This will be short, because it created more work, and I have until tomorrow to prep for their match.
Having run through the first 12 episodes of this year's show last week, I resolved to test my hypotheses in the 13th episode, which would air before I'd be able to meet with the team. It's an important way to treat your data, and apply the lessons you've learned from past data. If I find something that makes me question my priors I need to examine it, and figure out if my assumptions are still valid.
The thing I must note before we go any further with this is that I didn't get the full episode recorded. CBS was in live coverage of the death of President Carter, and didn't break to local until 11:05 Saturday. As a result my taping missed the first 2/3 of the first round, so I don't know the categories or the questions, and I won't know those until the rebroadcast next Saturday.
We are again working from the assumption that this was the 13th episode, and that shipments were made to the show in batches of 6. For that reason, we will assume that anything that was done in excess in this episode will not be done in excess in our episode.
Let's review what was visible:
- The third category round was Fine Arts. So far this year, every time the category called Fine Arts was offered it's been passed on by the first two teams. If we find out we're third (probably Monday) I'm giving them the review, but what I've seen so far I don't think it's absolutely necessary. They're going to go History, Geography, and any sort of wordplay category or picture recognition first, and Science and Lit second. While I think they can handle Fine Arts better than most teams in the field, I'm not going to hammer it unless it looks likely.
- The 60-second round was Books and Authors, and it covered all the hammers you'd expect. Every team got a Shakespeare, there were some other duplicates you'd expect (2 Dickens, Orwell, Steinbeck, Arthur Miller) It was a little easier than the Lit titles round we faced last year. Since I have a script which produces title-author questions (two books and their authors displayed, with a common word blanked out), I am putting it in the study for this week, but I have to think that this removes it from being the subject of our 60-second round.
- The 60-second round was also a fairly simple automatable construction. Since the show began this year, we've seen rounds which were clearly compiled from sets of short questions in a category, and those which were probably mass generated from a single table. Episodes 1,2,3, 5,7,9,10,12 were written as separate categories. 4 (Presidents by position), 6 (US landmarks), 8(Chemical Elements), 11(Squares), and 13(Titles) were not. This distribution indicates there's a 1/3 to 1/5 chance that our 60 second round will be like this, and I'm thinking there's a cheap defense against this, especially since the one obvious missing piece from that list is capitals.
- The second round of episode 13 actually used four questions on geography which employed capitals as their last clue. That's an elevated rate which makes me wonder. It also had as its final question one of the "which came first" questions they've been using in roughly 50% of the rounds. It's too late to develop a sense of chronology, but I will generate a set of these after I finish writing this. I may not like these questions, but I can't have the team being surprised by their presence.
- The math questions are just like last year, and I caught the tricks they put in episode 13's questions in the PocketMod I gave the team.
- The 30-20-10s of the final round are a bit more difficult than I expected from last year, but still resemble just a circuit tossup length question partitioned over three segments. The one thing I've noticed is that the Literature mentioned in these questions is a bit further down the frequency curve than I've come to expect for television. I don't know whether this is intentional or the result of many titles being consumed in the 60-second round of this episode and possibly those to come.
- And in noting questions in the round, I found two current events questions, which put me on alert. One was on Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the other was on Matt Gaetz. Both pricked my ears up. The Ukraine question had me thinking about current events generally, and realizing that subjects for current events questions, we have precious few figures in the world who are stable enough to write about for a television program. Many nations are about to embark on elections soon that will see the current leadership likely removed from power. That seriously limits the number of possible answers for a television show. The question on Matt Gaetz was both too hard, and reflected information that was barely three weeks old. That indicated to me that it was a patch for a different current events question that became outdated just before the set shipped. It gives us a date upon which we can guess the current events in our round will apply. That's also fitting into my estimation that the questions are being edited fully just before shipping to the show, which is something that has not always been guaranteed by writers.
I have two stacks where I can assign study material for the next week: stuff that will be covered in practice, and stuff that can be picked up outside of practice. These are the things that I need to pick what gets hit in practice, and what will be reviewed by them outside
Questions from an Earth Science book
Questions from an Astronomy book
Material from Maps of the continents
Two speed rounds on Colleges and Universities (geography)
Three speed rounds on Books and Authors (Titles)
Three speed rounds of chronology questions (I actually knocked these out before this published on Wednesday)
6 30-20-10s
10 math questions from the PocketMod principles
Two speed rounds of States by Senator/Governor/President
Category rounds for Science, Social History, Rivers, Science by diagrams,
Selected slideshows from last year (Landmarks, Art, People in the News with pictures, Sculptors, and Deserts/Bays/Seas)
Quizlet flashcards on state flags that haven't already been mentioned, constellations and items from last year (19 sets in a folder)
Kahoot quizzes from last year that can be restarted (and the link to them.)
I'm definitely running them through the geographic speed rounds in practice, the 30-20-10s, and the category rounds where I can. The Slideshows, Quizlet and Kahoot are better as out of practice study, and the Titles speed rounds are unlikely to be profitable after appearing in episode 13.
I want to run the team through extra 30-20-10s if possible because there's subtleties to watch for about where you are positioned with score and where your opponents are, so it's worth going through in person.
I'll put them through math bacause it's enough points to sink you, but it will be review for them. I've harped on it enough and I think I've showed them every trick they need here.
I'm laying back on the books and authors, putting them into quizlet and kahoot. Someone will go through them, and what they will review will be in the tail.
I'm going to try to fill the speed rounds for practice with odds and ends, since I think there's nothing I can lean towards here and catch one of the broadly written categories. The one speed round I will put them through is capitals, because that's looming out there and I don't want to be caught out by it. Besides, it's never not good practice, I've seen DI ICT matches lost because someone double clutched a capital they knew. It always has to be muscle memory.
Finally, a note from an article I read about Jeopardy! in the past week. https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/jeopardy-ken-jennings-behind-the-scenes-set-1235207751/
I got stuck on a paragraph early in it and I’ll finish reading it later, but I needed to put this thought down.
In the article they quote a fictional producer in the movie *Quiz Show* stating that he believed all the questions have to get easier if you want someone to watch, and the author of the article then praised Jeopardy! for not taking that route.
I would counter that Jeopardy! has remained the standard, and if anything gotten "harder" for the public, by broadening out their subject base, but it's gotten easier for contestants because the training to get on is both deeper and easier to get through other competitions and through a back catalog of episodes. Televised quiz bowl has also broadened out, making it seem harder to the general public, but for the competitor with experience, it's much easier. The problem is nobody has the archives, or the records of past matches to use to study tendencies. The real step will be when we are able to turn the personal quest for knowledge into something we can transfer to others. If I can just get this done with this book, that's going to be a big change.