mention Pac-Man seem to have any visuals/cites; not that one would expect it. At least one fan site has a picture of Pac-Man (and the Ms.) from 1982-83, but as walk-around characters.
Then again, if you want to get really picky, Guinness specifically says, "first videogame character to feature in the parade". Maybe the word FEATURE is the key? Defining "feature" is an exercise left up to the reader. OR, Sonic started as a home video game character, while Pac-Man was an arcade character.
-Dom
This site says "Pac-Man first appeared in the 59th Annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade as a 60 feet giant helium balloon to promote the Pac-Man video games." But as Dom said, it's missing pictures. The 59th parade is 1985. This is all very mysterious.
-Mark
BTW all, I've emailed the Macy's people directly already to see what they say, if anything. Straight to the source!
-Dom
Near as I can tell, that wiki is for people to post their fanfiction Macy’s Parade lineups. If you look at the list of all pages, you’ll notice that for any given parade, there are several different pages, all titled “(_____’s Version),” and all with different lineups that don’t match the lineups listed on Wikipedia or on https://macysthanksgiving.fandom.com, which appears to be a wiki for real-life Macy’s parade history.