The Quizbowl Resource Center

Inspired by the recent Moon Pie question on the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, I think this would be an ample time to begin a Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for Quiz Bowl. If you have any contenders for the worst first line of a toss-up written in the 2006-07 year, please post it here. We could all use a laugh.

These aren't from this academic year, but I'm posting them anyway:

a non-circuit team who submitted a packet to our novice tournament four or five years ago wrote:Most of our evidence for this practice in ancient times was pictorial.
ANSWER: _nudism_

CBI Regionals 1998 wrote:She wasn't Joan of Arc, but she was a French woman.

(What makes this leadin memorable is not so much the actual content, which isn't atypical for CBI, but that someone on the Delaware team buzzed in after that sentence with "Eleanor of Aquitaine" to win a game against Swarthmore and secure themselves a spot in the finals.)

"Though the boys elect Ralph as their leader...."

From an older Elvis tournament:

Strepsiades

GURPS Martial Arts wrote:From an older Elvis tournament:

Strepsiades

Huh?

EDIT: I see. In that case, I add the following:

It's Schlosser Modification....
It was modified by Horner....
The adjective "holandric"....

Strepsiades was the first word of the tossup.

GURPS Martial Arts wrote:From an older Elvis tournament:

Strepsiades

My team and I are rather fond of, during a CBI match, hearing a tossup starting "They look like Saskatchewans". This was evidently supposed to have been read "They look like Sasquatches", as we finally figured out when the answer was Wookiees.

cvdwightw wrote:My team and I are rather fond of, during a CBI match, hearing a tossup starting "They look like Saskatchewans". This was evidently supposed to have been read "They look like Sasquatches", as we finally figured out when the answer was Wookiees.

Only in College Bowl could you get a question that's equally hilarious when grossly misread as when read properly. "These fictional things look like an equally fictional thing that is famous for not existing and for being described as having a variety of physical appearances..."

"When your trivia questions are about things that don’t exist, you can just make the answers up!"

"They were known as the Sopranos of the Renaissance...."

At which point I negged with "castrati," because I had somehow failed to hear the capital S. It turned out the question was asking for the Borgia family.

Not surprisingly, this was from CBI Regionals.

Not to expand the machinery of spite, but perhaps it is high time we came up for an appropriately quizbowl-inflected (read: snarky) name for the Bulwer-Lytton Contest for Quiz Bowl.

SnookerUSF wrote:Not to expand the machinery of spite, but perhaps it is high time we came up for an appropriately quizbowl-inflected (read: snarky) name for the Bulwer-Lytton Contest for Quiz Bowl.

I would suggest the CBI Award, but that's just too easy.

We would give them a gold-plated garden hose or panty hose?

SnookerUSF wrote:Not to expand the machinery of spite, but perhaps it is high time we came up for an appropriately quizbowl-inflected (read: snarky) name for the Bulwer-Lytton Contest for Quiz Bowl.

The Curved Yellow Fruit Award? I suppose that would be a more appropriate name for an award for the worst giveaway.

The "This Egyptian River" award?

I can't seem to unearth it, but I remember reading this question in a hotel room at some point:

"This Norwegian artist..."

Aaron Kashtan wrote:"They were known as the Sopranos of the Renaissance...."

At which point I negged with "castrati," because I had somehow failed to hear the capital S. It turned out the question was asking for the Borgia family.

Not surprisingly, this was from CBI Regionals.

This isn't entirely related to the thread at hand, but when things like that come up (where capitalization makes a difference), I sometimes read it as "capital-S Sopranos"; also, I sometimes do air quotes when things are in quotations that make a difference as to how you would answer the tossup. Bad writing aside, I've always felt somewhat uneasy doing those - what are your guys's thoughts? Is that bad reading?

I like to do the air quotes with my hands when I'm reading a quotation just because I don't want to say "quote/end-quote" all the time. I'm not sure if I've ever had a situation where capitalization makes any difference, although if it does, I guess you might well say "big-S" or whatever. In a well written question, it shouldn't matter.

grapesmoker wrote:In a well written question, it shouldn't matter.

Not only is that question absurdly phrased anyway (I hear the Soprano family of HBO fame was not contemporaneous with the Borgias), having something that calls for air quotes is a recipe for parity disaster. Different moderators will do different things with such words, and if some recognize them while others don't it could lead to differing outcomes.

Back when I edited Elvis questions, I encounted...

"This opera's opening night flop prompted Verdi to write, 'La Traviata was a disaster.'"

La Traviata was, by the way, an answer to that question, which went on to talk about the plot.

There was also a science question where someone had used as clues their own theories about the hypothetical development in question.

From Moon Pie: "A member of the Islamic Society of Engineers, he is a former mayor of a world Tehran."

grapesmoker wrote:From Moon Pie: "A member of the Islamic Society of Engineers, he is a former mayor of a world Tehran."

Winner!

While I'm at it, I'll ball peen myself for letting this gem through:

MCMNT wrote:The chief god of the city of Babylon...

I don't think is stands a chance against that last one, though.

I know I've seen this leadin at least twice, and ones like it several times:

John Jay, John Rutledge, Oliver Ellsworth...

Ryan Westbrook wrote:
John Jay, John Rutledge, Oliver Ellsworth...

Ryan, you must be more expansive. The first line of ANY list tossup.

[quote]During this year, the grandson of grandfathers Josiah Wedgewood and Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin, published On the Origin of Species, and the antebellum song “Dixieâ€

Penn "It's Not Unedited, It's Fun-Edited" Bowl XIV:

"This equation, developed by a scientist of the same name..."

From CBI this weekend:

"This is the number of Noble Truths in Buddhism..." (buzz)

"Gimpel the Fool..." (buzz)

Aaron Kashtan wrote:From CBI this weekend:

"This is the number of Noble Truths in Buddhism..." (buzz)

lol

"Gimpel the Fool..." (buzz)

And this was a tossup answer at the ICT, which makes it even more amusing that it was the leadin here.

When I was an undergrad, I remember getting a tossup on "This fat subsitute..."

It was when Olestra was getting FDA approved and much in the news. Every tournament that year had a question just because people wanted to write questions about "anal leakage".

My knowledge of the number of Noble Truths is insane. Chalk up another 10 points to legit knowledge!

ImmaculateDeception wrote:

grapesmoker wrote:From Moon Pie: "A member of the Islamic Society of Engineers, he is a former mayor of a world Tehran."

Winner

There was another similar lead-in at CBI, which was way terrible.

"Lines from this man's poems include "water water every---"

"His work on digestion earned him the No---"

"The one in Florida does not contain an apostrophe"

"Angered and enraged are not only synonyms, but"

Just awful.

LA was okay, USC has a gorgeous campus (that we saw all of once), but needless to say, we were overjoyed that we didn't make the play-offs so we could sight-see.

bornonatrain wrote:
"The one in Florida does not contain an apostrophe"

I'm a little puzzled...is it St. Johns?

wd4gdz wrote:

bornonatrain wrote:
"The one in Florida does not contain an apostrophe"

I'm a little puzzled...is it St. Johns?

CBI 1, Stealth Jewish Billy Beyer 0.

I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned Dwight's leadin to that Taco Bell soap question.

But my favorite:

If he had remained married to Mandy Smith for two more years, his son could have been his own step-grandfather.

Answer: Bill Wyman

laszlow wrote:I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned Dwight's leadin to that Taco Bell soap question.

I thought it was mentioned, but a quick check shows it's in the Stingray Awards Forum. Also, it hands-down won the belated 2006 Bulwer-Lytton Quiz Bowl Contest as it was submitted to Ghetto Warz III and as far as I know all of our packets this year were of much higher quality.

cvdwightw wrote:Also, it hands-down won the belated 2006 Bulwer-Lytton Quiz Bowl Contest

Over "'Of Man's First Disobedience, and the Fruit...'"?

bornonatrain wrote:"Angered and enraged are not only synonyms, but"

Just awful.

How about the regionals question that went something like "If you rearranged the letters in the expression 'twelve plus one', you could get another mathematical expression which is equivalent."
Also everyone's favorite "Most important book in Arabic" or however it went.

My personal favorite CBI Suck tossup was from a campus tournament packet: "A sitting one is vulnerable, a dead one is a goner, while a lame one can't run for re-election." After I got this, my friend/opponent yelled a word that rhymed with the answer. Bonus CBI Suckage: same exact tossup was used in the 1994 Honda Classic Final.

jonpin wrote:How about the regionals question that went something like "If you rearranged the letters in the expression 'twelve plus one', you could get another mathematical expression which is equivalent."

Did the answer line include "one plus twelve" as a possible answer?

Did the answer line include both "eleven plus two" and "two plus eleven"?

setht wrote:

jonpin wrote:How about the regionals question that went something like "If you rearranged the letters in the expression 'twelve plus one', you could get another mathematical expression which is equivalent."

Did the answer line include "one plus twelve" as a possible answer?

And what about Reverse Polish Notation: "twelve one plus."

I'm very curious as to what the listed answer actually was.

ANSWER: Stop plus playing plus CBI.

MaS

Casanova Frankenstein wrote:

cvdwightw wrote:Also, it hands-down won the belated 2006 Bulwer-Lytton Quiz Bowl Contest

Over "'Of Man's First Disobedience, and the Fruit...'"?

You seem unacquainted with the terribleness of that question. Let me assure you, it was not because, as everything else in this thread has more or less been, it was ridiculously transparent, but rather because it was so obscure and stupid that no person in the universe save maybe the person who stocks the bathrooms at the Taco Bell on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Merced (and I'm assuming there's only one, and as I haven't been there in a year I don't know that it's still correct) would reasonably be able to answer the question at that point.

Personally, I rather liked the 2006 CBI Nationals bonus lead-in "Name this Edward Albee play...after one clue for thirty points, after two clues for twenty points, or after all three clues for ten points". Not only did this 30-20-10 start with "hey, it's an Edward Albee play at CBI, I wonder what the answer could possibly be", but the ... was really about 2 more lines of bonus lead-in that eliminated all other Edward Albee plays as possible answers.

EDIT: While I'm on the topic of bonuses I'll throw in this classic of unfinished editing from Penn Bowl:

Williams Packet, Bonus 13, Part 1 wrote:In his Requiem, this composer was the first to eliminate the Dies Irae movement, replacing it with In Paradisum. More clues

cvdwightw wrote:EDIT: While I'm on the topic of bonuses I'll throw in this classic of unfinished editing from Penn Bowl:

Williams Packet, Bonus 13, Part 1 wrote:In his Requiem, this composer was the first to eliminate the Dies Irae movement, replacing it with In Paradisum. More clues

I must say I'm a bit confused here. This seems like a perfectly fine clue for Faure. His requiem is his most famous work and that might be the most famous thing about it. There's probably something I'm missing here though, feel free to point it out.

Kit Cloudkicker wrote:

cvdwightw wrote:EDIT: While I'm on the topic of bonuses I'll throw in this classic of unfinished editing from Penn Bowl:

Williams Packet, Bonus 13, Part 1 wrote:In his Requiem, this composer was the first to eliminate the Dies Irae movement, replacing it with In Paradisum. More clues

I must say I'm a bit confused here. This seems like a perfectly fine clue for Faure. His requiem is his most famous work and that might be the most famous thing about it. There's probably something I'm missing here though, feel free to point it out.

I think he's saying the words "More clues" were still written at the end of the bonus.

Words baffle me.

Kit Cloudkicker wrote:Words baffle me.

Are you sure that word means what you think it means?

grapesmoker wrote:

Kit Cloudkicker wrote:Words baffle me.

Are you sure that word means what you think it means?

Inconceivable.

laszlow wrote:

grapesmoker wrote:

Kit Cloudkicker wrote:Words baffle me.

Are you sure that word means what you think it means?

Inconceivable.

For SSI this year, I wrote a bonus part that began "This is the character who says 'Inconceivable!' "

I think this is defensible, though. Vezzini's name is mentioned infrequently enough that a player might remember the character, but not his name.

I don't know, I think a lot of players could 30 a Fezzik/Vizzini/Inigo Montoya bonus.