My Thursday night trivia crowd has been going to a new venue for the last month or so. The atmosphere is better, the food is far better, and we just generally seem to have a better time.
But one complaint I must make is the difficulty of questions within certain categories. It seems to me that the "hard questions" in certain categories are much easier than the "easy questions" in others. Some of this you could chalk up to the particular strengths of our group, of course, but I think this goes much deeper than that.
For example, last week, you'd net 4 points for naming the coach for whom the NBA Coach of the Year award is named. This answer to this supposedly middle of the road question was Red Auerbach, which got enough "who?" stares around the bar that I got the feeling this was a far more difficult question that the score would suggest.
By contrast, tonight's penultimate question, worth 10 points, asked which of Shakespeare's plays contains the line "something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
Okay, seriously?
I'll admit, Shakespeare would be "one of our categories," and is likely more difficult for the average bar patron than a basketball question. But seriously, 10 points for Hamlet? It seems to me if you just said to somebody, "name any one play by Shakespeare," you're gonna get Hamlet more than half the time. (You'd probably get Romeo and Juliet from every other non-theater geek that could name any at all.)
My point is, you could easily know almost nothing about Shakespeare and pull Hamlet out of your ass for 10 points. But where is someone who knows nothing about basketball going to pull Red Auerbach for 4 points? There's just a total lack of parity in the scoring here, if you ask me.
I suppose I should be grateful that some of the questions we know nothing about are worth less -- it's fewer points for us to miss out on. Still, I feel more strongly that one of the most valuable questions in the game should require at least a little bit of special knowledge in the category.
Next week, "what is the name of the Vulcan science officer played by Leonard Nimoy on Star Trek?" (20 points.)
The week after, "name the only U.S. state that starts with the letter F." (14 points.)
5 comments:
Actually, that Red Auerbach question shouldn't have been hard for anyone who follows college basketball at all (anyone who watches a few games during March Madness should probably have at least hit their forehead upon hearing the answer, even if they didn't get it).
Of course, I only know it because I went to college in Boston, where you soak up a certain amount of information about ol' Red whether you give a rat's about college basketball or not. :)
10 points for Hamlet is completely beyond the pale, though. Yikes.
I have, at least, heard of Red Auerbach. It's one of those names you hear when you occasionally watch basketball (and I do mean occasionally as it isn't a sport I really enjoy watching). Still, his name doesn't immediately come to mind.
But yeah, 10 points for Hamlet? Yowch. Maybe for a play that isn't one of the most well-known Shakespeares.
Orville Red Auerbach? isn't that the popcorn guy? :-P
and isn't Hamlet a Klingon opera? actually they might have thought it to be kind of a trick question. it would be too obvious to be Hamlet and people would guess other lesser known plays?
-the Mole
on a different topic, would you have kept the car or given the four cars away? (survivor last night of course)
I didn't even know there was an NBO Coach of the Year Award....
10 points for Hamlet seems like a freebie. People who flunked on that one shouldn't be playing.
Mole,
Re: Survivor and the cars. Both I and the friend I watched with were in 100% agreement -- give the car away. Although our logic was perhaps a bit different.
The card they were giving away was a gas-guzzling, SVU-ish piece of crap. And you'd have to pay all the taxes and so forth on winning a car not even worth having. To get rid of that burden AND ingratiate yourself to four people at the same time? Win-win, baby.
Had it been a nice four-door sedan or a hybrid or something... that would have been a tough choice.
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