Week 40: The Steak Money Diaries: part 4
The value of considering writing as a continuous process
One of the things that you can note about pub quiz writing that differs from quiz bowl is you are able to more easily witness writing as a continuous process. There's two factors in play here, pub quiz writers have to produce a set on a very regular basis, and often they are the only writer they can rely upon. That means that the thought process that inspired a question in one set will often be continued in the set played immediately after.
We've seen this play out in televised quiz bowl packets, but the discovery of its importance came out through seeing the same writer's questions every week.
One of the earliest examples of this came in the second week of competition. In the first week, there was a mention of the PBS series Zoom in the "double O" category. The second week's questions included a round on children's television shows through the years, and the clue for the 1970's series could have referred to Zoom or 3-2-1 Contact, and we gravitated to the one that wasn't already asked.
Tactically, I had no justification for this other than I felt they wouldn't repeat answers in two consecutive weeks, but that is a quiz bowl rule, which I shouldn't have complete faith in outside of quiz bowl. It could have been more reasonable to think that putting Zoom in their mind to complete the category in the first week influenced the category selection in the second. It could also have been reasonable to think the reverse, that Zoom might have been a leftover answer from the second week's work which was strong enough that they tried to figure a category for the clue to be used. But the two thoughts had to have been close to each other.
A second case of this came from a round which took the clue used in the Zoom question, the show's frequent reference to its submission post office box in Boston, Mass 02134. A later evening's category of "Zip Codes" presented me with an opportunity that quiz bowl rarely provides, the chance to apply knowledge and extrapolate the answer, rather than have it memorized or deduced from a couple possibilities. I knew from sending out mailers in Pennsylvania how Pennsylvania's zip codes were assigned, I knew New England's method from nine months living in Connecticut, and New York's method from going there for college. I knew roughly the first digit was state, zero being New England, 9 being Pacific coast, and sequences roughly filled north to south, and then back to the northwest. Second digit matches were usually in the same state, and third digits closer than that. So as each question gave a zip code, and some non-specific geographic information, I was able to locate: a 60606 zip code as being in Chicago, college town with a 66049 zip as probably in Kansas (getting mail from NAQT helps), and the baseball stadium with a zip code of 90090 as being geographically close to 90210 (which they asked as their 1 point question.) Such an experience of using different faculties of knowledge prompted me to even break my radio silence on this project and send a boastful tweet.
A third instance of this was realizing that if a category of #2's in music shows up, you should prepare for #1's to follow soon after (in this case the next week). The writer's progression through sources is in this case logical, and to a degree predictable. I did some research after the #2's came up, figuring the next step would come soon. I was right, but I don't think it improved our performance because of the broadness of the category.
The final train of thought I'd note concerns favorites. During the first week, we noted the host's effusive praise for the movie "The Sandlot," which no one on the team had actually watched end to end. From the praise of the material, and the chastisement of the audience which mostly missed the question, my suspicions were raised. While it took three months for my five minute perusal of the plot to pay off, it did when they asked about James Earl Jones using that film as the central clue. This advantage is really a factor when seeing someone read questions they have themselves written, and the only format that provides a large enough audience to take advantage of this is pub quiz. For suspiciously effusive praise of subjects in quiz bowl, you have to watch forums. But in any format favorites will return, though they won't be consecutive. Most writers realize they should not return to the well too often, but they can't escape returning to the well eventually.
Quiz bowl can obfuscate these trains of thought through having limited amounts of questions from each writer in an event, and having time pass between events, or a system where events are filled well in advance. But for both pub quiz and a televised quiz, the train of thought of writers is much more apparent and traceable through observation, because both churn through large amounts of questions on a regular schedule.
As the fall began, it became harder for us to put our schedules in place to do competition. I had practices to attend, which demanded I leave immediately after competition and drive across town, Catie's after school activities started taking up our evenings, and patient schedules demanded later appointments for my wife. As a result we only got four opportunities between September and December. While we did well, it was more difficult to manufacture hidden advantages, because we weren't witnessing the week-to-week churn of categories and ideas that would allow us to think ahead. It was exciting, but I wasn’t learning anything new from the experience.
In 23 competitions we attended, we never finished out of the money (below third place), and our worst finish was that first week. All told we collected about $2000 in food comps and the same amount in free play. The free play turned into $1500 cash over the year, but we'd always forget to bring the extra food coupons to the casino to pool them over weeks, so we never really got to the steakhouse I had been staring at during all these competitions.
On our last week there in early December, they announced that that week would be the last competition, not just for the year, but until further notice. We should have figured it couldn't last. By the new year, the bar the competition was held in was under construction, turning into a sportsbook, and the steakhouse was gone. As for myself, my plans to write up the lessons learned were overtaken by a trip to the emergency room and the discovery of the virus that nearly killed me, which is karmically close enough to getting tossed out of a casino for winning.
I doubt I'm ever going to get another opportunity as lucrative as this, but you might. So hopefully you can take these lessons and use them to your advantage.
The final lessons:
Writing is a continuous process, the more you can see of the writer's past, the more you'll see of the writer's future.
Experience is an advantage. You can further cultivate that advantage by applying it forward and learning the things you can predict they will write about.