The Best Two-Way Players

[Cheynem]

Hopefully this is less controversial than my last thread, which I sincerely apologize if people were bothered by. This thread is meant to be more congratulatory.

Who are the best "two-way" players, i.e. skilled at both academic and trash? In other words, if there was a singles set where there were equal numbers of academic and trash tossups, who would prevail? (This is also assuming that the academic and trash is at equal difficulty, so you would need to be skilled at both to score)

Here's ten players I can think of, skewing more towards a presentist bias and people I've seen.

Honorable Mentions: John Lawrence (if trash had more whimsy, he would be ranked higher); Sam Bailey (probably could have made the list); myself (I don't have the academic depth). If I've seen Nathan Weiser more, he might also make the list.

10. Will Nediger. A quietly good trash game (strong film and music knowledge). Plays smart. Going to be more of a secondary or tertiary trash scorer, but a valuable one.

9. Kenji Shimizu. An especially good music game, but decent coverage in a number of categories. Also plays very smartly.

8. Dylan Minarik. One of the players who basically puts up very similar academic and trash numbers,

7. Chris Borglum. Got the old man swag which allows for a lot of points in a lot of categories.

6. Chris Ray. Kind of like Dylan really; similar game in each style.

5. Rob Carson. Really upped his trash game in recent years. A threat to buzz on (almost) all categories.

4. Tejas Raje. Since graduating from school, has become fearsome in a great deal of categories. Almost unstoppable in some categories (world history, sports).

3. Matt Lafer. The charismatic enigma, you never know what he's going to buzz on or if he's going to get outbuzzed by Ryan Westbrook negging.

2. Mike Sorice. I kind of flip flopped between ranking Mike or Matt number one. I think Matt is slightly more consistent, but Mike is easily the player who can buzz on ANY category in trash or academic, as he is a scientist and a great academic generalist, as well as a threat on almost all trash categories (I would guess comics and some video games are his "weak" categories, but I've seen him buzz on those too). I ended up placing him second because I think Matt has slightly deeper coverage and is less combustible (alas, Mike's weakness in both academic and trash).

1. Matt Weiner. Probably the player who most easily leaps to mind as someone equally skilled at trash and academic.

[Belgium]

I can only speak for the UK, but I would strongly back Joe Crowther in such a tournament. Broad knowledge across the board, scaled pretty well in certain areas at CMST, and absolutely monstered the field at the Cambridge trash open.

[Good Goblin Housekeeping]

who's the best defensive quizbowler

[Cheynem]

I can honestly say that Jerry Vinokurov is the only player who frightened me into not buzzing.

[merv1618]

I think this actually underseeds Tejas a bit

[ryanrosenberg]

If it's a singles set, Dylan is way too low. Andrew Hart should also be mentioned.

[ErikC]

Derek So is an impressive trash player on top of his academic knowledge when he does play trash tournaments. Aayush is also better than he claims to be. A good deal of Canadian players play both well but not quite comparably.

[everdiso]

On the topic of Canadians, Aaron Dos Remedios is a trash god and a good generalist at academic (though certainly not on the level of some of the top academic players here).

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

Wasn't Andrew Yaphe good at trash? He head-edited multiple trash tournaments.

[Captain Sinico]

Wasn't Andrew Yaphe good at trash? He head-edited multiple trash tournaments.

Andrew is an outstanding trash player across the board. I believe he was the top scorer at the first TRASHionals, for example. I'd put him first on this list for sure.

I otherwise think Mike's list is pretty solid. There are a couple people better known as trash players who were solid academic player back in the day - Dwight Kidder's reputation comes to mind, though his career in normal quizbowl is too old even for me to comment much on. In an opposite fashion, Subash and Zeke could both dominate on several trash areas, and are obviously all-timers in quizbowl overall.

[Cheynem]

How good was Chris Vicich at academic quizbowl? I think I've only seen him play trash.

[Captain Sinico]

How good was Chris Vicich at academic quizbowl? I think I've only seen him play trash.

I have a very partial view - Chris and Dom Ricci were the dudes I most looked up to when I started out in college and who basically taught me how to play - but I'd say that he was a very good second chair at academic stuff by his junior & senior years. Very ambivalently attached to the game and more than a little neg-prone, but stupid fast and with plenty of guts and deep humanities knowledge.

[Captain Sinico]

Actually, describing Chris leads me to a hopefully relevant point. Some of this can throw into relief the distinction between knowledge, which you need to be good at all, and the other skills useful in the game, which you need to leverage your knowledge or beat out other players who know about as much. I tend to call the latter skills, but would be use a better coin if anyone's got one.

Anyway, players who are really fast and know how to think inside the game, the two most important skills, are generally going to play well at any style they have any knowledge in. Andrew and Chris are good examples: of all the players I regularly faced, they're the two whom I knew for sure were faster than I was (being the dope I've always been, I needed to be a speed merchant for a lot of my points.) Matt's a good example, too; he was about as fast as I was but probably knew some more and could think the game as well. Thinking about high-skill players who also excelled at normal quizbowl may lead you to add more people to put on this list if that's an end in view.