Here we are at the Bayou Cafe in Glenville. My Ruck-specific “We Are Your Nemesis … Fear Us!” trivia squad. Myself and 25 other trivia teams.
We’re ready to play, and “Catch the Mania” trivia host Scott Mumford has our questions. Everything started out with some great promise.
And in the end…
Well, before I get to the “end,” I need to address something very important.
I’ve played competitive team trivia for nearly eight years. I’ve played as a solo team, I’ve guested on other teams, and I’ve built my own trivia squads. My Street Academy trivia team has won several championships, and we’ve crashed and burned in several championships. I’ve had dependable teammates, I’ve had teammates who just showed up for the food, and I’ve had teammates who promised to be at trivia events and then just simply didn’t show up.
Now my usual Street Academy trivia compadres, Jeremy and Katie, couldn’t be at this event due to a scheduling conflict. No problem. I asked my friend Ed from the trivia team A Few Cards Short of a Deck to join in; Matt asked his Woo Hoo a Go Go teammate George to help out. Now we’re up to the maximum of seven players – myself, Donna, Dylan, Matt, Ed, George and Dan –
Oh yeah, I forgot about what happened to Dan.
See, my trivia team is allowed to have a maximum of seven players, and I’ve gathered teammates and friends from various trivia squads, as well as my stalwarts from the Street Academy squad. One of those teammates was Dan Smith, who not only plays on the Tres Hombres trivia team; he also comments regularly in this blog as D357.
Yes. THAT D357. The same one whose blog comments are equal mixtures of snark and satire. Dan can be a wiseass on this blog, but you know what – I’m okay with his comments. If I wasn’t okay with them, I would let him know to clean them up or reign them in. It’s okay.
Well, apparently his comments in the past about the Catch the Mania trivia didn’t sit well with the trivia company’s hosts. When I listed Dan as one of my teammates in the tournament, I figured that hey he’s shown up a few times, he’s got trivia knowledge, and he’s just as dedicated to the game of competitive team trivia as I am.
A few days before the trivia finals, I received a note from Scott Mumford, the head of Catch the Mania trivia. Because of comments Dan made in my blog about the Catch the Mania game, Scott told me that Dan was disqualified from playing on my team during the finals. And if he showed up… my whole team would be disqualified from the finals.
I wrote back that I wanted to at least talk to Dan about this. The response I received – the decision was final, if Dan shows up, the Nemesis team would be DQ’d from the finals.
Wow. So now I have to go back to Dan and say to him, “Hey, I want you on the team, but the host doesn’t.” To his credit, Dan understood, but it wasn’t a good conversation.
So we’re going to play as a team of six. Even though we could have replaced Dan with someone else… I decided against it. Trust me. NOBODY tells me who I can or can’t have as a trivia teammate. That’s like saying that any time Derek Jeter goes up to bat for the Yankees, he has to use a table leg for a baseball bat and if he gets a hit, he has to hop on one leg to first base. And if he doesn’t, then the Yankees forfeit the game.
So we go into this tournament with a six-man squad. Such is life.
And our six-man squad kicked goals all night. The cube root of 343? George knew it was 7. Could we identify a mugshot of a famous person? Matt recognized the mugshot as that of a young Axl Rose. Ed recognized and correctly identified a Robert Frost poem. Donna knew a quote from a motion picture as that from The Goonies. What was that classical music piece they played over the loudspeakers? Oh yeah I knew it, Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.
We even took a prize in the first round, based on a tiebreaker question. At the end of each round, teams were asked an additional tiebreaker question, and the team closest to the correct answer – i.e., how many words are in the book Moby Dick, or how many episodes are in the Star Trek franchise (including Deep Space 9, Voyager, the Next Generation, Enterprise and the cartoons), etc. We won that first tiebreaker and earned a $100 gift card to the Circus Cafe in Saratoga Springs. Nice.
Then came the round that had many people upset. It was a round in which, for the first time in the entire tournament, teams would be penalized if they wrote down a wrong answer. And, if they challenged a question and were unsuccessful, they would be docked another point – sort of like an unsuccessful challenge in the NFL.
In that round was a four-point question, and each answer had to be correct – if you are on a boat, what are the proper nautical terms for left, right, front and back? Well, if you wrote port, starboard, bow and stern, you were correct and earned four points. If you wrote port, starboard, fore and aft, you were told you had two wrong answers and two right answers, which finished that question with a net total of zero points. And a lot of people were upset at that prospect. “Do you want to challenge the question and possibly lose points?” the host asked over the loudspeakers. Some people did challenge the question. It was not a good scene. Those people ended up losing more points because of the bad challenge.
The game continued. We finished the final round with a perfect 20-for-20, in that we had to identify two mash-up movie titles based on a description of the two merged films – for example, Luke Skywalker meets Marty McFly would be “The Empire Strikes Back to the Future.”
I calculated our cumulative points. We had 80 on the night. A very good score. We might not win the grand prize – Unwed Fathers were ahead of us by a point or two throughout the game – but we could still win some more prizes if we finished in the Top 3.
And after some other awards were handed out – one team took a “most improved” title, another team snagged a “best multi-tasking” award (they played their trivia games at a bowling center, and actually played trivia and picked up baby splits simultaneously), yada yada yada…
The final scores were finally read.
“We Are Your Nemesis, Fear Us with 80 points… and Amino Assets with 80 points… a tie for third place.”
Yes. We earned third place. Okay, let’s do like we’ve done every time there’s a tie during the regular season. One representative from my team and one representative from their team come up to the scorer’s table, we have one question between us or we have a staring contest or we do push-ups or something –
“And the tiebreaker for the overall night goes to – Amino Assets!”
Wait…
What?
Which?
Huh?
How?
When?
Who?
Which?
What?
Meanwhile, the host read off the name of the final champion for 2014 – Unwed Fathers, congratulations to them – while I was still dumbstruck. Which tiebreaker?
I went over to the host and asked.
“We used the tiebreaker for the final round to determine third place,” he said. “It’s in the rules.”
“Wait,” I replied. “That should have been the tiebreaker for the seventh round to determine a prize for that round.”
“It was,” he said. “And it was also used to break the third place overall tie. It’s in the rules.”
No, wait,” I implored. But I knew there was no challenging this.
First off, we never should have gotten in this position. There were some times when we crossed out the right answer and wrote the wrong one, that cost us a point here and there. And we did play like a solid, cohesive unit. We had fun. In the end, that’s all that matters.
But that tiebreaker thing – plus being told I couldn’t have a teammate because he spoke his mind about the “Catch the Mania” trivia game and the host arbitrarily banned him from my team – that stuck in my craw all the way home.
And I checked the rule sheet. Here’s what it said regarding tiebreakers.
“Tie-breaker answers will be utilized to settle any ties for individual rounds as well as final ranking.”
Okay. But it doesn’t say what type of tiebreakers, or whether the tiebreakers from the seventh round would have been also used as a the tiebreakers for the overall score. Heck, we won the first tiebreaker in the first round, we could argue that THAT tiebreaker should have been used.
Chuck, take a deep breath. It’s only a game of team trivia. It’s not like you’re playing for life or death.
I’m not going to make this sound like a bowl of sour grapes. Unwed Fathers won the “Catch the Mania” trivia championship, congratulations to them. And congratulations to Amino Assets, who came in third place. We did our best, and we finished in third place too.
That being said…
If anybody wants to voice their opinion on the trivia tournament, they’re more than welcome to use the comments section of today’s blog and make their voices heard.
As far as I’m concerned… this was a great tournament that was marred by some bush league actions.
And I’m going back to Trivia Nights Live trivia games… and getting away from the bush leagues.
Chuck The Writer 
I kept saying continuously all night, since you like old worn out metaphors 😀 , that playing in this game is like playing in the Arena Bowl after playing in the Super Bowl. Both are great accomplishments, but outside of a few people, no one cares about the Arena Bowl. It was also WAYYYYYYYY too long, there’s no reason why someone should get home at 11 PM when trivia started at 7. If these comments get me banned from playing another Catch The Mania game, so be it. I am 95% sure I won’t go back. It was a fun night with some other friends, and I have a newfound respect for the Woo Hoo team now, and according to Matt we should all move to Canada, but the trivia game itself was actually kind of boring.
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Ed – It was more like playing in the championship for Arenafootball2. Even the Albany Firebirds had their moment of glory in the sun. 🙂
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“tournament” was the CBI of post season college basketball.
Scott is a horrible trivia host and should feel bad about the person he is. Banning team mates because they said mean things about you on a second rate blog? Holding the marqee event on a worknight, handing out 300-word 11pt font rules, talking big game about keeping order then loosing control of the game for a half hour. Why should teams be allowed to challenge the answer? YOU MAY NOT HAVE THE CORRECT ANSWER???
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Any sign of D357 yet? Word is that even Godzilla is lying low. 😉
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You can’t say that Dan was banned for comments and not have those comments up to see! Screw CtM, they run a poor ship. I would be embarrassed if I was them.
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I think these might be the comments that were deemed offensive.
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“I look forward to Pin the Tail on the Donkey at the championship level.”
why wasn’t this part of the game last night. Dan’s giving away stellar ways to add to CtM’s game and they ban him?
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That would have been great to see a blindfolded Chuck walking toward a wall looking for an ass. 😀
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I would have had many accurate targets, wouldn’t I?
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I CLAIM TOTAL VINDICATION!!! I told you all a long time ago that this game sucked.The only thing I didn’t say was that the host was a complete a-hole. That is now confirmed.
As Scott Mumford wrote in his email banning me from a game that I don’t like to play “actions have consequences”…well, the consequences of his arbitrary rules, moronic hosting ability and overall second-rate wannabe trivia game seem obvious. Catch the Mania is an inferior product.
Everyone who has commented on this post should expect that they are now banned. Everyone who has READ this post should expect that they are now banned. That’s what happens when you play with a little crybaby like Scott Mumford. I hope that the establishments that employ Catch the Mania realize how poorly this reflects on them.
I would rather play Trivial Pursuit with Roz than be seen anywhere near a bar that hosts Catch the Mania.
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Well, you just might have to if you keep getting your ass banned from Trivia Nights, so you’d better be nice to me.
And thanks for getting me banned from some…place I don’t even give a rat’s ass about, Chuck. You Angry White Men are ruining everything!!!!
Oops… sorry. Wrong blog. 😉
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I go to trivia on Wednesday nights as much as I can, I am a member of Flunk U which finished 18th last evening. I as is most everyone that I can tell from my attendance at this establishment a Scott Mumford fan of his hosting abilities. We have a good time every Wednesday without the know it alls that we’re in attendance last evening.
I left during the challenge controversy which I thought was a embarrassment to be a part of while waiting for the tournament to resume. I thought Scott handled it a swell as he could dealing with the complainers, I will never attend a final tournament again, not due to the hosts abilities but due to the game becoming a total crybaby convention due to the prizes causing many people ( outsiders) to act like idiots when they thought they had a valid point.
What this guy had to go through was trying for anyone who had to witness it.
Scott for now on have a final playoff round just for the teams at the site, let everyone else stay in their place that they are comfortable in and let the person who runs this blog with his complaints stay the h ll in Troy.
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DC – I appreciate your comment, even if I am “the person who runs this blog with his complaints stay the h ll in Troy.” Here’s the thing. I like what Scott Mumford is doing. I like what he does with the game. But when you start introducing things like “Challenge me and if you’re right, you get your point back, challenge me and if you’re wrong, you lose an additional point,” it doesn’t work.
Case in point. The double point question in Round 4 asked for the two Presidents who won the office with 520 or more votes in the electoral college. We wrote down Nixon and Reagan. The host’s answers were Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt. Nixon was correct, but we were actually afraid to challenge because how would we know if the question was worded in such a way that he meant “more than 520 votes” or “520 or more votes” – it was just too nebulous and confusing. And at that point in time, every point counted.
The two other trivia organizations, Trivia Nights Live and Memorama, have absolutely no problem running championship tournaments with representatives from several bars participating. Those championships are held on the weekend – not during a weeknight when people have to work the next day. There’s plenty of time budgeted to get all the questions asked and answered, you’re not trying to scramble to get the finals completed before last call. And with regard to your comments about the game being a “crybaby convention,” understand that we’re all playing for prizes and trophies and the right to call ourselves trivia champions.
Maybe there should have been regional championships, and one team from each bar could play in the finals. That’s something to think about in the future. But when you’re introducing trophies and prizes and the like, heck yeah we’re going to want to win. Nobody wants to lose on a technicality or a botched question or a misunderstanding. Then it stops being a trivia championship and it becomes the 1985 World Series.
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Chuckie I told my team to write Nixon down and they did, I am old enough to remember Nixon winning 49 states against Mc Govern, I knew he had to have 520 electoral votes and when I went home I googled it and I was right. Guess what, the prizes, trophies and other stuff t shirts etc ruined last night it was a stupid trivia game on a Wednesday night, it should not have been a big deal. I do not plan on throwing a fit if the answer to the Nixon question was wrong, it should not be that important.
I never plan on playing at the Ruck and I will never go to a final again at the bayou, some people last night acted. Like little league parents it was trivia on a Wednesday, give it a break.
You got your anti Scott troops pumped up and they are coming out on your blog, your gang should start your own trivia contest.
Back to the Nixon question, this is why they put erasers on pencils and backspace on keyboards, we all make them, MISTAKES.
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You’re absolutely right, it shouldn’t be that important. But when you make it out to be this big “tournament of champions” event that has all of the top teams in the area competing for a CASH prize, it turns into something of greater importance. At the end of the night, people just want to hear the scores, they don’t really care who gets a trophy because someone made a sweater for it and is a nice guy. When you give out trophies left and right, your “tournament of champions” loses its luster. Good for you for not throwing a fit to the Nixon question. When it says IN THE RULES THAT THE HOST MAKES AND DISTRIBUTES, that you can challenge an answer but lose an additional point if the challenge is wrong, it sort of discourages the point, doesn’t it? In that case, you better make sure that the answer is correct, especially when you are losing points if you get the answer wrong, otherwise you’re going to have a lot of pissed off people. I’m not a Scotty hater or a CtM hater, in fact, this was my very first game of CtM, but honestly, with all the rules and regulations that had to be followed, I felt like I was competing in the North Korea trivia championships.
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Wow I’m new to blogs but bravo DC what a bunch of ridiculous whining over a simple game, you need to get a life chucky, if you knew you were right about Nixon have the stones to challenge, by the way D357 fans were not walking out and your obviously another idiot with to much time to bitch about things without trying to run anything yourself.
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You claim ‘to be new to blogs’ but your petty squabbling and overly dramtic insults say otherwise.
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Wow…even the fans were walking out?! Now I am kinda sorry I missed it. I don’t understand what kind of buffoon would be impressed with hosting abilities that lets a game turn into an “embarrassment”…but it sounds like it was a poorly run game with rules made up as it went along.
I also don’t know who the “outsiders” were since every team had to qualify over a number of weeks. Maybe it makes sense to Mumford or maybe you’ll be banned for this comment. Who knows? He’s pretty sensitive and doesn’t handle criticism very well.
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He’s probably talking about me, Matt and George as being “outsiders,” but at the same time not realizing that Chuck was forced into having outsiders there. Speaking of which, I noticed ALOT of teams there that were also-rans from TNL.
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Yes D 357 I walked out,, it had nothing to do with Scott,s facilitating of the game, it had to do with the serious attitude the outsiders brought to the game hitting it, speak over the stupid boat challenges and the non stop complaining over the answers.
Some outsiders even wanted a stupid smoke break, we never have one of them on Wednesday nights.
Mumford knows what he is doing whenever he runs Wednesday At Bayou, he never has a problem and he has never had a headache like last night, I did not recognize one complainer during the boating direction controversy, which is why I refer to them as outsiders.
Maybe you will understand this I don’t believe they were from the bayou, do you know what I mean now, I know what is going on here, Chuckie is giving you a forum to rip Scott and you are loving it.
Get over it I would probably not want you around either.
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Amen DC! let crybabies have their own tourney!
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I was there last night too, first time at the Bayou and damn the game ran long but really how could it not with all the stupid smoke breaks and people insisted on. Give me a break, and the mob scene over the boat question? People took this WAAAAAY too seriously, I was half expecting bouncers to be brought out for angry mob. I think the trivia crew handled it the best they could given the circumstances; all the bitching and whining and yelling really ruined it for me. I like Scott’s trivia and I think he does a good job to make it fun. I guess there’s always that risk when you invite 200+ people that you’re gonna get some overreactive babies in the mix and you can’t control everyone. I think Scott did the best he could with the whiners he had to work with. And btw Chuck, while you paint yourself as a saint, I saw you run up to Scott at the end all hyped up red faced, angry, arms flailing about how you lost the third place tie. Anyone who rushed the hosts angrily needs to accept some responsibility for their actions and how they contributed to the deterioration of the evening. Frankly Chuckie you seem like a whiney sore loser who needs someone to bully from a distance… compensation much? 😉
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RG –
Again, I don’t have to defend myself regarding this tournament. But if you read the blog post, you will see that I’m not complaining about how we did in the tournament. What I’m complaining about was that an arbitrary tiebreaker was used to determine third place, a tiebreaker that was supposed to be just for breaking Round 7 ties for prizes. I addressed this in the blog and I’m sticking to it.
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Could Scott have explained better how the tie breaker worked for the final? Sure. Was it arbitrary? No. It was in the rules (even if exactly how it worked was a it vague), and tie-breaking questions for each round were well established, and based on answering trivia questions. You can hardly complain that using the final tie-breaker for the final score was “arbitrary” while simultaneously hoping for a staring contest or push ups.
Also, while I can’t be positive, I’m pretty sure the electoral vote question specified “more than 520”, so Nixon was incorrect (full disclosure, after hemming and hawing between Reagan, FDR, and Nixon, we ended up going with Nixon as well). It was a tough question to be sure, but fair.
That being said, you do have a legitimate gripe about your teammate being barred from the contest. To me this seems petty, and certainly a bad call on Scott’s part (if it was indeed Scott’s decision and not someone else from CtM). Unless there’s something egregious I don’t know about it (and it doesn’t seem there is) I’d certainly hope things like that don’t happen in the future.
Anyway, something to consider, before deciding to commit yourself to a lowest common denominator outfit like Trivia Nights Live, keep in mind there are other games in town, and plenty of bars run their own in-house trivia nights, which are often the best.
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Guy – here’s something else to consider. During the sixteen weeks of the tournament, Scott always let the teams know (somewhere around round 4) what the cumulative scores were, so that everybody knew who was leading and by how many points over which team. During last Wednesday’s final, he did not do that. When I politely asked him during a break to read the cumulative scores, his comment was, “I don’t have time, we’re supposed to have been out of the building by now.” And when he did read the end-of-round scores, he read them with the speed of an auctioneer’s cadence. So even if we tried to calculate on our own which team was leading, it was nearly impossible to do so. That meant there was NO WAY OF KNOWING who was leading or who was tied for third until the final scores were listed – and the arbitrary tiebreaker was assigned. Again, this was poor planning on the CtM part, and it – combined with other actors – soured the experience of the CtM finals.
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Ed is right your obvious dis like of Scott has you on a continuous rant about how things are done, FIND another trivia venue. During the tournament it never mattered what position your team was in, your either winning or not, would knowing your position changed any answers? as I said before, if your sure of your answer, challenge.
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Okay, look at the blog post. I don’t dislike Scott Mumford. I think that he runs a good trivia game at the Ruck, that’s why I participated in the tournament. And I said so in the blog. But even you have to admit that the finals could have been better organized, and that there should not have been confusion regarding tiebreakers – especially when there’s a difference between a tiebreaker to win a gift certificate for winning the round, and a tiebreaker to determine whether you finished in the top 3 to win the grand prizes.
Believe me, there are plenty of people who were upset with that round, not just me. The boat question in particular. One of my teammates questioned whether “windward” and “leeward” would have been acceptable directions, especially since those terms are used on sailboats. It was a nebulous question and was open to interpretation, and that caused a lot of angry responses – and they weren’t just from me.
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It sounds like I missed out on a real train wreck of a trivia game. Interesting that there’s been no comment from Mumford…he had plenty to say fore he tried to run a big game, but nothing aft?
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/but nothing aft?/
It isn’t a side of a boat!
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DP, where did I say that Chuck disliked Scott Mumford. I never said that, so please don’t go putting words in my mouth. Also, Chuck used to play over at TNL, and for a variety of reasons, one being that he was having trouble beating our team, 😉 he found another one. To answer your question, while knowing our position may not have changed our answeres, it would have changed our STRATEGY on the answer, especially knowing that you lose points. We went in to that round thinking that we needed as many points as possible, but had we known where we were, we probably would have taken the gamble of NOT answering some of the questions because leaving an answer blank would have been better than losing a point.
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Just to clarify for everyone…I believe I’m the only one who has said anything negative about the host personally…and rightfully so. I didn’t like his game but I now dislike him even more.
On the other hand, after reading all these comments, it seems like he did me a favor by banning me.
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It sounds like there is less controversy at those “lowest common denominator” games. Maybe a little less confusion too. We usually have a good time at those games. There is also a halftime break for everybody.
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Chuckle, it is time to end this so this will be my last post unless one of your followers decides to keep it going. I believe the case is this, you report on a trivia tournament and can’t wait to write about what you believe to be the shortcomings of the tournament.
Your friends and followers such as yoo boo or woo hoo go on the attack of the host probably due to sour grapes about your friend being barred, next comes your comments about how You do not have a problem with Scott but you have a problem with this or that and your followers do the ripping for you.
I am glad I commented on what I believe the problem really was on Wednesday night and I do not believe it was Scott, it was people like you Chuckie taking this way too seriously.
It is time for you to call off your chihuahuas and tell them to grow up, you could probably grab a few inches I height yourself based on what I believe is your attempt to give the host headaches.
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Well said DC!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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No need for the personal attack at the end, tough guy.
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Hello Chucky, I believe you take yourself a bit too seriously. I look forward to trivia each week. Seven of us have been going for 2 years. We look forward to trivia and seeing Scott, who is a great DJ and manager of trivia, each week. It is the highlight of our week, not because of its academic value, although whenever we are wrong, we appreciate learning something. We enjoy it because it is fun,
entertaining, and social. And it is great when you pull something out of the recesses of your brain and the whole table cheers. If you are looking for a more serious trivia venue, I suggest your call Alex Trebek and get on Jeopardy as you are completely missing the point of trivia IN BARS, the Karaoke of the 2010s. Therefore, you are barking up the wrong tree.
All the best, Kim
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Seems to me the crux of the problem was time management. If things weren’t rushed at the end, Scott would’ve had time to give the cumulative scores a couple times as well as explain how things work in the case of a tie. It’s clear that wasn’t the case. Hopefully this is a live and learn experience, but it seems most of the factors which led to the end rush were hard to control. As I see it, there were numerous factors.
First, the sheer number of teams. Inevitably, the more teams there are, the longer the game will take. Nothing can be done about this without further limits on who makes the finals, which isn’t in anyone’s interests.
Then there’s the smoke break. Though not necessary in regular play, when people can step outside with impunity, it was probably a necessary addition in this game to curtail potential cheating. Nic fiends need their fix, I guess, and no one wants to tell a team they’re disqualified because their resident smoker took too long to finish their cig. Still, the break seemed to go well beyond the designated time allotted, and this could be better enforced in the future.
Then there’s the trophy awards. While not essential, this was a nice addition. While I sometimes disparage “big box” trivias like CtM and TNL when compared to the “Mom and Pop” trivias of smaller establishments, I thought this was a genuine way of showing a honest connection and appreciation for some of the regulars. Besides, if I recall correctly, it was done during the final tabulation, which would have been dead air anyway. And since Scott went through the trouble of creating these awards and having trophies made, he wasn’t about to cancel it due to time constraints. All in all it didn’t make much of a difference in terms of the overall length of the game, and was a nice addition.
Overall pacing of the game, by which I mean time between questions in each round, can have a dramatic cumulative effect, but didn’t strike me as a huge problem that night. It being the finals, when the questions generally were a bit more difficult than in regular play, sort of necessitated allotting a decent amount of time to come up with an answer. I didn’t think this slowed the game much, and was certainly better than the deathly slow pace of TNL. Still, I suppose, in the future there might be room for improvement in this regard, albeit not a whole lot.
Then, of course, there’s the challenges. Nothing can really be done about this, without taking a “no challenges; host’s answers are final” approach. Some trivias do this, but I always resented it. The maligned new rule of unsuccessful challenges yielding a penalty was probably the best solution to the issue of superfluous challenges delaying the game. It’s a concept the NFL has used for years, and if it’s good enough for a billion dollar industry, it’s probably good enough for a local trivia tournament. And while it obviously didn’t solve the problem entirely, I’d wager it mitigated it. The specific controversy about fore and aft versus bow and stern will remain a vexed question, I’m sure. I’ll just say that as someone with pretty substantial experience in sailing traditional large vessels, bow and stern was certainly a better answer than fore and aft. In a less formal setting I could see either answer being acceptable, but this was the cutthroat finals, and the subtle, yet distinct difference between bow and stern and fore and aft was not illegitimate. And Scott basically (in not quite so many words) said that a challenge based on fore and aft would not be ruled favorably, so the teams had plenty of warning. I’m not sure how else this could have been handled. Oh, and “windward” and “leeward” would certainly not be acceptable answers, as they refer to wind direction, not the position of a boat, as any side could be windward, and not synonymous with left, right, front, or rear. (“Larboard” rather than “port” should be an acceptable answer, but if you put that you’re just being pedantic.)
The only real change I can propose that might address some of these issues would be to display a spreadsheet showing each team’s scores on the big board between each round, so everyone would know how they were doing overall at any given time. It wouldn’t solve all problems, but would be an easy fix for the question of knowing where your team currently stands. The technology is obviously there, and seems easy to implement.
So, yeah, that’s my two cents.
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It seems to me that if the problem was time management or unclear rules then the problem was poor planning and poor execution by the host. I’ve played in many larger local tournaments that were run flawlessly and without controversy.
Obviously, I couldn’t be at this game but if it was as bad as all these comments from “insiders” and “outsiders” make it sound…then that’s on the host. Mumford still remains mum even though we know he reads this blog. I’m sure he thought banning me and sucking up to Chuck would result in some great free publicity for his game but like he said…actions have consequences.
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Other than Chuck’s complaint about the “arbitrary” tiebreaker, the only real controversy was over the boat question, and by “arbitrary” it seems he more means “not made clearly explicit ahead of time.” You can perhaps pin the tiebreaker issue on Scott (not that I think there was much of an issue there), but the other was several teams insisting that their almost correct answer was completely correct. I can get out my copy of The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea and recite the definitions of “aft” and “stern”, but I’ll spare everyone that. Sure, Scott could have given points for “fore and aft”, but he certainly didn’t have to, and if he had, it would’ve been a very easy question. I admit, our team initially wrote “fore and aft” before thinking about it more carefully and reading the exact phrasing of the question, after which we decided “bow and stern” was certainly the better answer. If a few teams had trouble accepting the results, well, that’s on them. If you think the question was vague, and perhaps it was a little, that’s on the writer (who I’m pretty sure isn’t Scott).
The game wasn’t nearly as bad as a few people here have made it sound. Yeah, it ran a bit long, but it’s the finals. It’s a lot of teams and a big event; not your typical Wednesday night trivia game. If you can’t stay out a bit past 10 then go join a bingo league. I don’t know where Ed lives that he got home at 11; I stayed after almost everyone else had left and was home well before that.
As for your larger trivia tournaments being run flawlessly. If you’re talking about Trivia Nights Live, they ask, what, 20 questions? That they drag so few questions out for 2 hours is one of the reasons why I’m not a fan of their game, but everyone has their own preferences. The thing I like most about Catch the Mania is that they ask 70 questions; it’s just more bang for the buck.
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Fore, aft, leeward, windward are all directions, not locations. A good host should have had the matter settled instantly and not dragged out for however long it took.
Everyone should certainly play the game they prefer. I’m not a fan of staring contests and the flag-waving for clues. But being banned for the comments I made on here? Seriously?! I just re-read them…they’re pretty tame, especially for me. Your host is weak. One of the other reasons I was banned was “lack of play”…but people who had never played before were welcome? That makes sense? CtM is a poorly run operation.
As for being called Chuck’s “followers”…that’s just hilarious. I never realized it was “Bayooouuu” that teams were yelling each week when his score was read.
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Honestly, Dan, I don’t think the whole challenge ordeal took as long as people are letting on. Several teams went up after the answers were read to question their “fore and aft” answers, and while I couldn’t hear what was said beyond some things Scott said over the mic, he needed to know if they wanted to wage a formal challenge, potentially costing them points, while warning them that there is a difference between direction and location. The teams had no confer about whether they wanted to “throw the challenge flag” and he gave them some time to do so. Undoubtedly each team was hoping another would be the one to do it, so they could reap the potential benefits without the risk. Eventually one team did, and after that it didn’t take all that long. Given that they were risking a point on the question, they deserved a better answer than “I say so,” especially since the whole “one is direction and one is a location” is a slight oversimplification (“foreword” and “abaft” are more comparable to “leeward” and “windward”). There might have been a separate challenge the same round, but I couldn’t hear. From the way people are talking about it here you’d think the whole thing took half an hour or so, but it was nothing like that. Just a slight delay. I didn’t see it reflecting poorly on Scott as a host.
We do agree on several points. As I said, I thought it pretty ridiculous that you were banned, and you have every right to be pissed off about it. I also am not a fan of staring contest tiebreakers or the clue flags. However, those sorts of frivolous tiebreakers have only been used for individual round prizes, so we’re looking at a couple tacos or something, while the clues have screwed my team over a number of times. Neither aspect was featured at the finals the other night, I’m glad to say. In my view the “guesstimation” tiebreakers are the best method, and I was a bit surprised to hear Chuck say he was pining for a staring contest.
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I was seated near the front by the host tables and during the boat question multiple teams rushed the front and were yelling and screaming, screaming at Scott and the two girls who were doing the scoring. It was embarrassing to see, embarrassing that grown men were refusing to accept the fact that they had incorrect answers and yelling at the staff for not accepting their incorrect answers. I even heard one guy say that he believed so strongly that they were wrong that he couldn’t leave until his teams score was changed or something along those lines. It was unbelievable. People wouldn’t stop to even let Scott or those two girls even attempt to explain the answe.
I would like you to explain D357 how you, since you seem to be the ultimate all knowing god of hosting able to pick apart everything Scott did wrong all without being there, how a “good” host would have handled an angry mob and gain controll instantly had you been bombarded by a hostile crowd who refused to listen to logic and reason or even let you complete a sentence and see what was actually going on…. Alot like what’s happening here in this comment thread….
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Sure RG, I’m glad you had the good sense to ask for my help.
1st – Get rid of the challenge and lose a point rule. I had no idea CtM was this bad. An answer is either right or wrong. If you can convince the host a different answer is acceptable then good for everyone who submitted the alternate answer. It only takes a minute to look something up on a phone. To penalize one team for a challenge when other teams have the same answer isn’t fair. If the challenge was ruled favorably wouldn’t all the other teams get credit? Just a horrible rule.
2nd – Get rid of the stupid, pre-teen birthday party tiebreaker games. It’s a trivia contest. You need a tiebreaker? Have a tiebreaker question.
3rd – Get a good host.
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If a trivia host bans you for “arbitrary” reasons, is that a violation of your civil rights and can you sue them for discrimination?
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