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Epic Fail thread

Discussion of quizbowl topics not related to specific tournaments
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ZhangC1459
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Epic Fail thread

Post by ZhangC1459 »

Or, we can just put epic neg.

ITT: Your worst neg, tournament or otherwise.

I think the worst one was at the recent NAQT qualifier at Rolla, where I completely missed the question that gave a fairly obvious clue and I gave a stupid answer. I can't say right now.

How about the rest of you?

EDIT: actually, let's just have this be a general fail thread for anything you may have heard.


For example, a few years ago, we had someone answer "trinoceros" in response to a question about dinosaurs.



<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... ngC1459</a>, Feb 24 2009, 08:27:48 PM.</div>

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Jeffrey Hill
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Epic Fail thread

Post by Jeffrey Hill »

NAQT sets are being used elsewhere in the country - you can't discuss them publicly until at least July (if not later, I can't remember exactly when they're cleared for discussion).

On a related note, in a way that gaffe actually fits this thread well.


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... /88961/'>U. Lou Sthagaim</a>, Feb 24 2009, 08:15:53 PM.</div>

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ZhangC1459
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Post by ZhangC1459 »

My bad >.<

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

Last edited by Jeffrey Hill on Fri Jan 29, 2010 11:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: phpbb3 link update

FishyFreshman
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Epic Fail thread

Post by FishyFreshman »

Answer = Neil Armstrong

Given = Lance Armstrong

Ya, I rock. Also, when my coach asked what city the Alamo was located in, I promptly responded "Los Angeles"

WillHack
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Post by WillHack »

Opposing team's coach: "I've never seen such an uncontrolled game room before in my life!"

My team member: *rolls eyes*

Opposing team's coach: "Don't roll your eyes at me!"

HAHAHAHA

Fail.

FishyFreshman
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Post by FishyFreshman »

Hahah what coach was that? What an idiot. I'd have told him that I will roll my eyes however I want. Quiz bowl should be fun and laid back, I hate it when people take everything so seriously. My team wore hats with red feathers and made special pink name tags for Valentines Day =D

WillHack
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Post by WillHack »

HAHAHA How am I not surprised the Liberty captain would say that? Let's just say, that coach did not need to be lecturing us when our team was already losing by 200 at the NAQT Qualifier. . . .

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

Mr. Allen has a 'tude on him, that's for sure.

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Jeffrey Hill
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Post by Jeffrey Hill »

WillHack wrote:Opposing team's coach: "I've never seen such an uncontrolled game room before in my life!"
If I have identified the correct game, how did Paul Nelson let his room get out of control?

WillHack
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Post by WillHack »

Lolol he's my favorite mod, for sure. It wasn't bad, actually; we would exchange groans every time we missed a question, and NKC would share contrasting happy exclamations for their success. It was silly that their coach felt a need to comment mid-game (I should have asked for a time-out after that), but the fail was that he saw *PCH player X* rolling his eyes . . . and commented. Mr. Nelson looked mildly ashamed, but I had to concentrate real hard in order to stifle my laughter.

FishyFreshman
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Post by FishyFreshman »

I like Coach Allen, but honestly he has no room to comment on other teams' behaviors. NKC is one of the loudest teams playing and while it does't bother me or most of my team, many coaches, players, and moderators are appalled at their general lack of respect.

Awehrman
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Post by Awehrman »

The "NKC is too noisy and disrespectful" theme is well over a decade old. Many people who who have run tournaments or have watched NKC's games compliment NKC on being loose and friendly rather than having the gloomy intensity that other elite teams often show. Mr. Allen certainly has room to comment on other teams' behaviors just as any coach does. Knowing Mr. Allen quite well, it seems to me that his comment was likely meant for both teams and even more towards the moderator (another friend of mine) for allowing it to get out of control. Paul has read for me plenty of times, and he does prefer a jovial light-hearted match, so it does not surprise me much that this happened in one of his rooms. Mr. Allen does not usually speak up (his teams often wish for him to speak up more), so if he did, I would imagine something needed to be said. The eye-rolling probably just further set him off as it would to most any coach or teacher in a similar situation.

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

Yeah, I mean, when I was plaing all last year I was very loud, especially at both nationals.

FishyFreshman
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Post by FishyFreshman »

Yeah and everyone had very little respect for you. To this day there are still a lot of people who won't listen to you simply because they feel your behavior was inappropriate.

CherryCokeStain
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Post by CherryCokeStain »

Both teams were a little loud that game, though to be fair you guys were getting obnoxious. Now before you call me a hypocrite I know that we (NKC) can be a loud obnoxious team, but as a general rule, the better the questions get the quieter and more focused we play, and I do not think we were at all out of control on Saturday. Yes, spencer, we were laughing a lot at SJC, but that's because it was QG and the questions were so bad that they were laughably funny. I imagine it was similar at Truman, though I wasn't there so I can't say. And no one has thrown something at the moderator this year after a Heart of Darkness question (knock on wood), so that's an improvement from last year.
Happy Birthday Spencer.

WillHack
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Post by WillHack »

*shrugs* We weren't any more obnoxious to you guys than you were to us, no doubt. It was just silly for the coach to interject himself like that; if you guys were upset, then call a timeout and say something to the mod (as you saw, he was perfectly willing to moderate a quieter-type game).

It's pretty funny when we play NKC, too. No matter how well we seem to do versus other quality teams, we never seem to be able to mount a defense against NKC (see the title of this thread). Thus, there's a sort of ironic humor underneath our 300+ point losses. . . .

WillHack
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Post by WillHack »

Oh! Here's a good one.

At Two Saints, we held a big lead over Clayton but needed more points in order to stack up against FHC. As the final point count separating FHC and us was a mere 30, any one question might feasibly have made the difference. In this final, pivotal game, a question arose concerning Busch, a company involved in a specific field. Jason knew that Busch, of course, was a

"Beer-making company."

Upon a prompt, Jason clarified,

"Alcohol beverage sellers . . . distributers . . . beer, selling, alcohol. . . ."

Fail.

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

WillHack wrote:*shrugs* We weren't any more obnoxious to you guys than you were to us, no doubt. It was just silly for the coach to interject himself like that; if you guys were upset, then call a timeout and say something to the mod (as you saw, he was perfectly willing to moderate a quieter-type game).

It's pretty funny when we play NKC, too. No matter how well we seem to do versus other quality teams, we never seem to be able to mount a defense against NKC (see the title of this thread). Thus, there's a sort of ironic humor underneath our 300+ point losses. . . .
How much have you played NKC? By my count there's been only one game all year.

WillHack
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Post by WillHack »

We also played them at Rolla Fall, and we got destroyed by you guys last year at WUHSAC.

FishyFreshman
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Post by FishyFreshman »

Thanks Grant =D About the Happy Birthday that is.

AShoaib
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Epic Fail thread

Post by AShoaib »

Epic fail? Me going on this board to wish Spencer a happy birthday.

I had the same problem Will... I said the SAME exact thing, but they were looking for something so specific, it was painful.

Other epic fails? Well... I'll have to say it was a question last year...

"You have a bag of nickels and dimes, and NO pennies and NO quarters. The total amount of money is 55 cents. There are 3 dimes. How many quarters?" I buzzed in and said "0" because the question said NO QUARTERS. But then the answer said "5 pennies" or something stupid like that.

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Jeffrey Hill
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Post by Jeffrey Hill »

Not quizbowl, but I have to bring back this classic question from Applebee's Trivia Night:

"If you're standing on the equator, what country is to your right?"

The answer they had was Ecuador, but I think they threw the question out, for obvious reasons.

Charbroil
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Post by Charbroil »

AShoaib wrote:I had the same problem Will... I said the SAME exact thing, but they were looking for something so specific, it was painful.
Before you get too embittered, Abdullah, do try and recall that we got that tossup first and lost it before you did. :P

MJones
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Post by MJones »

My team has played both NKC and PCH twice this year. In my experience, NKC may have been a little loud (maybe) but weren't obnoxious by any means.

PCH yelled out "damn" after they incorrectly answered questions.

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

That's positively innocuous by national standards.

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redliberte
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Post by redliberte »

Ah well, "loud and obnoxious" were adjectives that could almost always describe us (Liberty) my senior year. Really, it was when we weren't being loud and obnoxious that we had problems.

WillHack
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Post by WillHack »

There is no accounting for Chris Zhang. Sorry about that.

I like the Dixon team, by the way. Even if they did beat us at Rolla Fall. : P

Fresh Prince of Bradleyville
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Epic Fail thread

Post by Fresh Prince of Bradleyville »

I actually have a couple of pretty bad things that we do that "may" be considered epic fails.

At a practice using old questions:

"Give the name of this thick, red Russian soup..." At this point a freshmen buzzed in and not comprehending the question answered Mormon Soup. Mass hilarity ensued, unfortunately, she a year or so ago had moved to Bradleyville from Germany. I think you see the connection I am going to with this.

I will throw in our prayers before matches to the the supreme Norse god Odin, created by Matt Haden, in which we asked Odin (and still do) to "vanquish our enemies, and enjoy much alcohol and many cigars afterwards". We have a real problem with getting serious.

CherryCokeStain
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Post by CherryCokeStain »

One of our freshman had an epic fail this year.

the question was asking for a city that Harold and Kumar went to, the capital of the Netherlands.
Our freshman hears this entire clue, and then says "Guantanamo Bay." fail.

I also believe we played a team that had an epic fail. the question was talking about diseases, and he buzzed in with "HIV" which was wrong. "It can be transferred through tomatoes and other vegetables..." Mass hilarity ensued. I believe they wanted tobacco mosaic.

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ZhangC1459
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Post by ZhangC1459 »

MJones wrote:My team has played both NKC and PCH twice this year. In my experience, NKC may have been a little loud (maybe) but weren't obnoxious by any means.

PCH yelled out "damn" after they incorrectly answered questions.
"PCH yelled out 'damn' after they incorrectly answered questions."

Erm, that would be me, like Will said. Sorry.

Anyways, I don't recall Jason saying "beer-making company", although you make references to it all the time. Was this during the Two Saints tournament?

EDIT: Also, Will, about the rolling eyes thing, am I allowed to say anything about the discussion in the car afterwards while we went to get chicken?


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... ngC1459</a>, Mar 3 2009, 08:04:14 PM.</div>

WillHack
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Post by WillHack »

Yeah, the "brewery" fail was in the last game of Two Saints vs., uh, Clayton I think. I don't know exactly what you're talking about, CZ, but so long as it doesn't give away any answers, you should be all right.

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Epic Fail thread

Post by wldcat_blldog »

My most memorable epic fail came my freshman year at Truman State. It was at NAQT Sectionals and showed how green I was:

The question was: "This phenomenon was invented in Panama in the 1980s..." where I buzzed in and answered El Nino. The answer was the wave.

We also had a moderator at the sectional that thought the shortstop for the New York Yankees was some guy named Derek Jetay.

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ZhangC1459
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Post by ZhangC1459 »

WillHack wrote:Yeah, the "brewery" fail was in the last game of Two Saints vs., uh, Clayton I think. I don't know exactly what you're talking about, CZ, but so long as it doesn't give away any answers, you should be all right.
I think I'll save it, wouldn't do to spread it around

Chococheesey
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Post by Chococheesey »

Wow, these are pretty hilarious.

Well, me being a Freshman, I have many things you could call "epic fails", and I probobly don't even know how stupid some of the were yet. At a game at our our tournament in December, when asked a bonus about the star of the Indiana Jones movies, I immediatly told my captain that it was Henry Ford. He, beleiving that everything I say is law, relayed the information to the moderator. What was even worse was that the other team didn't get it.

Later, we got one of the easiest bonuses in history from, guess-who, Questions Galore. It read something like: "I will name three sides of a triangle, and you classify it by its angles." I laughed at the stupidity of this, but at the third one heard "incorrect", and realized I'd said isoceles. Fail.

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Post by PenforPrez »

I was sitting in on a practice at Wash U about a year ago; I think we were playing through an old ACF packet. I buzzed in and negged with the answer "Mein Kampf." The answer was some book of the Bible!

They had a guerrilla tournament after ICT two weeks ago, and I buzzed in on a question thinking the answer was "A Good Man is Hard to Find." Unfortunately, I transposed a couple of words in my answer. :unsure: Both answers were wrong; they weren't even looking for anything by Flannery O'Connor.

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