Astute visitors here may have noticed that the site hasn’t been updated in the better part of a week. That’s because I’ve been in Blackpool, England, having a ball at the most unbelievable trivia tournament I’ve ever seen.
I’m at the European Quizzing Championships, part of a four-man Team USA along with Ken Jennings, Ed Toutant, and David Legler, with occasional cameos by the founder of the US Game Show Congress and US rep on the International Quizzing Association’s board Paul Bailey. (Incidentally, if this group were the Beatles, make no mistake: I’m Ringo at best. If not Stu Sutcliffe. Those guys have a total of over $7 million in quiz show winnings between them. Me? I have, um, this blog.)
We’ve spent the last three days hammering our brains against about 100 inspiring fanatics from nearly 20 countries from all over Europe and as far away as India. And just how crazed can the questions get when you’ve got people that good from all over the world? This one was completely typical, I swear to you:
I had no idea whatsoever. (Not that you need me to tell you that.) But the English guy sitting next to me came up with it after about thirty seconds of thought. He figured it out, in fact — by remembering which region Marmont was Duke of, then coming up with its biggest city, then modifying the name into a common French verb form, resulting in the educated and correct guess of "raguser."
Good lord.
Here’s another:
There are people from Belgium, Norway, Hungary and so on who walk around knowing that Zamenhof was born in Bialystok. Yes, yes, dear boy, ask us something difficult, would you?
So: this was three days of trying to come up with Albanian dictators, East German ping-pong players, Senegalese poets, and more weird random crap than I ever imagined I’d see asked with a straight face.
We actually did OK, if you’re curious. In the singles event, Ken ranked near the top (gee, big surprise there) and the rest of us were respectably middle and up. As a team, we again fared middle-up, losing the exhibition match against an international European side by one point, 60-59, because we could only identify two of the three snips of cinematic dream sequences we were given in the last round.
But winning was never the point, of course. Mostly it was a great chance to hang out with the guys and meet dozens of fascinating international nerds capable of raking at brain-frying trivia while — let’s remember — not even playing in their own native language.
So: thank you, EQC, thank you Paul Bailey, thank you fellow US players, thank you Steven and Chris and Jane and a bunch of other folks who put together the quizzes, and most of all, my hearty thanks to thousands of random events, objects, and historical people whose names I have now at least heard once before I humbly die.
Incidentally, and I say this with glowing affection: the Belgian players are total freaks. Off the charts. They know crap in four to six languages that I can’t even spell in English. Mark these words: never challenge a Belgian to a trivia duel. They will cut you with their minds.
At one point — my hand to any god you prefer — they actually asked which species of civet in the Balearic Islands marks its territory by performing handstands.
And like half of the people in the room just nodded dismissively as if they’d just been asked, I dunno, the capital of Denmark. I’m sure the Belgians were waiting for the really hard questions to start.
Wait a minute — you mean there are civets that do handstands in the Balearic Islands? How did I not know this? At least now I have a picture to seek out for Friday pudublogging.
More when I get the chance. A couple of the guys and I are taking a few days to hang out in Northern Ireland before heading home, and I’m not sure what the WiFi sitch will be. Should also be some pics from there and around Blackpool here, too.
(And yes, I am leaving the identity of that handstanding Balearic civet to your Google skills. Assuming you don’t just know it off the top of your head. I’ll post the answer later in the week.)