2023 BHSU: Favorite questions/clues/buzzes/moments

[Auks Ran Ova]

I liked this feature of the SCT discussion and would like to continue it. To paraphrase Andrew Hart:

This thread is for posting your favorite buzzes, questions, and clues from BHSU. Give a shout out to questions you particularly enjoyed hearing, fun or funny buzzes, clues you found interesting (or weird stories about why you knew them), and other things like that. Purely for fun and with no need to advance a serious purpose in the discussion. I and the other editors and writers will be delighted to hear about them.

[ThisIsMyUsername]

Thank you for the lead-in to the Lucy poems tossup, my favorite buzz. This is a great literary theory/criticism clue, because it's so much more memorable than some critic's random quip about a particular work.

Speaking of quips, though, I loved the bonus parts on "dancing about architecture" (which I've quoted in an academic paper) and "baggy monsters" (James's disdain for Dickens being one of the only things I dislike about James). I also appreciated the bonus part on 52nd street (nice to have something that's gettable off knowing the titles of standards or the physical geography of the Manhattan jazz scene).

[Excelsior (smack)]

Honestly, my favorite moment of the tournament was seeing Nick Jensen's team get and 30 the bonus on "15th-century engraver Nicolas Jenson".

[Og's Magog Bog]

I thought the Drive My Car bonus did a great job asking about some of the most interesting/salient details of the film

[naan/steak-holding toll]

Probably my favorite buzz of the tournament was inexplicably recognizing the quotation of an Akan proverb that was used in the lead-in of the Ghana tossup. I was pretty miserable playing most of this event (not because of the questions, mind you) but that brightened up my day. The other tossup highlights were in the finals: unfortunately I didn't get to play any chess games with John this weekend, as I initially hoped, but at least this tournament let me beat him at chess in another way, and it was pretty funny to power fast fashion based on stuff I learned in my favorite business school class.

[grapesmoker]

Shoutout to whomever wrote that tossup on SBF that allowed me to directly translate being too online into 15 points. Also loved the "Frog and Toad" answer in, I think, the same packet; everyone else on my team was definitely confused at what was going on but that's because none of them have 5 year olds at home.

[Sima Guang Hater]

Shout out to the bonus part on My Career Goes Bung, which had previously been mentioned in the 2015 ACF Nationals final (in the dead TU on My Brilliant Career), from which three participants were in the room. A fun little callback to all the games that many of us had played against each other over the years.

[Mike Bentley]

My second favorite moment was on Tossup 1 in this tournament and first-lining the South Dakota trusts clue. That sent me a good message that this was going to be a tournament where I'd still be able to get some buzzes despite being on such a good team. This round ended up being a bit of a fluke for me but set a great tone for the rest of the tournament.

My actual favorite moment was getting the power on glassblowing on Tossup 21 in Finals 2, then improbably getting 30 on the Sinclair Lewis bonus owing to that time I read The Man Who Knew Coolidge 15 years ago. I have a memory of creating the Wikipedia page for this book as it didn't have one at the time, although I guess it got deleted for not being notable enough because the current page dates to just 2013.

Unfortunately this was followed by my second least favorite moment in the tournament, which was Jordan answering the Khrushchev tossup after I spent 2 clues trying to make sure I didn't mess up the name "Lee Kuan Yew" like I've done in the past rather than listening as it started to talk about Pepsi.

This was followed by definitely my least favorite moment, which was me on the plane yesterday translating some old notes and ideas into more concrete quizbowl questions. Just like I did on the flight over. One of the first notes that I got to yesterday morning was that exact same Brazzaville beaming internet clue as was used in that internet clue. Had I got just a little bit further on Friday I would have been buzzing there in the tossup rather than losing the buzzer race to Jerry on the Loon clue and putting us in a disadvantage rather than advantage in the finals.

Oh well, such is life. And because I tend to latch onto negative experiences much more than positive experiences, long term I think this is going to make the tournament more memorable for me than if we came out ahead.

[TaylorH]

I was able to power the Marcos family TU for an amusing reason. I recently watched the King of the Hill episode Luanne Virgin 2.0, in which Luanne undergoes a "revirginizing" ceremony, a popular practice among some Evangelicals. After seeing the episode, I was Googling a bit to see how prevalent this type of ceremony is in real life (possibly to write a future QB question on it). My searches kept turning up the 2021 Philippine comedy film Revirginized, which was clued in the TU. Though I did not watch the film or really read anything about it but the title and nation of origin, I reflex buzzed on the film title at BHSU and correctly reasoned family + Philippines = Marcos, netting me a first clue buzz on a history topic I know very little about.

[jinah]

I was very happy to get the USA tossup in the finals (and even happier to not get negged for saying Puerto Rico), since I’m extremely bad at recent pop music and only knew the answer from reading people on the internet argue about whether or not it was a red flag for guys to say YHLQMDLG in their online dating profiles.

However, I think the most sheer delight I saw all day was when Jordan and I were preparing to think about what seemed like a fairly rote, if hard, philosophy bonus only for Jerry to cut us off by saying, VERY confidently and excitedly, “Okay, I know this. This is Frog and Toad.” You could tell that having a small child had given him a lot of real knowledge on this particular question.

[jirafman]

Wanted to give a note of appreciation to Andrew Wang for writing the toss-up on Guan Yu in Myth/Religion! Definitely my favorite toss-up of the tournament even if it wasn't my earliest conversion just since as a long-time ROTK fan I had noted previously how interesting Guan Yu's prevalence as a semi-religious figure in China was but had never expected it to actually come up in a toss-up that emphasized those aspects.

[vydu]

I've been (slowly) making my way through The Shock of the New over the past few weeks, and in particular watched about half of the Trouble in Utopia episode the other night over dinner. I was stoked when I heard it come up in the NYC art tossup, but quickly realized that I didn't watch far enough in the episode to get to the part clued in the question! I knew I should have finished that episode at some point.

After the landlords tossup, Kevin Jiang and I turned to each other and realized that we'd both played the card game clued in the lead-in (dou dizhu) loads of times with our relatives. Great clue, and definitely very interesting to learn about the origins of the game

Was great fun to watch Eric demolish the Fatboy Slim tossup off of musicals knowledge.

On the "Midgar" tossup, Grant buzzes in around the end, and, with zero knowledge, makes the correct guess of which Norse realm AND the right modification of the name to say to get points. I was stunned. Later that day I learned that someone on UMD (iirc Isaac?) managed to do the same thing--some truly crazy guessers at our mirror.

[Bhagwan Shammbhagwan]

The flip-flops TU made my day (thank you to whoever wrote the electrical engineering content, you called my bluff)

[Lagotto Romagnolo]

The flip-flops TU made my day (thank you to whoever wrote the electrical engineering content, you called my bluff)

I’m very glad to hear that. :)

[zxc]

just learned about the Ellsberg paradox today in class. why couldnt this have happened before the tournament

Seconding that I also enjoyed the landlord and Guan Yu questions

[warum]

My favorite questions (not including some of the later packets):

Sertao/caatinga/pampas bonus
Heinrich Biber bonus
Early book printing bonus

Satis House TU (I certainly would not have gotten it even on the giveaway, but the idea seemed cool and Tim got it)

Ars subtilior bonus
Dickinson/Master/bird bonus
Jester's Privilege bonus
Wh-movement bonus

Gorgon heads in art TU
Wine history TU
Country music bonus
Berio bonus
Diamond anvil cell TU
"Cathedral and the Bazaar" bonus

[halle]

Some scattered positive thoughts, some of them self-indulgent:
At the start of Round 4, I thought to myself "I'm feeling some girlboss vibes for this game" and then I powered Lydia Tár so I was literally so correct about that.
Rokeby Venus that round was also a really satisfying buzz (someone at the site said that saying that there was an event that happened to the painting so early gave too much away but I don't completely agree).
"Jester's privilege" is a fun thing to ask about.
Thank you for the David Byrne leadin on Fatboy Slim.
I mentioned the Cagliostro clue in the specific question thread because I wanted to say something nice in that post, but really, what a guy.

[etotheipi]

Enjoyed the quadratic reciprocity bonus a whole lot - maybe my favorite moment of the tournament was thirtying that off of stuff I did at a summer camp a couple of years ago. I'm not usually too big on "recite this equation" bonus parts but I think this one was especially well-executed.

[VSCOelasticity]

I had a great day at the online mirror, but my favorite buzz was getting "core and periphery" from Samir Amin knowledge. Really glad to see him come up!

[Cheynem]

I liked having a bonus on my favorite wrestler, Jacques Ranciere.

[rhn26]

One of my teammates (Sarod) first-clued FEC, and another (Yared) first-clued landlords. Thanks to whoever wrote those questions!

Echoing the praise of the Guan Yu question; that tossup was one of those rare tossups that really made me want to learn more about a subject.

[magin]

I had a great day at the online mirror, but my favorite buzz was getting "core and periphery" from Samir Amin knowledge. Really glad to see him come up!

Yeah, it was great to hear a clue about Samir Amin, and I thought this answer line was a really clever way of asking about this material.

My favorite question was probably the Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson tossup with the clue from Crimes of the Future. A great tossup that would have been perfect if it mentioned her wearing his iconic Orioles hat.

Edit: I just finished reading Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, and though the other team got that bonus, I think the hard part on the MR James story was pretty rough, especially since it required players to get all nine words of the title exactly correct. Based on experience, I'm not a fan of most bonus parts that require providing than 4-5 words--in this case, I think it might work better to make the hard part on the whistle or MR James.