Second Place Stars brought the contest back to Williamstown, to a thuderous welcome. This was the best attended contest in years—perhaps in a decade. At least 19 teams played all night, judging from the scores on Hour Bonus 8. And 6 of them were on campus:
The contest went very smoothly, getting to 99 on-air questions. There were some streaming issues early, but very few technical problems otherwise.
Several teams got the Ultra Bonus, which was "Things which appear on state quarters", but, strangely, no one received points for their guesses.
The Second Place Stars were:
A few contributions from the Trivia mailing list, following the contest:
Congrats to Second Place Stars for a terrific contest! Sure, the streaming was a little rocky in the first half-hour but after that it was smooth sailing, a very professional job and loads of fun. My thanks to the IM'ers that we interacted with all night, to the especially hardy crew that totalled scores for an hour-and-a-half after the contest ended for the 17 of us still on the other end awaiting final scores, and to the whole team.
Whatever deficiencies one may identify are merely the natural flipside to an incredible acomplishment: attracting 30 teams to play who scored 20 or more points, including a very healthy on campus (largely freshmen) contingent. Fantastic work! Of course there were overload problems....tons of teams played! Dare I say that Trivia is in better shape than we've been in decades?
Suffice to say we are thrilled that BOMO is back atop -- finally rising as a 21st century victor! A true team effort from Bedford, NY to U Penn to U of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. Yep, 34 years after our last win....and 38 years after our first one in December '73... BOMO is back! And eagerly awaiting May....