Week 257: Three Programs
A short one tonight. I am not fired, but I need to come up with something to bring some more students into the program between now and the end of the year. It's not urgent, this weekend is winter break for Seton, so there's no afterschool activities tomorrow afternoon. So I have a week to get things in line. I'm taking a small break from creating material tonight, and generally looking at the TV.
Since we disqualified ourselves from this year's local show, I haven't been paying as much attention to it as I should. But this week I've been able to give it some thoughts from a distance.
I've arrived at the opinion that this year's writer(s) have replaced or seriously augmented last year's writers, and I've leaned heavily into the augmentation idea. The logic behind that has been that some of the more esoteric choices of last year have made repeat appearances, but the overall presentation suggests a return to the form of the 2022-23 set. A few very specific categories have appeared in the category round, but they were categories which could have extended last year's more specific categories (state quarters, state flags). When these weren't appearing, the categories are very broad ("Literature", "History", "Fine Arts", "Geography", and "Science") This suggests to me not categories that were assembled for the episode, or split from lightning rounds, but sampled from a larger collection and dropped into the round.
The other oddity I found in the construction was another mention of Klimt, this time in a 30-20-10 question. If you recall from our appearance, Klimt was the answer to the hardest question we faced in the first round, and I found it an eccentric choice. Its appearance this year, in roughly the same patch of rounds we played in, suggests a similar position in the fine arts list the show's writers are working from. We're officially in the coincidence portion of Goldfinger's Law with this, and though I'm looking for a way to make things easier for next year, preparing for enemy action is probably a way to make it easier. It also may mean I should cross-check episodes from the past two seasons against each other to determine if there's a pattern there.
I was kind of surprised by The Floor taking the post-Super Bowl slot on Fox. Not only because it was I hadn't gotten around to watching the just-completed second series, but because I hadn't figured the show had generated the type of hype worthy of getting the slot. I was further surprised to day to hear it mentioned (and slagged**) on a non-quizzing podcast (Bill Simmons). But it confirmed a couple of things I suspected about it. First that, it's a very quick turnaround game to produce (you can borrow categories from other national versions, and all versions are using the same set in Ireland.) And while it's probably not wildly popular, it can draw enough of an audience to keep it going. Once those two things are established, it's going to last, and at that point it's worth considering applying the skills of quiz bowl to it. And with the episode of it featuring interviews with Dave Madden without him ever competing, I realized I wasn't the only quiz bowl person who made that connection.
** The slagging came from describing it as "the game you don't need to be able to read to win," which is true only up to a quickly arriving point. The Floor tests a few quiz bowl skills: reaction plays, retaining composure and quick recovery from mistakes, and subject flexibility, and does it quite efficiently and repeatedly. You shouldn't slag it for that, you should use it to learn how those skills will benefit you. If I can figure out a way to incorporate its features into training, I will.
Finally, I tuned into the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, and in watching this, I realize I've settled into a hierarchy of who I root for, one that relies on general proximity. In the finals, I know I remember Amanda from somewhere, but I'm not rooting for her. I know I've read rounds at high school and college nationals for Isaac. But I'm not rooting for him. I'm definitely rooting for Neilesh because I've sat in Pitt practices with him in the years just before I got sick, and because after he went to grad school, he edited a ton of NAQT tournaments including ones that had my questions.
Quiz bowl isn't the perfect cheat code to each of these shows, but practice in it, and working with questions is certainly a skill that is not only transferrable to other competitions, but it imparts adaptability to any format of interrogation put before you. Having the knowledge from quiz bowl allows you to adapt to the rules of whatever game you're playing faster. And that is a compounding advantage.