Norm's Foole finished in 22nd place this year, an improvement of 12 places from last year. The official score keeper said we had 5,910 points. Network won the contest with 11,325 points pulling ahead of second-place Festivus for the Rest of Us and third-place Knights of Neek in the last few hours. The contest theme was "The Dark Side of the Contest" with several elements making up the Dark Side theme including Star Wars, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Michael Jackson's "Thriller." The Wikipedia globe logo made it into the trivia logo also. I'm starting to think someone doesn't like Wikipedia.

Again the weather was beautiful and warm on Friday and Saturday just like last year--the downside of great weather is the basement gets a little sauna-like. As usual, we ate like kings and had a great turnout of team members. We even had some surprise visitors which will result in a new and improved team for 2011.

And now for the controversy of the year. And it's not so much a single question this time, but a pattern that leads to teams with the wrong answers getting big points. The question about the Dick Clark-owned raceway in West Virginia and the slogan on the Coke machine in the movie Dr. Strangelove had point values of 200 and 225 respectively. And the teams that got those points had the wrong answer. Now here is the problem: If you were one of the teams who called in and complained that you were not given credit for your answer, you may receive the 200 or more points and the teams that don't call in and complain get 0. And for both these questions, the Oz had an incorrect answer, so the rightful point value of each question should have been somewhere around 20 as these were relatively easy questions. But the issue is that teams that complained were handed huge points relative to the teams that didn't call and complain. Hardly fair. The correct action on these questions should have been to toss them.

The 41st place trophy was awarded this year to Clash of the Freaks continuing the tradition of giving a trophy to the team that lands in the spot that matches the contest number.

The Trivia Kickoff movie was another classic: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). The movie was shown April 9 and 10 at Roger's Cinema. This idea of showing a classic old movie for Trivia Kickoff seems like a great tradition. The movies are guaranteed to be excellent and the pressure to furiously take notes isn't there, so the attendees can sit back and enjoy a great fund-raiser with the trivia community.

After last year's final-question-of-the-contest 15-pointer about a Donald Duck comic, Oz came up with a stumper this year for Hour 54, Question 8: "When fictional character Paul Bryan was in the Calvin Phillips Safari Camp, the announcer on the radio said that after the music he would be giving the weather forecast. He then began to play music. What is the name of the song that he played?" No team had the answer to this question, but I bet a lot of teams would recognize the song "Strangers in the Night" if they heard it during the correct TV episode.

Last updated April 16, 2011
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