So if you hadn’t heard already, we put out a little thing called Buzzword this week. And if you hadn’t heard about it already, I clearly failed at my marketing task.
Now IF I failed you, allow me to explain. Buzzword is NAQT’s first online competition and its first competition open to everyone**. You will hear questions read to you and you will buzz in and type in your answer. If you’re right, you get points, if you’re wrong no points. Depending on where you answer, you can get between 10 and 20 points for a correct answer. After 50 tossup questions, you’re done, and you get to see how you did against people all around the world. The experience to me is sort of if you crossed quiz bowl with Jeopardy!’s contestant search tests with home run derby. It encourages you to smack the question down as fast as you can, which when you do it and get it right is incredibly satisfying.
**that is, everyone who wasn’t writing or editing or playtesting Buzzword.
This has been exciting for everyone involved. For my minor part, I got to do my day job at night, and wear the black hat for a change on testing. During my playtesting, I figured out a few ways to cheat the system, and then we figured out how to block those cheats, or trap them so that if someone does try to cheat, they leave their fingerprints so we know who they are.
I also got to work on the logo. I’m happy my initial ugly pen-and-paper sketch was improved and tuned into a great logo.
Last week’s newsletter tipped the hand a little, when I mentioned needing to bring everyone together. If we’re lucky Buzzword’s going to do a little of that for us. There’s thousands of people who missed out on the optimal quiz bowl experience, either because they weren’t in the right area growing up, or they weren’t in the right class, or weren’t in the right place at the right time to connect with people. The Open division will give them a chance to play that they missed out on. And in the middle of this pause in the world, there threatened to be another group of students who were stuck at home, and wouldn’t be in the right place for quiz bowl to cross their path. Well, Buzzword means the right place is wherever they are right now.
Stuff to Get Straight in Your Head
The difference between aerosolized, airborne, and droplet, and what it means for COVID-19.
Stuff to Read
This collection of Great American Short Stories fails by including a Danish author in the second place, but for our purposes, it’s plenty to read now, or in the future.
Stuff to Do
Aside from try out the three sample rounds of Buzzword?
Several Frank Lloyd Wright-designed buildings are arranging virtual tours while they can’t be toured in person.
The Articles You Could Learn from This Week
All about the eruption of Krakatoa
and The Sargasso Sea
A portrait of Florence Nightingale with a large amount of detail about the Crimean War, it is listed in the article as “largely forgotten today” but it is key to numerous early buzzes.
I am well known for my love of typefaces, so I found this article an excellent introduction to the whole obsession.
I saw articles on the passing of Kazuhisa Hashimoto, and I remembered this old article (previously published elsewhere) about the history of the cheat code in video games.
The Articles I Learned from This Week
Road trips of American Literature
The Cooper Union Building and this got me thinking about Abraham Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address
This article didn’t age well in a month, but for its study of the 1952 Democratic Convention, it gives a lot of detail.
Didn’t You Learn Anything From the Last Time?
1
This creature's given name of Asterion, meaning "the starry one" may tie him with the constellation Taurus.
A. Name this half-man-half-bull creature of Greek myth.
answer: minotaur
B. The minotaur lived in the labyrinth created by Daedalus on this Greek island.
answer: Crete or Kriti
C. Aided by Ariadne who provided him with string to escape the labyrinth, this hero slew the minotaur.
answer: Theseus
2
Its highest point, Cadillac Mountain, is often the first point in the US to see sunrise.
A. Name this national park.
answer: Acadia National Park
B. Cadillac Mountain is not the highest point in this US state, rather it is the far more northerly Katahdin.
answer: Maine
C. Acadia National Park covers about half of this second-largest island on the Eastern seaboard.
answer: Mount Desert Island
3
In her novel Dumb Witness, Emily Arundell dies shortly after a luminous emission from her mouth.
A. Name this writer, whose knowledge of poisons stemmed from her time working at a hospital dispensary.
answer: Agatha Christie
B. The victim in Christie's Dumb Witness dies due to the ingestion of the white allotrope of this element.
answer: phosphorus
C. In Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the victim dies after being dosed with medicinal levels of this poison, then given bromide powder, which precipitated more out of it, and then given morphine to hide its convulsive effect.
answer: strychnine or nux vomica
4
Answer the following the Cassini-Huygens mission.
A. This planet and its moons were the target of the Cassini-Huygens probe.
answer: Saturn
B. The Huygens probe landed on this largest moon of Saturn and examined its atmosphere and surface.
answer: Titan
C. Cassini's path was rerouted to pass over this moon several times after water was discovered beneath its surface. Later discoveries determined this moon had ice geysers and a gloabal underground ocean.
answer: Enceladus
5
This religion merged the traditional Yoruban religion of enslaved Africans with Roman Catholic traditions.
A. Name this religion which emerged in Cuba.
answer: Santeria or Lukumí or Regla de Ocha
B. Santeria involves the veneration of these deities
answer: orishas or oricha
C. This figure of Yoruban religion is omnipotent and created all life, and as such all orishas are subservient to this figure.
answer: Oludumare or Olorun