When you’re right, no one remembers – when you’re wrong, no one forgets

So here’s what happened.  Thursday night at Elbo Room, my Street Academy team bet the farm on a question involving South America.   And of late, you know what’s been going on regarding my team and South America.

Anyways, the question that came up was the identity of the South American country that borders the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

We went with Chile.  So did Woo Hoo a Go Go and two other teams.

The answer was Colombia.

I went home, cursed about how South America seems to be ruining my competitive team trivia life of late, and wrote a blog post.  A few people commented on the fact that I should study South America in case it’s the final question for Trivia Bowl 8.  Which it probably will be.

Friday afternoon, I got an e-mail from Wayne Powers.  Wayne is the captain of the Blue Mooned trivia team, and his team and my Street Academy team have had a bit of a rivalry of late – they’ve sometimes branded their team name “Street Drug Academy,” and one time their teammate Lindsay played on our squad when we had a perfect game.

So why was Wayne e-mailing me to my personal account?

Probably to gloat some more.

I opened the e-mail.

It wasn’t a gloat.

Wayne had actually said that Chile was just as correct an answer as Colombia.  In fact, he sent Trivia Nights Live host Baker an e-mail stating that Chile was correct, and cited a Wikipedia map as proof.

An hour later, I received a phone call from Ed, the captain of A Few Cards Short of a Deck.  He also said that Chile was just as correct as Colombia.

And after that, I received a blog comment from Dan of Tres Hombres, suggesting that Chile may have been MORE of a correct answer than Colombia, in that Colombia borders the Caribbean Sea rather than the Atlantic Ocean.

What to do, what to do…

I looked at the math.  We could have come in second place and snagged three playoff points if Chile had been accepted as the correct answer.

And it’s not like I haven’t argued the correct answer to a question before.  Back in 2006, when the game was at Hooters, Baker had a double-bonus question in which teams needed to name the two Beatles one-word song titles – with the song title being a female first name.

I immediately remembered “Michelle” and “Anna.”

The answer given was “Michelle ” and “Julia.”

I asked Baker, “What about ‘Anna’?” “Anna” was on the Beatles’ first American LP, and it was a Lennon-McCartney tune.  Baker looked it up – and by “looked it up,” he did what all of us did at the time whenever a question was in dispute at Hooters – we walked over to the Time Warner Cable kiosk and used the free internet browser to check Wikipedia.  And sure enough, “Anna” was a correct answer, and teams were given credit for being correct.

However, that strategy has backfired in the past.  One time, Baker asked the question, “What Emmy-award winning show is also the name of a 1990’s rap band?”  I put down “Living Colour,” as I referenced it to the sketch comedy show In Living Color.  The answer Baker had was “Arrested Development.”  I tried arguing all night that “Living Colour” was an acceptable answer, but Baker wouldn’t budge.  He argued that there was a difference between “Living Colour” and “In Living Color,” and that Living Colour wasn’t exactly a rap band.

Here’s the thing, though.  I gotta cut Baker a break on this one.

Baker is busy writing 20 questions a night for games played five days a week.  Sometimes he has to write two sets of questions for a night, just in case a team decides to play at two venues in the same night.  He’s got to research the questions, double-check them, and then get the questions sent to all his hosts.  He doesn’t purchase a trivia service like some trivia companies do.  He does this all by himself.  YOU try writing 20 questions of varying difficulty five nights a week.

Can he make an error?  Hell, we all make errors.  Is this question going to affect the standings for the Elbo Room tournament?  Not this time – five teams are already locked, and realistically a team could walk in in the next two or three weeks, take first place and get in the tournament.

Our team would not have won the $25 gift card from Elbo Room for finishing first for the night – that card went to the team that DID win, the Skidmarks, so they can split that $25 card with all 15 of their team members.  Cocktail onions for everyone!

The best way to put this – stuff happens.  It’s not the end of the world.  It’s done.  It’s over.  The trivia standings and results, one way or the other, would not have rested on this question.  So let’s just continue to play competitive team trivia and move forward.

But I will say this.

At Trivia Bowl 8…

I am VERY tempted to provide every trivia team with a custom-printed placemat so that they don’t spill their wing sauce or ketchup on the table.

And if that placemat just happens to have a map of a certain continent printed upon it…

Oh well. 🙂