When I See the Word ULTRA, I Reach For My Revolver

Trivia questions come and go in a few minutes. Hour Bonuses are cheap and plentiful. One Action Trivia trips over the next. Even the mighty Super Bonus can never claim more than 50% dominance over Trivia's struggling hordes. Clearly there was a crying need for an all-encompassing, contest-spanning trivia unit of ultimate hazard.

And so was born the Ultra Bonus!

The Format

The Ultra's format is devilishly simple. Typically, three words or phrases were announced over the air shortly after the first question. Teams were invited to figure out the hidden connection between them. Every hour on the hour (when teams remembered to read 'em), three more clues were revealed... but the point value for guessing the connection is lowered. A successful answer at 2:05 AM scores higher than the very same answer at 3:05, which in turn is worth more than a 5:30 identification. And so on, until the eighth and last set of clues is provided, in the final hour of the contest.

For years, the precise point value of the Ultra Bonus was an elaborate secret delivered in faux-ominous 'MWUH-HAH-HAHHH' tones. However, most teams scored Ultras on a sliding scale, either 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 or 10-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. Some Ultras have been gotten after one set of clues, but not many. Other Ultras have gone unsolved, but again, not many.

It is particularly unlikely today that a future Ultra will shut every team out, because hosts have taken to filling their eighth set of clues with obvious giveaways, thereby enabling even clueless competitors to achieve a single mercy point.

Similarly, some Ultra Bonuses of the past provided just 2 or even 1 clue per hour, but the 24-item format is fairly entrenched. (The 8-clues-and-out Ultra Boni were a little TOO impenetrable.) Another benefit of the three-clue rule of thumb is that it permits teams to organize its items into amusingly or cleverly related subsets that are almost always unhelpful to the authentic answer.

Wrong Guesses

Another humorous aspect of the Ultra Bonus often arrives between the end of the contest, and when the final scores are tabulated and announced. Hosts have often entertained their audience and themselves by reading the incorrect guesses received during the night. Because there is no penalty for wrong answers, players are encouraged to let their imaginations run free. Most teams submit multiple attempts as the night progresses. This can lead to some strange attempts.

Some guesses that made a kind of sense at 2 AM are thoroughly repudiated by later clues. As for other guesses.... well, there is no explanation.

Wrong guesses have been as simple as "They're all redheads" or "They're all cartoons," or as dementedly unlikely as "They're all things mentioned in the Paul McCartney & Wings' song Venus and Mars/Rock Show" or "They're all names of the black men left untreated in the notorious Tuskegee syphilis study." And a late-80s Ultra just wasn't complete without one (or five) guesses of "They're all people who have never been in Cliff Claven's kitchen."

History

Probably the most infamous Ultra Bonus occurred in December, 1986. Andy Laitman of the host, The Giant Pygmies of Beckles, came up with a list of Robin's "Holy ---, Batman!" expletives. The clue list was a bizarrely evocative one, as compared with earlier efforts. "Interplanetary yardstick"? "Human pressure cooker"? "Priceless collection of Etruscan snoods"? This wasn't your father's Ultra Bonus.

The contest was a very tight three-way race until Team #3 faded late. After a long wait, Giant Pygmies announced that after eight hours, teams All the Sugar, Twice the Caffeine and We Begin Bombing in Five Minutes were deadlocked. This led to the hard-to-forget "Tonga" tiebreaker, which is still commemorated with an on-air Tonga question per contest. But the very existence of the tie score was precipitated by Laitman's Ultra Bonus.

Solved by All The Sugar early for 7 big points, but not solved by We Begin Bombing at all, the Ultra Bonus turned a 7-point Bombing lead into a flatfooted tie. Of course, this triumph only led to a more painful finish for All the Sugar when they lost by the narrowest margin in contest history. Traumatic proof, if it were needed, that the Ultra is at its heart fundamentally cruel and haphazard.

The list below shows that Ultra Bonuses predated that 9 AM drama. But the emotion of the Tonga finish, matched with the ingenious Bat-theme, cemented the Ultra into Williams Trivia's firmament for good.

Like many contest elements, the Ultra's origins are now buried in murk. In 1984, Rule Six allowed teams up to six hours to solve a half dozen esoteric trivia questions, calling the whole procedure an "Ultra Bonus." Though it shares the name, this is not the since-recognized Ultra format. In fact, Rule Six's Ultra set-up unknowingly mimicked the very first Hour Bonuses offered by Morgan in 1968, which were themselves just one question apiece.

The connective similarity of Rule Six's "Ultra Bonus" to earlier contests is not unique. Chicago 60609's Ultra Bonus, a listing of Iranian hostages, exactly mirrored an Hour Bonus offered by Grape Nehi three years previous. Nehi's "Mystery Category" Hour Bonus began by reading three of the names, revealing an additional trio of hostages every 15 minutes.

Another example of the 15-minute format can be found in the 1983 Phasers on Stun contest. Four sets of names were announced every 3 questions or so, with the common thread being that all twelve names were those of TV doctors. In both cases, higher points were awarded to the earliest solvers.

Such offerings were then referred to as "Graduated Bonuses," and they are clearly one-hour-long Ultras. It seems likely that the germ for the Ultra Bonus may have gestated in players' memories of the Graduated Boni.

Some players of the time believe there were Ultra Bonuses in 1983 or earlier. A remembered topic (precise contest unknown) was "Names of Authors Engraved in the Stonework Around Stetson Hall".... although that subject was also used as an individual on-air question in at least two contests. But would those ten literary geniuses, staring at Ultra Bonus clues scrawled on a blackboard, be able to crack next semester's hidden theme? That is Absolut speculation. MMmmmm..... Cervantes.

No, things are as they should be. Though we know much about the Ultra Bonus, its full depths, its primeval origins, and its evil void of foulness remain an unconquered mystery.

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