The Michelson-Morley Experiment

This is what I love about trivia. So much has happened, and is happening, in our world that we know nothing about. Every single question is another opportunity to meet someone new, visit a new place, or gain a new insight into your own life. Speaking of, your life is the end result of a chain reaction of millions of years of actions, thoughts, and decisions. The more you know about those, the more you know about yourself.

Yesterday’s WWTBAM featured an example of what can go wrong when you refuse adapt to a question, or accept that your instinct might be wrong. Even though you have something in your mind, something nagging you, you have to look at the data at hand and have faith. A headstrong contestant was faced with this question for $16,000

A Monégasque is a citizen of what country?

a) Mongolia
b) Madagascar
c) Montenegro
d) Monaco

When I first saw this question, I immediately eliminated Mongolia, as i’ve heard the term Mongolian and Mongol before. Madagascar just doesn’t fit at all. Montenegro? Maybe, but the word Montenegrin seems right. My next instinct was to notice the word seemed French, which would lead to Monaco. Also, what else would it be? Monaco-ian? No way. That said, I would have used a lifeline to confirm those instincts.

The contestant went right to a lifeline, asking the audience. The audience came back with the answer Monaco, at about 47%. Not overwhelming, but still confirmed all the other indicators. At this point, you should go with Monaco, especially at $16,000.

This is when the contestant’s stubbornness got in the way. He said that Monaco was a principality, or territory, and wasn’t a country, so he didn’t think that could be right (To his defense, Monaco is indeed a principality. The problem being that principality means only that that country has a constitutional monarchy which pledges allegiance to another monarchy, in this case, England. It is absolutely a country, just a certain type of one. Other examples include Andorra and Lichtenstein).

So, he is absolutely convinced, wrongly, that it can’t be Monaco. So he uses the 50-50 lifeline, which reduces it to Monaco and Mongolia. A this point, I know it is Monaco for sure, but he is blinded by his assertion that Monaco isn’t a country.

So he uses his Phone-A-Friend, who can’t confirm either way.

At this point, every instance is pointing to Monaco. 50-50 confirmed the audiences choice. But he just can’t accept it. So he walks away, with $8,000. The answer Monaco is revealed, to which he just shakes his head. It seemed he didn’t even believe it when he saw it.

That is a prime example of someone so stuck on an instinct, thinking they are right, they ignore every sign telling them otherwise. If you are that unable to go with the flow, and trust others, then it should be no surprise when you walk away with less than you thought you deserved.

I’m adding a new show for discussion on the site: Cash Cab. I’ve been hearing about the show for some time, but had my hands full with the other two. Now that we are in repeats for WWTBAM and Jeopardy! refuses to show any episodes not involving twelve-year-old kids just aching to graduate from Yale and start working on Wall Street, I added Cash Cab to the record list. It is good, pure trivia, traditional-style. They don’t try to trick you or phrase questions poorly. The best part is, unlike other shows, it is spontaneous, so it is a true test of how much you know. There is no preparation time. You are on your way to a bar and next thing you now, you have to give the name of the latin version of the Tooth Fairy (it is actually a mouse, called el ratoncito de los dientes). The host, Ben Bailey, is entertaining as well. And their site has a good interactive trivia section. So let’s open this show up for discussion.

Yesterday’s WWTBAM demonstrated the seeming difficulty with which they assign dollar amounts to the questions. Some $2,000 questions, as example, as much more difficult than others. When several of these difficult questions are strung together, the contestant doesn’t really stand a chance. Every so often, for unknown reasons, a contestant will get slammed in the early questions. Are the question writers tinkering with their format? Is there a person who assigns value? Were they hungover or pissed off on that particular day? Here’s an example of an early question from yesterday’s show:

National Review Magazine named this the #1 Greatest Conservative Rock ‘n Roll Song of all time:

a) Beach Boys - “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”
b) Tammy Wynette - “Stand By Your Man”
c) The Who - “Won’t Get Fooled Again”
d) Lynryd Skynryd - “Sweet Home Alabama”

I think this qualifies as a $25,000 question, at the least. This is far from common knowledge. Who actively reads National Review, other than Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, who probably touch themselves while reading it? I read the news throughout the day, and don’t ever recall coming across something even remotely resembling this story. So how does it become an $8,000 question, unless they wanted her (the contestant) to get it wrong? She was already out of lifelines (for unfortunate reasons I’ll explain in a moment), and, as I would’ve done, she went for it. She figured Stand By Your Man would be the anthem of conservative republican men, which I thought was a good guess. But it was right. The answer is Won’t Get Fooled Again, which I’m not familiar with in general, more or less with it being a Republican favorite.

That question was indicative of almost all of her early questions. She had my sympathy, as she clearly was an intelligent trivia player, and was frustrated with her question draw. Here was another early, $2,000 question:

In the story Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, what did Ali Baba gain entrance to with his famous phrase, “Open, Sesame.”

a) A dungeon
b) A castle
c) A cave
d) A tower

First off, most people might be generally aware of Ali Baba, maybe even general elements of his story. But this is pretty specific, and all the answers seem as if they could work. Again, a $25,000 question, sure. But $2,000? Particularly when the contestant before and after had clearly easier questions at this level. My first instinct was to say castle. The contestant went to the audience, which gave her the correct answer, a cave. So already missing her first lifeline, her next two questions proceeded to be equally obscure. Rightfully so, she commented on the string of obscure questions so early on. Is it random? Assigning values to questions is clearly a subjective action, so there obviously will be gradients. Unfortunately for the girl yesterday, she was at the far end of the difficult gradient. A few years back, I met someone who’s good friend was a question writer for WWTBAM. I think he was a Yale graduate, late twenties or so. I remember her mentioning the difficulty in finding questions that had never been asked before, and having to research tirelessly to check their facts, and assign value. Knowing their process would certainly help one take better guesses. Even knowing a few of their research materials would give you a huge heads up. If anyone has any insight here, please add.

The more trivia you watch and play, the more you realize that understanding the question is nearly as important as knowing the answer. WWTBAM intentionally uses obscure and needless language when phrasing a question, creating confusion and self-doubt as to what is even being asked. An example of the way phrasing can disrupt the sense of a question:

SOURCE QUESTION:
What city is the capital of California?

WWTBAM VERSION:
The Golden State made this city their seat of government in 1855, after a failed attempt at creating a capital in Benicia.

Same answer, but profoundly different questions. The second one has so much extraneous information and wording, it can be hard to deduce exactly what is being asked, which is exactly what WWTBAM is hoping for. As stated often here, trivia is only partly about what and how much you know. Speed, recall, deduction, logic … all play huge parts as well. The first step, using the above example, is to strip away all the unneeded elements (1855, Benicia, failed attempt), and then “translate” their language into the real word (Golden State = California, Seat of Government = Capital). On WWTBAM, you have more than enough time to do this. It is harder on Jeopardy! , but then again, their questions aren’t usually phrased as oddly, as they have to fit in a smaller space. Regardless, they both reward contestants who are both able to figure out not only the answer, but the question itself.

WWTBAM, in particular, usually obfuscates the answers, in addition to the questions. They know that most people associate a certain term with a certain question. As example, instead of saying North Star, they’ll say Polaris, instead of Congress they’ll say Capitol Hill (triva note: Capitol is used to designate the actual building the legislative body meets, Capital is used to refer to the city itself that is the center of government), instead of Pi, they’ll say Archimedes Constant … You might know both answers, but will get thrown off with the unexpected use of a phrase. You ask, why are they using that phrase instead of the more common phrase? The answer, often, is simple: They are trying to mislead you. Keep that in mind and you’ll remain a step ahead of them.

We’re in a bad stretch for trivia shows. WWTBAM is back to re-runs, and Celebrity Jeopardy is slowly wrenching my love of trivia out of my heart. It is painful. There have been a few highlights (Neil Patrick Harris killed it, and would have been good enough for the regular version), but mostly there are lowlights. The trivia itself is fine, but the celebrity guests are torture. They never get through all the questions, and sometimes don’t even get half-way through. Some celebrities (the torturous Bebe Neuwirth in particular) seem to have forgotten they aren’t performing, and take a bow after answering every question. Even worse, they have to be reminded after after question that they are supposed to pick a new question. It’s as if they are so pleased with getting one question right, they are ready to call it a day right there.  I’ll give Alex Trebek credit, however. He keeps people focused about as well as a person can, given the flighty personalities he is dealing with. The show reminds me why I never had any desire to be an actor.

Today’s name review: Otto von Bismarck. A familiar name, but maybe one you don’t remember. He was the German statesman from the 19th century, most popular for unifying Germany, and serving as it’s first ever chancellor. As a mark of his brilliance, he essentially predicted WWI at the time of his death, even specifying the time and region it would start. All his diplomacy was essentially undone by King Wilhelm II (trivia note: he was the first grandchild of Queen Victoria, longest ever-serving British Monarch), who’s arrogant policies were partly responsible for the outbreak of war.

As long as we’re on this topic of statesman, another name that Bismarck reminds me of is Oliver Cromwell. This, too, is a name most people know, but don’t know why. Like Bismark, he was a politician who helped “unite” England, Scotland, and Ireland. For that reason, and his harsh style, Irish hate him, while British revere him. He lived in the 17th century.

Two common names in the trivia world, only 1 trillion more to learn.

Katie Kahn, Amanda’s best friend, has taken over Phone-A-Friend Lifeline duties in my absence. Here is her blog, up until the actual call from Meredith, which happened today. Due to restrictions (they hold your money for a month, and reserve the right to revoke payment if any information about the show is leaked to the public), I won’t post her final blog until the day after the show airs in October (I’ll post actual air date soon). But up until the call, this is Katie’s report:

Tuesday. 5:25pm
I’m feeling OK about having to be Amanda’s phone-a-friend but I still feel the knot in my stomach very strongly … Luckily she practiced with me for over an hour and we had decent success and a lot of laughs, both of which eased my nerves. I would be much more confident with Mark doing this, but I’m also honored if I can help Amanda out tomorrow and we get it right!! How often do you get a chance like that to help out a friend?!

Noah’s sympathetic to me and agrees that trivia is not my strong suit. Hopefully, Googling is … What I learned from Amanda is I need to do a better job of scanning the search results. Sometimes the answer was in the first one but I was so nervous I missed it and :30 goes by so fast … OK, time for a break from worrying and practicing. We’re off to dinner!

Wednesday. 8:55am
Jeffrey from WWTBAM called me this morning at 7:02am. We knew from before that they’d first call between 7-8am, and yesterday when he called it was almost 8am so I’m hoping this means Amanda is towards the front of the cue. Today, it was only me on the call, and I missed everyone else (Mark, Amanda’s mom, and Rick). Even Jeffrey remarked, “I won’t lie — there’s a lot of pressure on you.” Bring it on! (Gulp!)

I’m relying entirely on technology to help out Amanda (that is - Google). Here are some configuration steps I took that will hopefully make me quicker:

• In IE, I switched the text size to “Larger” so it would be easier to scan results
• In Google, I set preferences to return 30 results (rather than 10) and I turned on the highlighting feature
• In Google Images, I set preferences to return large images only
• I turned off anything that could interfere or slow down my computer (IM, anti-virus updates, etc.)

And some simple searching tips that seem to improve my speed, too:

• Unless it’s Wikipedia, I’ll just open the cached page of the search result since that doesn’t take as much time loading all the bells & whistles
• I’ll use quotes to combine key phrases (like “King Lear”)

OK, now I’m going to study Wikipedia layouts so I can find info quickly if needed, though I’m hoping not to have to click on any pages since that eats so much time. It looks like Wikipedia puts the key info and summary stats on the right hand side of the page - which is a good place to look first.

The call.

Editor’s Note: The actual call detail will be posted the day after the show.

Well, despite my best efforts, I’ll be unable to continue Phone-A-Friend duties for tomorrow. However, as that torch has passed to Katie Kahn, Amanda’s best friend, I’ve gotten her to agree to keep a guest blog for tomorrow. This way, we can share the details of the experience with all of you. So look for that.

Apparently, there is spillover from show to show. In other words, they’ll call a certain amount of people each day to appear, and whoever doesn’t get to go the day they are called, has to appear the next day. There were almost five spillovers from yesterday, meaning Amanda got bumped to the back of the list. Thus, at 5 PM, they stopped taping and told her to come back tomorrow. From the report, you just sit in the green room with the other contestants for hours, with no magazines or newspapers, nothing in your pockets, bathroom escorts, watching the show on closed circuit TV. Not very exciting, obviously until you get on the hot seat.

By biggest regret is not seeing how the set-up I had for the question would’ve worked. I was extremely happy with it. In Firefox, I made use of the tabs functionality to create the following:

• 3 tabs set to Google.com. In case of an elimination question, I could Google three answers at once.
• 1 tab set to search Google Images, for map or flag questions.
• 1 tab set to to Google Maps world view, so I could scroll to anywhere in the world for details in seconds.
• 1 tab set up on a free online translator, for foreign language/phrases questions.
• 1 tab set up on a list of all Academy Award winners, ever.

I’m not sure what question could’ve gotten past that, but I’ll just have to imagine for now.

So I just got a call from Age, who is Amanda’s husband. WWTBAM ran out of time, and so she has to come back tomorrow. And as Murphy’s law always intrudes in things you look forward to, I’m not sure I can help tomorrow. I have two big client presentations that I simply don’t see myself getting out of without doing severe damage to my job here. Age might have to take over the reins as lifeline, as he has helped us study from the beginning anyway.

It is a bit much to ask people to sit by their phone for seven hours, without a break. If people could use cellphones, i’d understand. But to ask for another seven hour window tomorrow would be pushing it. So I’ll talk more with Amanda tonight and see what happens. It’d be disappointed not to do it, but in the end, my goal is to be on the show itself, so I’ll keep that as the target.

Still nothing .. Getting a bit bored now, not to mention the novelty is wearing off with my co-workers, as i’ve now missed three important meetings. I just want to get it done with … A lot of waiting for :30 seconds of time.

Still no call.

Age texted to say Amanda wasn’t on the first show, said next show wouldn’t start for about an hour. Glad he texted. I was able to go to the bathroom, for one, and put on some music, for two. I’m gonna chill out a little for now.