DePauw Undergraduate Tournament (DUNCE), 11/1/03

Results: Northwestern
(Robert Flaxman, Justin Moles)

    Things got a little funny at DUNCE.  It was amusing that three solo teams were there (including Colby, the only undergraduate among them), but that's not the kind of "funny" I mean.
    Missouri-Rolla was in attendance and doing quite well - racking up immense power numbers and pounding all comers in their games.  Then, suddenly, in the last two rounds, their performance fell off substantially (we lost to them 385-135 in Round Seven and then won 315-115 in Round Fourteen - not unheard of [see New Trier A and Rufus King's games at Wildcat], but fairly unlikely in level competition).  Colby, Justin and I were all a bit suspicious.  Rolla was declared the winner and went home with their trophies.  We went home and did a little research, and discovered that Rolla had indeed heard the questions before, at a tournament in Oklahoma on October 11.   (That tournament had a couple fewer rounds, explaining Rolla's sudden inability to answer questions in the last couple rounds of this one.)
    To their semi-credit, Rolla admitted to their ruse without having to be presented with the evidence (unless they read this, they may not even know that anyone was on to them) - but WHAT THE FUCK, huh?  Look, I'm sure it sucks to drive however many hours it was - five or so - and then realize you've heard the questions before and can't play.  But is it too much to ask that you just come clean?  Which is worse, playing all day (well, almost all day) on questions you've already heard - I'm sorry, that's just boring - and then either having to come clean after the fact or being found out, or just admitting it from the start and scorekeeping/moderating?  They may have admitted it without a confrontation, but that doesn't change the fact that they did it - were the couple days you were the champs worth the huge downgrade in respect, boys?
    Aside from that, the tournament was pretty fun.  I was the top non-solo scorer (third overall among those who counted, for which I earned a little medal), with my highest collegiate point total, and I had two rounds of 100-plus, which I hadn't done since 2001 Carleton.
    Favorite Tossup: Simply has to be Shawshank Prison.  I mean, come on.  They started off naming wardens (there were multiple wardens in the book, for those who only know the film) - I heard the first one and immediately thought "fictional character."  I buzzed before they'd even said Norton's last name.  Power, of course.  The Wind Waker one was pretty good too.
    Favorite Bonus: Round Four, the Asian geography bonus.   I love geography bonuses because they tend to give me a chance to flex on stuff like Lake Van or Manitoulin Island.  In this one, the answers were Kamchatka, Kuril Islands, and Sakhalin.  I love Sakhalin.   I want to live in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.  (Note: This is a total lie.)
    Worst Neg: All four were legitimate, and all were also irksome.  Cilia for flagella, I was picturing the right structure and just mentally assigning the wrong name to it.  TV commercials for advertisements, I probably shouldn't have said TV, in retrospect, or at least said something when prompted.   Cape Cod for Nova Scotia, if I'd known UIS wasn't even going to buzz, I could have waited for a more specific clue than "Truro."
    Most Annoying Moment: Losing to Colby.  Losing to a solo team is always lame; losing to your own teammate is just plain annoying.  At least we split with him (though it took a comeback in the first game).  The second game, it felt like every tossup was politics or history.  I mean, they might as well have been about "Burnett family history," that's how good a chance we had with questions like that.
    Heard It!  No, Literally: I got a Benjamin Britten tossup because of the Peter Grimes interludes played by the CSO last year (yes, that was the Maestro Seaman performance).
    Wrote It!: I powered Gibraltar thanks to the first clue being about the 1967 referendum that rejected Spanish control over the territory (and its inherent irony), which was the third clue in a question I wrote for MLK last year (that was not used, it being MLK).
    There's One You Don't See Every Day: We went to sudden-death overtime with Mike Philpy (a second-year grad student filling in as a solo team due to Loyola's absence), at which point he lost it on a neg.  I've only been to a few overtimes, and maybe only one sudden death one before this (2002 CBI Regionals against Loyola), but I don't think I've ever seen a neg in one.  Thanks, Mike!
    Thanks for Forfeiting the Losses Too: Rolla only went 9-3, but forfeited all 12 matches, which means I lost a 90-point round in the official stats.  Well, in my stats, I'm dropping the 30-point Round Seven (because I can guarantee you I would have had at least three more tossups had Rolla not known what the answers were ahead of time), but keeping the last round, which they clearly had not heard before.

Round Robin (double)

Round One: Northwestern 250, Colby B. 200
Round Two: Northwestern 330, Michigan 180
Round Three: Northwestern 280, Mike P. 275 (OT)
Round Four: Northwestern 445, Illinois-Springfield 35
Round Five: BYE
Round Six: Northwestern 225, Stan J. 205
Round Seven: Round forfeited by Missouri-Rolla
Round Eight: Colby B. 230, Northwestern 170
Round Nine: Michigan 310, Northwestern 210
Round Ten: Northwestern 365, Mike P. 150
Round Eleven: Northwestern 425, Illinois-Springfield 40
Round Twelve: BYE
Round Thirteen: Stan J. 385, Northwestern 230
Round Fourteen: Round forfeited by Missouri-Rolla (score was Northwestern 315, Missouri-Rolla 115)

Final Record: 7-3 (2nd out of six teams)

Personal Stats: Questions Answered

   No one's asking you to care about it.  Powers are in bold, neg-5s are in italics with the real answer following.  Anything in plain text was just ten.

Round One
Nunavut
West Nile virus
Togo
Natty Bumpo
John Madden
Black Hawk
Benjamin Britten

Round Two
Wisconsin
Napoleonic Wars
Italy
All Quiet on the Western Front
Cartel
To Kill A Mockingbird
Lord of the Flies

Round Three
Akbar the Great
Lactic acid
Seal - Kiss from a Rose
Seminole Wars

Round Four
Mohamed Suharto
24
Ludwig von Beethoven
Cyrano de Bergerac
Cape Cod (really Nova Scotia)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Enamel
Seine River
Moby Dick

Round Six
Jordan Baker
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Scotland Yard
Jerusalem
Shirley Jackson
Pecos Bill

Round Eight
Guano
West Virginia
Alexander Graham Bell
Charles Babbage
Large intestine
Miguel de Cervantes
King Tutankhamun
The Gold-Bug

Round Nine
Cardinals
Ralph Bunche
The Canterbury Tales
Alloys
Brasilia

Round Ten
Shawshank Prison
Gabon
The Nose
Radon
Train
Cilia (really flagella)
TV commercials (really advertisments)
Olmec
Eratosthenes
John
Lake Victoria
Mary Poppins

Round Eleven
Iceland
Gibraltar
Mirror
Ethan Frome
Dred Scott (really Plessy v. Ferguson)
Carmina Burana
The Emperor's New Clothes
Eight Days A Week
Lemony Snicket
Tagus River
Liver
Vlad the Impaler

Round Thirteen
Joe Biden Jr.
Ceres
Rocky
Chechnya
Don Giovanni
Québec

Round Fourteen
Book of Mormon
Rent
Groundhog Day
England
Lake Maracaibo
James K. Polk
Long Island
Fall

PPG: 75.91