May 1st, 2008
#498 - Buzz
It’s funny. In high school I was on some sort of quiz bowl type team. I remember meeting up after school a number of times and practicing. We had a teacher that asked questions and a set of buzzers to try and mimic a real competition. The weird thing is that I don’t remember us ever competing against anyone. All I can remember is practicing. Has anyone else been on a quiz team and made it to an actual competition?
May 1st, 2008 at 12:18 am
I was on the academic quiz team in high school and we went to competitions. Whenever we didn’t know the answer we’d buzz in with “Arthur Miller”.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:30 am
I was in High Quiz Bowl, which became High School Challenge my senior year. I only remember competing in one tournament in a neighboring state. We did okay, but forgot something obvious in a crucial round and got eliminated. Phooey. The finals were televised.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:42 am
I was in a High School Quiz Bowl program, I forget the name.
We competed constantly against other schools, but we were typically destroyed by this one other school. They always asked from a set list of about 20,000 questions, and the 6 people on their team actually memorized this list. It was impossible.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:52 am
I just woke up at 3AM to read Biff. Methinks I have a problem. I’m a Biffaholic 0_o
The only other thing I have to say is that it’s “Things Biff realizes week” possibly, I’m too tired to think of anything else that connects these comics.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:55 am
public school education is rather limited…I learn something new about once a week. This is all my subjects, I learn something new in a week. That’s not me being dumb, it’s them not teaching me more. and I know I can finish the whole year’s work in a couple of weeks, if they let me.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:04 am
I was in my high schools quiz bowl and ours was pretty active. We were always competing against other teams in the area. we ended up going to the state tournament but we didnt make it very far. so we consoled ourselves with the fact that we were the most attractive (half of us were good looking females and our males were decidedly non-dorky looking) and probably the only team we saw that all had significant others.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:15 am
@insertnamehere: I had the same problem through most of high school. Bunch of bollocks.
Anyway, at our school we had the Math Team (I know, I know.), so we were “mathletes” and went to Math competitions at other schools and crap. We actually won most of them. *shrug*
I can’t come up with a theme that connects all of these. Any hints, Chris?
May 1st, 2008 at 1:36 am
I remember going to a maths (not those silly “who can do the questions faster”) competition and winning a certificate, and I’m on the quiz team (I got on this year and this year’s competition was cancelled because the qualifying competition was held on PTA day…). So I’d have to say I don’t remember going to any competition despite being on a quiz team.
May 1st, 2008 at 2:11 am
Don’t think i have been in any of those ^_^
And how is it possible to get -1600 O_o
May 1st, 2008 at 2:12 am
I was on my high school’s knowledge bowl team sophomore, junior, and senior year. My school fielded 3 JV and 3 varsity teams and my varsity team junior and senior year managed to make state. Not to mention those two years we were a part of the High Five Challenge (a televised Portland, OR area knowledge competition). We also had competitions about once a month with the schools in our area.
Chris, were you watching Scott Kurtz’s broadcast today? I saw somebody in the chat with the nick BookOfBiff on there and was wondering about that.
May 1st, 2008 at 5:17 am
I competed in Knowledge Bowl my junion and Senior years. My junior year one of the school teams made it to State, and I got to go with (Though, I was on a different team, so I just got to watch)
May 1st, 2008 at 5:27 am
I was on the quiz bowl team for my high school as well, and while there wern’t really any tournaments, there were competitions that pit us against five other schools. Some of them were televised, so I got to be on TV a bit, as well.
and yeah, they were kinda quiet cause no one really knew all of the answers at any given quiz…and we always got pizza after all was said and done =3
May 1st, 2008 at 5:41 am
I’m the captain RIGHT NOW (whoa) of our High School Bowl team. We compete, like, once a month against the other schools in a general area. We’re ranked numbah one in the area at the moment…
May 1st, 2008 at 6:03 am
Oh, dear god, yes. I was on our “Academic Team” during my last two years in high school. During the main part of the year, we actually were part of a conference, with a schedule for playing other schools teams once at home and once away, and the top teams getting to go onto state competitions…it was treated pretty much like the sports conferences, really, minus having a group of cheerleaders, a mascot, and extra attention from the girls.
At the end of the year, we also had the “Quiz Bowl”, where we had 12 to 16 teams from our school compete in a four day long tournament, with the final being held in front of the student body, and the winner of that getting a shot to play a group of teachers.
May 1st, 2008 at 6:05 am
# SEA Says:
May 1st, 2008 at 2:11 am
Don’t think i have been in any of those ^_^
And how is it possible to get -1600 O_o
Depending on the scoring rules, you actually can lose points for getting answers wrong. Although, I suspect that it’s more of a nod to Jeopardy for the comic purposes.
May 1st, 2008 at 6:50 am
I got roped into my highschool’s “It’s Academic” quiz team - I hadn’t planned on joining, but the staff sponsor talked me into it anyway. I made it as an alternate, and we went to competition - losing by a single question to some ramdom other school.
I learned that they edit those things, even as they edit other live shows - At the final question, my team blurted out the correct answer half a second behind the winning team, but when the competition aired, only the winning team’s answer was heard.
May 1st, 2008 at 7:32 am
@Fizzball - Yep that was me.
May 1st, 2008 at 8:05 am
I was on a quiz team with several of my good friends in high school. One of our guys answered 80% of the questions. He was ruthless. Apparently, all he did was read the encyclopedia because he didn’t get cable or have video games. Best thing about the team was that NOBODY on the team cared. Whether we were winning by 50, or losing by 100, we just screwed around. GOD did our coach hate us. You could see it in his eyes every time anyone other than the encyclopedia kid opened their mouth. But I gotta say my favorite memory from the whole season was when we broke the other team’s coach’s spirit. Encyclopedia man was hitting EVERY question, and the other coach whispered to himself ‘How is he doing that?’ He then laid down his papers, leaned back in his chair, and gently uttered the most forlorn and hopeless sigh i have ever heared.
May 1st, 2008 at 8:20 am
I was on the speech team,
interpretive speech, and placed 2nd once.
It’s kinda like a quiz, but isn’t.
We didn’t have buzzers
(I’d have stolen mine and taken it home)
but it was a timed event.
May 1st, 2008 at 9:52 am
I was in the quiz competitions as well. We had a variety of ones, including Quiz Bowl and Knowledge Masters.
We only competed a few times for actual quiz competitions at other schools. When we did, I distinctly remember the two answers to every question were “Brave New World” and “Creep.”
You know creep, rocks slowly going downhill? Crazy. The only other question I remember was the one about the war started notoriously by British captain who, in 1738, brandished his own ear before the House of Commons. I’d learned about it in my AP European History class, and finished the question before it was finished. *BUZZ* WAR OF JENKIN’S EAR!
I got some funny looks for that one.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:05 am
I was captain of the Brain Game team in high school. We got to the semi-finals, then we lost by one freaking point. Ooh, I was so mad.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:17 am
I joined scholastic bowl my senior year of high school and was a prodigy. I feel bad because I answered a question wrong in the last round of the big competition and we lost by just about one question’s worth of points.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:20 am
Here in the Tri-State area of West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky we used to have a quiz program for high schoolers that ran on the local NBC affiliate (this is way back in the day, late 80’s at the latest). My brother was on his high school’s team, and several times had the answer that clinched victory for BHS’s team. I wanted to be on that so desperately when I got old enough!
But alas, the show was eventually canceled and Phil Donahue’s show saw re-runs in its stead. Man, did that hurt for a couple of years.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:42 am
I was a member of my school’s math team, we traveled once a month to face other schools in competition, but there was one big school there that never lost. They actually recruited the students with the highest averages from their calculus and pre-calc classes, we just had whoever wanted cookies and punch for doing math problems.
May 1st, 2008 at 11:35 am
I was a member of Scholar’s Bowl, which is a state-wide high school trivia competition ring for high schools in Vermont. There were two “meets” per year we would go to and compete against ~10 other schools from around the state. It was pretty fun.
May 1st, 2008 at 11:54 am
@ cass
why “arthur miller” ?
and for my message: no, i never got onto a school quiz team. im not nerdy enough
May 1st, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Heh, our team’s default answer was “Walt Whitman”.
Some ridiculous answers came up in practice too.
“Why do elephants have large ears?”
“To scare off the cheetahs!”
May 1st, 2008 at 3:19 pm
My family does the SAT questions everyday. When I was 12, I got a pretty good score (they gave me an award for it). But today, I didn’t get a medium/hard one, and my mom seems disappointed.And she laughed.
May 1st, 2008 at 3:27 pm
@insertnamehere I also have that problem. Ever since I learned to read (I resisted at first), I have known everything before they teach it.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:25 pm
http://www.etptv.org/about/scholar_bowl_08.html
Used to compete on knoxville’s pbs scholar bowl. Along with this televised contest was other school tourneys where we never made it to finals. got a perfect record in the last tourney but knocked out and took 4th in the finals.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:33 pm
I was co-captain of the high school bowl team this year. Each year the team goes to the T.V. set in Marquette and record the competition for the local PBS-type station. My school usually always get put up against the people who know the most random stuff, and their coach like lives and breathes high school bowl. A friend of mine got bleeped on the show it was pretty epic.
May 1st, 2008 at 6:04 pm
I actually lettered in knowledge bowl in high school =)
May 1st, 2008 at 6:45 pm
I was on the academic team! We made it to states!
May 1st, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Don’t worry BIff, I find ther is good money in makeinjg people look smart by comparison.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Wait, how can he get that, but then how can he make stuff like the untoaster then?
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:43 am
I competed to compete in a quiz show-thing, but lost. Lucky Biff…
May 2nd, 2008 at 3:21 pm
KuKu: I did the same thing at the same TV station … 16 years ago! We won the U.P. competition and went to the state competition twice in 3 years. None of us ever got got bleeped, but the first time we won, our celebration antics made some letters fall off the set.
And there’s a pub a few miles south of my house where they hold “Pub Trivia” every Tuesday. I usually go with a group of friends, and we compete against other teams for a $50 gift card. It’s like quiz bowl for adults, with food and beer.
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:54 pm
I’m actually president of our school’s Knowledge Bowl team, and we’ve been to a few competitions. It’s a lot of fun, really. Very geeky, but a hell of a lot of fun. Oh, the stories I could tell…
May 4th, 2008 at 2:08 am
In high school, I volunteered to videotape the knowledge bowl team’s recent competiton. However, I quietly freaked out when the tape ran out…
May 4th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
I recently went to Dubai for a Varsity Academic Games competition as part of EMAC. EMAC stands for Eastern Mediterranean Activitities Conference, and it is a group of schools around the Middle East that compete in sports and the arts against each other. My school won the quiz bowl, and got second place overall, because we didn’t do as well as the winning team in the Olympiads, which are competitions in just one subject, like Geography or Spelling. We practiced once a week at lunch break before the tournament. Each school was allowed two teams of four people. It was a round-robin tournament, so there were a lot of matches.
May 6th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
I was on a scholastic bowl team much like what you described. We actually did go to competitions and recieved trophies and medals and such.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:20 am
I was on the Knowledge Bowl when I was in high school. It was a buncha us nerdy kids practicing once and a while, and trying to come up with awesome team names. We competed quite frequently; there were probably 5 competitions a year around our county. We usually had one team that did fairly well, but we never ranked very high. It was just fun hanging out with friends.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Also, I learned that, even though it may work for Guatemala and Mexico, the formula of adding ‘City’ to a country’s name doesn’t always create the name of the state capital. “America City” got me a lot of dirty looks.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Oh, do I remember Quiz Bowl. I got some odd looks one time for correctly answering a question about Charles Manson with great enthusiasm.
Our teams didn’t really practice, but the first year we had it in my conference, all of the schools were playing it wrong, so though my school had the best record, we didn’t get to go to state. The following year, we did not have the best record. Not as a team, anyway, but I got at least some personal vindication by winning the solo tournament for the conference at the end of the year. Yes, by one point.
The best part of that time was making fake name cards for each other. We were the only team that did this, and it seemed to irritate the teams we beat, so my “Butch” got stolen once. Other name cards had such gems as “Disco Stu” and “Russell the Love Muscle.”
May 8th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
My HS, a small and not that good school, won state and came close to winning another time when I was on the team. In Wisconsin.
May 11th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
My most memorable quiz bowl experience was when the coach of the team we were competing against - he was a stereotypical rabid high school football coach - ended up disputing a question: “And I know what I’m talking about because MY MOTHER IS A JEWELER!”
May 24th, 2008 at 11:22 am
I was on my high school quizbowl team. We got second place in the national championships in 2006. Everyone thought we were a private school filled with geniuses. Then they showed up at our school and saw the trucks hawling away asbestos.
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I was on the Knowledge Bowl team at our high school for two years. My senior year we went to state, after having taken first and second in our region’s qualifying tournaments.
Our stock answer was “The Dali Lama.”
We only took second because somehow one team’s coach was somehow giving them the answers when she read the questions.
It was rather obvious when they would buzz in to answer after three words, none of them a noun. “In the year 1964…” *BUZZ* and so on.
July 18th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
I was on the Reach for the Top team in highschool. I was the only girl on the team and I was the only person with any knowledge of European History. It came in very handy. To this day though I still remember the only question I got wrong. “What is the name of a large, Australian burrowing bird?” I had no clue but it was one of those questions that I had to answer for a bonus so I had to say something. “ummmm… The Giant Australian Burrowing Bird???….” That wasn’t it. It was the burrowing owl. We did win regionals and appeared on T.V. against a team from Toronto. We lost by 10 points.
August 11th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Yeah, I was in one, 4 man teams, we lost every game even one that had only one guy because the rest of his team got sick.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Yeah, I really can’t remeber anything I learned in school other then the basics. If you asked me how school changed me, I’d probably say, “Well, the idiots there changed my personality from nice guy who loves evreything to raging revenger.”
And when I say idiots, I pretty much mean evreyone there, students, staff, and people who I don’t know that aren’t part of the staff yet show up one day for some reason and are never seen again.
August 31st, 2008 at 2:06 pm
I remember being in junior high and being on a quiz game show locally. We had three contestants from each school. The three of us were split with knowledge; one kid studied the Korean war (me) another the 1st world war and the third the 2nd world war.
Me and the other kid ended up not really getting a word in edge wise because the third kid knew the answers to everything! @@