6.01.2006
since you asked (fourth in a series*)
A reader has requested to hear more about our experience at the quiz tournament last weekend (also known in some circles as Geekfest 2006). I won't go into too much detail because I'm currently working on a radio documentary about the tournament, which should air this summer. But here are the basics:
My brother, a quiz tournament veteran, brought me, our sister, their mother, and our father to Valencia Community College in Orlando to compete against 9 other teams. We were the only family team, and indeed, the only people who had never competed in one of these before. (Our team name, of course: The Aristocrats.) It was a grueling schedule, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., 20 tossup questions per round, plus bonuses. And the questions were brutal. Here's a fairly typical example from a previous tournament (remember, you get extra points if you can jump in very early in the question with the right answer):
In the fourth chapter of this work, the author describes the need for social interaction, beginning with a struggle to the death. Having learned that a corpse cannot provide validation, the next interaction becomes a struggle for dominion, resulting in lord and bondsman forms of self-consciousness. Its famous Preface outlines the author’s characteristic method of Zusehen. Contrary to popular belief, this work was not finished the night before Napoleon’s invasion of Jena, where its author had a university position. Name this book tracing the path of consciousness to absolute knowledge, the first major work of Hegel.
ANSWER: The Phenomenology of Spirit
And that's not even one of the science or math ones, which are technically in English but completely unintelligible to me.
Anyhow, somehow we won four out of the nine rounds, and I even got to answer a few ("Dashiell Hammett!" "Frida Kahlo!" "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas!" "A barber!" etc.). Most of all, it was a kick being back in a classroom, and hanging with the mathlete set. Gotta love 'em.
* links to other posts in this series can be found here
My brother, a quiz tournament veteran, brought me, our sister, their mother, and our father to Valencia Community College in Orlando to compete against 9 other teams. We were the only family team, and indeed, the only people who had never competed in one of these before. (Our team name, of course: The Aristocrats.) It was a grueling schedule, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., 20 tossup questions per round, plus bonuses. And the questions were brutal. Here's a fairly typical example from a previous tournament (remember, you get extra points if you can jump in very early in the question with the right answer):
In the fourth chapter of this work, the author describes the need for social interaction, beginning with a struggle to the death. Having learned that a corpse cannot provide validation, the next interaction becomes a struggle for dominion, resulting in lord and bondsman forms of self-consciousness. Its famous Preface outlines the author’s characteristic method of Zusehen. Contrary to popular belief, this work was not finished the night before Napoleon’s invasion of Jena, where its author had a university position. Name this book tracing the path of consciousness to absolute knowledge, the first major work of Hegel.
ANSWER: The Phenomenology of Spirit
And that's not even one of the science or math ones, which are technically in English but completely unintelligible to me.
Anyhow, somehow we won four out of the nine rounds, and I even got to answer a few ("Dashiell Hammett!" "Frida Kahlo!" "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas!" "A barber!" etc.). Most of all, it was a kick being back in a classroom, and hanging with the mathlete set. Gotta love 'em.
* links to other posts in this series can be found here
