US vs. Good Time in Vegas was headlined by Williams Freshman Ben Kitchen, who may be the first person heavily influenced to attend Williams College because of the Trivia contest. Ben's sister Madison Kitchen ("Mad Kitch") was the DJ all night long, to very good reviews.
The IRC chat system crashed on question 2, when it reached a limit of 100 users. Louis Moga worked frantically for the next 45 minutes to fix it, and brought the system back up around 11:15. There were also a few problems with the website, namely two teams disappearing and then having trouble getting back in their chatrooms; a few wayward Google doc submissions; and a late problem with the scoring system that exhibited a bug in the code.
Other than that one big problem and a few small ones, the contest went smoothly from a technical standpoint, and none of the glitches were the fault of the host team. Attendance was high, with at least 20 teams playing all night.
Again, many thanks to Vegas, great job! And congrats to P2-D2, looking forward to May!
Hi everyone!
I’m Ben, team captain of US vs. Good Time in Vegas (you may remember that I was name-dropped in on-air 4). Sorry this has taken so long to send out, but here’s a short analysis of every bonus, as well as my personal favorite answers from each one!
This is one of the boni I almost completely wrote in my grandparents’ condo in Arlington Heights, Illinois, right after winning in May. Inspired by our team name, it kind of wrote itself - we figured out what the two sections would be and proceeded to research “laws named after people” and “famous Supreme Court cases.” Definitely a fun one to write, especially once we started letting phrases that ended in “law” in there even if they weren’t necessarily laws.
In terms of questions, the only universal stumper for teams that didn’t use the internet was #23, “MacGuffin from The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant; this item is remade when two characters are combined to make it” (the answer is The Staff of Law). The closest any team got was Mesopotamian Pomeranian, who wrote, “I have the book, let me go look…” This makes me think whoever had the book didn’t get back in time.
Some other answers that I found funny on Hour 1:
Right off the bat, I knew this would play hard - with clips as short as they were, I figured it’d be difficult. I didn’t expect it to play as difficult as it did, however, and I’ve learned my audio bonus lesson if I ever host another Williams Trivia Contest. Sorry about that. Also, sorry that Soundcloud spontaneously deleted the file! It wasn’t a problem the hours leading up to the contest, so I was quite surprised when that issue came up.
Steve texted me this past summer and told me that an entire Marvel heroes/villains song round would be fun as inspired by the song “Modern Love” by Peter Gabriel including the word “magneto” (which ended up being clip 42 in the bonus). I figured that we could focus it more and make it specifically mutants, which led to a lot of research into both X-Men and X-Men names popping up in song lyrics.
In all, since everything was half a point and if I didn’t miss anything, there were 15 points that no team that didn’t use the internet got (and if we include teams that used the internet, that number only drops to 14.5). If you’re curious, those were “Unstoppable,” “Suck My Kiss,” “Animals” by Maroon 5, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” by Tony Bennett, “Man on the Moon” by R.E.M., “Lump” by Presidents of the United States of America, “Party Like Tomorrow is the End of the World by Steel Panther, “Jack Sparrow” by The Lonely Island, “YMCA” by Village People, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” “Fuck the Police,” “Well, Did You Evah!” by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, “Whiskey in the Jar” by Metallica, “Girls on Film” by Duran Duran, the aforementioned “Modern Love” by Peter Gabriel, “Rock of Ages” by Def Leppard, and “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” by Pink Floyd (Pink Floyd is the ½ point that goes away if we include teams that used the internet).
There were a lot of great answers, but I have two special commendations to give out:
The idea for this one came up at around the same time as the idea for Hour 1, and it was also inspired by our team name. Like Hour 1, it also kind of wrote itself, as once we had the categories, we knew exactly what to write. Nothing too special about this one. Every answer was achieved by at least one team that didn’t use the internet. Some clever answers:
I honestly don’t remember where the idea for this one came from. I think the original rationale was that there are a lot of long words in a lot of genres, so it’d be a feasible bonus. I must apologize on this one too for there accidentally being two question 38s!
This ended up being surprisingly easy for teams that used the internet, with three teams that used the internet missing only one (and in each of those cases, the one point missed was from the double 38 confusion).
Good answers:
Also known as the “Messed Up My Recommended Videos On YouTube For a While Bonus,” this bonus started as a super. The original plan was to do something akin to Taha Noa Noa’s chase scenes super (we’d have the visuals of brand names in movies shown over the audio of songs naming brands). I eventually forgot about it, though, and it came back up once we got closer to the contest and we already had two boni relatively set in stone to be supers, so we retooled it to be just video (which made gathering brands much easier, as we could then use clips of people saying the brand name in movies as opposed to looking for clips that show visuals of the brand).
Overall, this also played relatively easy. Once again, no points stumped every team, but some were harder than others (specifically Evolution, Happy Gilmore, and Zoolander, from what I’ve seen).
Some good answers:
If I remember correctly, this started as a joke which we ended up following through on. I definitely made part three in the same place the idea for Hours 1 and 3 came up, and I was so attached to that part and that part alone that I decided to go forward with it. As a side note, I realized a little too late that each of the three sections had a question about the Red Hot Chili Peppers—sorry about that!
Once again, this didn’t play that hard, and there were no universal stumpers yet again. In general, the hardest part was Part 3, which was also the most confusing part (however, most teams that figured it out got solid scores). Speaking of which, sorry if that was confusing! I did my best to make sure the instructions were clear, but there was still confusion nonetheless. I hope my on-air interruption with the George Harrison/Chiffons example cleared some of that up!
Good answers:
This technically originated in the summer after the Beautiful Human Submarines contest. One of my friends from home said he wanted to make a sports bonus, so we put him in contact with someone who could help him make one. While that never went anywhere, it was technically the first iteration of this bonus.
Unless I missed something, there was one partial point that stumped everyone: Tab Hunter, the actor who played Joe Hardy in 1958’s Damn Yankees. (At least one team got the movie, but nobody got the actor.) I’d say this one played fairly hard.
As expected in a bonus where you ask teams to write funny answers, there were some great answers. I’m choosing favorites so this email doesn’t become much longer than it already is. So, my personal favorites:
This was a stream of consciousness. I looked up “edited for TV movie quotes” and wrote the best/most recognizable ones down and made a round out of it.
Scores for this bonus were all over the map for teams that didn’t use the internet. There were some that most, if not all, teams got (Die Hard, The Matrix, and Snakes on a Plane, to name a few), but two that no non-internet teams got: “Right on my sandwich, after you kiss it!” is from Dumb and Dumber and, “Before I blow your fat circus away, I wanna know why you picked me to lead your war” is from Spawn. (If you’re curious, both quotes are censoring the word, pardon my French, “ass”).
Unfortunately, there weren’t many good answers on this round. On to supers!
This was also a stream of consciousness. If I remember correctly, I remembered the origin of Cameroon (which is why that’s the answer to question 1) and thought name origins could be the basis of an entire bonus. Like some previous boni mentioned, this super kind of wrote itself. Once we had the categories determined, we were good to go.
The different categories each had wildly different difficulties. The first three played significantly easier than the fourth. Indeed, the one point no non-internet team got was in the sports section: question 90, the team name chosen in lieu of the Stallions to reflect the bravery of the state’s natives. Denver Broncos and Atlanta Braves were the most common incorrect guesses, but it was actually the Houston Texans.
Good answers:
This is the third and final bonus I can describe as a stream of consciousness, though one we dressed up to look nice. I believe the direct logic behind it was, “There are a lot of elements, so let’s make it a super bonus!” It ended up lending itself nicely to a variety of categories, which was helpful in terms of writing a super bonus.
Overall, this played relatively easy, with no universal stumpers.
Good answers:
Steve can take all the credit for this one. He should, too, since he did everything for it. One last apology here for my lack of diligence in grading ultra answers, which I should’ve done much more regularly.
If you weren’t awake for me saying it on air or haven’t checked the archive yet, the answer was Disney villains, or, as Horton Rides Again put it, “Bad guys in motion pictures produced by Disney.”
Speaking of Horton Rides Again, I have to give them a special shout out here. There were 419 submissions to the ultra bonus during the contest, and Horton Rides Again submitted 197 of them, which is nuts. One of their submissions said, “I swear we should have a record.” Maybe someone wiser/tech-savvier than I can see if that’s true.
I could write an entire book on Horton Rides Again’s answers, but just know that they were all great. Other good wrong submissions outside of theirs:
These were fun to come up with and more fun to watch. This is already verbose as is, so I’m not going to do a full analysis of every single action bonus. Just know that they all rocked.
Whoops.
Finally, the on-airs were so much fun to brainstorm. It was definitely a team effort to come up with everything, song matches and all, but once everything came together, it all worked very nicely. The one regret I have is that there was only one Horrible Song Quartet. I’m glad that we could include that Edward Furlong cover of “People are Strange,” though! (I don’t even remember how I stumbled across that. Once I heard it, though, I knew it had to be used for trivia.)
It was an absolute joy to help put this together. Thanks to everyone for participating, and congratulations to P2-D2 for the victory. I can’t wait to play your contest in May!
This was a really fun contest, and while you certainly had some veteran help in Steve, it was a pretty impressive debut for most of you. I'm glad you all didn't get too flustered when the tech unexpectedly failed--it always unexpectedly fails--and the contest managed to go off without a hitch otherwise. Postmortem is very much the right word, and I'll try not to go on quite as long as I often do in mine.
I don't know if I have any particular favorites among the questions (maybe the AC/DC quote, which Laurie and I guessed instantly and typed in unison), and a couple maybe gave things away too much (what else, after all, could be the answer to the Hufflepuff one when you already said it was about house scoring?), but I don't think there were any clunkers, which is an accomplishment.
The song matching was really high in quality. The Dee Dee Ramone one felt really excellent at 5:00 AM, as we all reflected on what a daft punk Dee Dee really was. There were a lot of ones that had good multi-faceted hints, like "Take Me Home Country Roads" for Gilligan's Island and "Honky Cat" for Elton John on Soul Train. Just all really well thought-out.
And there were a lot of great horrible songs, even beyond the horrible song quartet! Shaq rapping about his pump-up sneakers! The best Tonga song ever! Thanks for exposing all to the My Dick Band, also performers of "Dancing in My Dick" and "Dick on My List" (so I have learned), and to Bryan McKnight's excellent YouPorn theme.
Big fan of Sesquipedalianlogophilia, which had a lot of silly fun (thunder-words!). On similar logophilic lines, the first Super had a lot of really clever stuff that required some puzzling ("Antigua and Barbuda," for instance, on ancient & bearded). Censorship was the kind of thing that's the right kind of stupid for 5:30 A.M. (I knew Wally Wick was coming as soon as I opened it and was glad to see it). The written music bonus, too, was a great concept, although I don't know enough current Top 40 to have done well (and my brain was too fried to process the different steps of the audio portion, on which Laurie had to constantly correct me at that time of the morning).
The mutant audio was fast and tough, but I feel like the longer you listened the clearer the clips became. Although the fact that, ahem, I wrote this back in 2007 probably helped. But I supposed that's well past the statutes of Trivia limitations. I also contributed to this one from 2005, which had similar overlap, but your Laws were definitely better than ours.
Baseball was fine, though I... like sabermetrics more than I like minor league baseball. (Let it be noted, by the way, that Laurie managed to recall Tab Hunter was the lead in Damn Yankees.) Product Placement was solid and clever in stretches (like the IKEA references), and remembering the different movie bombs was generally entertaining. Elements was solid all-around, although I don't know if anything stood out to me.
Looks like this hit the sweet spot: a couple got in the middle hours, a bigger trickle around 3:00, and most everyone by the end. Accessible answer with lots of room for clues, so a good choice. I felt clever for getting it when I got it.
I'd like to get some time to watch the Actions, as it seems like there were some good ideas to work with.
Again, congratulations for getting so many teams on board and putting on a very silly and well-crafted night. And congratulations to P2-D2--good luck, and feel free to ask us any questions you might have. We'll see you in May.