| 304 | Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil Mutant Hellbound Zombified Flesh-Eating Subhumanoid Living Dead Part IV |
| 275 | Rule 6.1 |
| 225 | The Really Really Really Really Good Looking Team |
| 217 | Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal (aka Sam Will Kill Him if He Tries Anything) |
| 216 | Mortal Kombat Intelligence Squad (*TOP FROSH-HEAVY TEAM) |
| 193 | Thankfully, Men Have No Biological Need for Nipples |
| 188 | Darling, the Cat is Drunk Again |
| 177 | I Am Evil Homer |
| 168 | Rabid Crocodiles on Valium |
| 155 | Team Squishy Cow |
| 152 | Your Mother's Occipital |
| 142 | We Keep Getting Older, But the Girls on Campus Stay the Same Age |
| 99 | Eph Trivia Smack |
| 81 | Going to Bed Soon |
| 79 | BOMO |
| 59 | Viva Ned Flanders! |
| 29 | Roger Clemens is a Pussy |
| 24 | I Am Evil Toby |
| 21 | Winona |
| 20 | Bathtub Eels Embryo in My Wiggens |
| 18 | Tasmanian Treebiters of the North |
| 10 | I'd Like to be Part of A Vast Chicken-Wing Conspiracy |
| 9 | I Hate Grapes, All Kinds of Grapes, I Hate Green Grapes, I Hate Purple Grapes, I Hate Grapes with Seeds, I Hate Grapes Without Seeds, I Hate Them Peeled and Unpeeled, I Hate Them Individually, in Bunches and in Small Groups of Twos and Threes, I Fucking Hate Grapes! |
| 8 | Betrayal Took the 6:00 a.m. Dive |
| 8 | John Stewart is the William Shatner of Jewish Music |
| 7 | Fathingdale Mabeltubbs Does Things. Great Things! |
| 7 | Barking Spider |
| 6 | Melty Man |
| 5 | I'll Hate You With Hammers |
| 5 | Kiri is a Pervy Frodo Fancier |
| 5 | Deadly Jellybabies |
| 5 | Ohhhhh, Arwen's Dad is a Big Fat Bitch |
| 5 | Trans-Gendered Reindeer Comma Heath Dill Is. |
| 4 | Hardcore |
| 4 | Pervy Hobbit Fanciers |
| 4 | People Sitting 1,047 Miles from Dom Grillo |
| 4 | Stupid Ring. Stupid Quest. Stupid Fellowship. |
| 4 | Oy, Hey, My Jews Went Home |
| 4 | Red-Hot Wolf Nipple Chips |
| 3 | Oob is Tasty with Ketchup |
| 3 | BOMO Redux |
| 2 | Boobies Z'Hooters |
| 2 | Pervy Elf Fanciers |
| 2 | Satan and the Schoolgirl |
| 2 | The Comeback Monkey |
| 2 | I Want a Refund on this Rape Whistle |
| 2 | Scott Canty, Make Your Way to the Small Intestine; There You Will Seek Out the Sparrow Prince |
| 2 | Quang's Own Nightmare |
| 2 | My Manly Stubble is Even Making Myself Hot |
| 2 | It's Really Late and I'm Not Wearing Any Pants |
| 2 | Scott Canty Transcends Sally Much As Cher Transcends Old |
| 2 | Where the Hell is Rich Flynn |
| 2 | Is the Answer Tonga? |
| 2 | Ben I. Needs to Shave |
| 2 | Heath Dill is Such a Sally; He is Rivalled Only by Scott Canty in His Glory |
| 2 | Brian Wecht Has Struck Out on His Own and is Not Coming Back |
| 2 | Mistaw Peepers |
| 2 | I Love Danish Folks |
| 2 | It's Really Late and We're Still Not Wearing Any Pants |
| 2 | Jesse Dill is But a Shadow of His Brother |
| 2 | Heath is a Wan Prelude to His Brother |
| 2 | E Pluribus Mac |
| 2 | Part IV's Nose Dive (or 6:00 Dive is Cheap) |
| 2 | Joanie Wouldn't Love Trotsky If She'd Paid More Attention to Marxist Theory |
| 2 | Hamlet, You Rock My World |
| 2 | I Used to Like Creed Until I Realized They Suck |
| 2 | Winners, Know This: If Betrayal Had Wanted to Win We Could Have, with Ease |
| 2 | I Rebuke Steve Homer As Well |
| 2 | Trotsky, If You're Taking the 7:30 Dive, We're Going to Come Over There and Kill You. |
| 2 | Heath Dill is an Equal Opportunity Offender |
| 2 | Jon Young Already Owns www.analviolator.to |
| 2 | The Kid on 4692 is Not Much Help |
| 2 | The Horadrim Once Spoke of Such a Chew Toy |
| 1 | I'm Sleepy (Currier Basement South) |
| 1 | Boobies-3: Tatas |
| 1 | Jesse Dill Rocks My World in My Dreams Only |
| 1 | Ben I. Needs to Shave So He Stops Looking Stupid |
| 1 | It's Not a Trivia Contest if Dom Grillo's Name Isn't in a Team Name |
| 1 | Why Does the Pus Line Cost $4.95 a Minute? |
| 0 | The Saddest of All Keys |
| 0 | Dogs Love Me 'Cause I'm Crazy Sniffable |
| 0 | An Unnatural Fixation on the Secret Diaries |
| 0 | I Did Sminty's Mom |
| 0 | Jesse Dill Has Something to Tell Everyone |
| 0 | If Heath Calls Again with Another Team Name, We'll Kill Him. |
| 0 | This is Des' 2.1 Millionth Contest |
| 0 | Steve's Mom is No Longer Glorious |
| 0 | Jason Carini Likes Bright, Shiny, Objects |
| 0 | Me Want Sleep |
(NOTE: Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal (4th place) made an abortive attempt to change its name to "Sam Will Kill Him if He Tries Anything." Rabid Crocodiles on Valium (9th) had a side notation of "What the Hell is Our Name?"; it's unclear whether this was an official name change, or middle-of-the-night angst.)
Night of the Day Part IV were that rarest of Williams Trivia champions: first-time winners. (Though a handful of them had tasted gold with Holy Sack, the lower frosh team that won it all in December of 2000.) They'd finished second the previous semester as Culminating in a Spectacular Battle on the Moon. Mostly comprised of sophomores and juniors, they threw in a few frosh and seniors, plus a high school senior ("for good luck"). The team included such worthies as Jon Hendrickson, Evan Gee, Zach Kung, Steve Winslow, Emily Bright, Davy Stevenson, Niko White, Jenny McElroy, Vicky Bock, and Dan "Action Boni" Bahls (all '04), Lynette "Phone Queen" Yorgey, Jeff Dougherty, Carolyn Dekker, Matthew Kugler, Hale Simon, and Rachel Seltzeman ('05ers), Josh Ain ('03), and many others not listed here. Part IV's headcount around 8:00 a.m. was a whopping 30 players, a number most teams would love to start with. In winning, they were the only team to surpass the allegedly magical 300-point total.
What could have been a memorable race was sabotaged by two factors. First, Joanie Loves Trotsky's scoring system tragically took its own life during the first hour. It would take several hours for Trotsky to recuperate and get the scoring up to speed. The backup spreadsheet, though accurate, was plagued by a scrolling feature that made it tough to get a clear, readable view of the standings. For much of the night, teams only had a dim idea of how they were doing, and who was where. As it turned out, both the level of competition and the actual points race were good. But it's impossible to appreciate a horse race in the fog.
Secondly, Night of the Day Part IV's main competition, Curse Your Inevitable Betrayal, bailed out of the race early in the second half, after taking the lead in the third hour. It had been neck and neck until then.
It was about 4:15 that Betrayal decided to slack off. Thanks to a 2-1 edge on Question #51, they'd netted just 1 more point on phones during the first half than did Rule IV (97-96). Rule IV got the point back on Actions. Thanks to a 10 on the Old Toy Scenarios Hour Bonus (the only perfect score on any bonus by any team), Betrayal had outscored Rule IV by 2 points on the first four Hour Boni. And they'd turned in a 23-point Super Bonus that beat Rule IV by 3.
After this, things get speculative fast. However, we're helped by the knowledge that Betrayal started devoting at least some of their energies into the sub-team I Am Evil Homer, which until then had been operated by just one of Betrayal's players. (More on this phenomenon later.) Though Betrayal only answered 7 of the contest's last 34 questions under its own name, the fortunes for Evil Homer reveal an amazingly simultaneous uptick from #73 on. Even so, Part IV scored higher on the on-air trivia over the second half than Betrayal and Homer combined, eroding most of Betrayal's 5-point halftime lead. And with a 5 on the Amherst Library Action and a 9 on the Survival Hour, there was as much opportunity for Betrayal to lose ground as to maintain or increase its tiny lead.
After getting the top score on the Newspapers Super, Betrayal handed in the second Super Bonus under the Evil Homer pseudonym. That bonus again achieved the highest score on Super #2, although their 20 points were only good enough to tie Rule IV (and runners-up Rule 6.1). Betrayal also revived briefly as themselves in the final hour, scoring a 5 on the last Action Trivia, and a 3 on the 8th Hour Bonus.
Betrayal skipped the 3 Hours and 3 Actions between 4:30 and 7:00, taking zeroes for all. This enabled them to accomplish their tank job only too well, not only avoiding any possibility of winning, but plunging down to 4th place. Alas, there's no legitimate way to concoct imaginary scores and "plug them in," since you can't usually factor how a given team will do on a given topic at a given time. For example, Betrayal got a 10 on one Hour Bonus and a 3 on another. They also scored a 6 on one Action Trivia and a 2 on another. It might be possible to go back over the previous audio bonuses assembled by Des Devlin, check out how the Betrayal team scored on them, and try to estimate how Betrayal's potential answer sheet for Des' January 2003 Trotsky 5:00am Hour might have gone. But that's a lot of guesswork (and work), in the service of what?
So the big question is: did Betrayal throw the contest, or did they just THINK they did? (Or, would Rule IV have won anyway?) Examining the scores, it's uncertain whether a full-tilt 8-hour effort by Betrayal would have managed to unseat the champions. The claim made via a bogus team name that Betrayal would have won "with ease" is wishful thinking in the extreme. But they definitely would've made 'em sweat.
Here's a rough estimate of the hourly score shifts:
As of 1:00am: BETRAYAL 31, Part IV 29
As of 2:00am: PART IV 68, Betrayal 65
As of 3:00am: PART IV 100, BETRAYAL 100 (tie!)
As of 4:00am: BETRAYAL 161, Part IV 156
It's a shame we didn't get to see what would've happened.
Who was the team that caused all this mathematical havoc? 4th-place Inevitable Betrayal were the Tupperware-Elvis-Tongue-Immunity-Vampires crew who'd won five times since 1995 and weren't eager to try for a sixth. They commonly adopt a "win-host-coast" pattern, though usually the "coast" part is accomplished with a little more finesse. But with the scores dark for so many hours, they didn't take any chances.
Quietly taking second place was Rule 6.1, the latest version of the Python team whose members have been playing since 1979 (well, one of 'em; the rest of the silver age regulars can claim 1980-81). The Pythons won five contests between 1983 and 1990, plus a Senior's Tour win in 2001, albeit with significant reinforcements that time. In 2003, they made the most effective use of the internet of any team, as not all of their players were physically present in Williamstown.
In third place was a 7-player sophomore team out of Mission, the Really Really Really Really Good-Looking Team. Once upon a time, it was considered a badge of courage to play out of Mission, which isn't exactly convenient to Baxter. But the computerization of Trivia has eased that burden somewhat. The really really really good-looking and multi-tasking Oren Cass wrote an account of his team's experiences, which appeared in the Williams Record the following week. That account may also be found on the Joanie Loves Trotsky page you're looking at right now.
Joanie Loves Trotsky made a few efforts to alert the incoming freshmen class about the ghastly wonders of Trivia, and it paid off with two strong all-night frosh squads.
Fifth-place Mortal Kombat Intelligence Squad and seventh-place Darling, the Cat is Drunk Again vied for the Top Frosh-Heavy Team title for most of the night, until the Cat passed out late from alcohol poisoning. Mortal Kombat was comprised of most of Sage D and some stray passersby, at least until the rival lure of sleep reduced its core membership to Dave Letzler, Ben Cohen, Laura Effinger-Dean, Sam Clapp, and their lone Sage C ringer, Rachel Selinsky. The worthies of the Cat team have not yet been identified.... if you're interested, just follow the distinctive smell of vodka and Fancy Feast.
Those two frosh teams sandwiched the highest-ranking all-online team, Men's Nipples, which was led by Trivia stalwarts Jen and Toby Elliott.
Your Mother's Occipital (11th) described themselves as "people who knew Part IV people well but wanted to avoid the pressure associated with an attempt at winning, and then we added a marching band to that." Playing out of Geo, their numbers fluctuated widely.
Longtime team names I Am Evil Homer (8th) and We Keep Getting Older (12th) fall under that peculiar subset of "teams" whose membership consists of 1 or 2 players on a legitimate upper squad. These players, rather than basking in sorely-needed 40-second breaks whenever they present themselves, use the "down time" to call in yet AGAIN, and rack up points for their secondary name of choice. This may account for the rings under their eyes, and the little cartoon lightning bolts emanating from their dialing fingers, at the awards ceremony. And they deserve society's assistance, not its scorn.
Once upon a time, unreal team names like the above were used by devilish superteams to tie up extra phone lines and thereby impede competitors (a practice known as "phone jamming"). Now it's done as a personal Sisyphean celebration of tree-biting. In all fairness, though, neither team fit the vanity profile this time. Evil Homer also served as a repository for Betrayal's efforts after they dropped from the competition. And usual attendee Jon Young was playing remotely this time as Getting Older, a team name he's also used several times in person.
The biggest recent shift in Williams Trivia has come from the availablity of the WCFM signal online. The heavy campus turnout bumped most of the online teams down to the second tier of competitors. But there were a lot of them, several of whom went the whole 8+ hours riding the bandwidth.
10th-place Squishy Cow was a three-person alum team unevenly divided between New York City (Craig Ganzer) and Montclair, New Jersey (Larry Ascher and Diana Tenery-Ascher). Eph Trivia Smack (13th) was a California team featuring Maggie Heaman and Joe Francis (possibly among others). 15th-place BOMO was the latest in a string of return appearances by the 1970s Williams Trivia colossus, as original members "Mot" and "Werts" extended the legend. Viva Ned Flanders (16th) was an inside job; since Joanie Loves Trotsky member Eric Lindholm couldn't get there to help run, he decided to play instead. Roger Clemens is a Pussy was another one-man operation, this one based out of NYC.
If all of the fake team names teasing or abusing other people by name were to be combined, it would score 71 points.