SZCZBlog

From May 2012 through August 2012, my family and I had earned, through a number of solid performances (including a number of wins) playing Team Trivia, a berth in the 2012 Team Trivia National Championship, held on the afternoon of August 18, 2012, with a top prize of $10,000. We could include up to six people in our team, and did we ever: we had a strong team, one with a chance to take the championship, but having played in games like this my whole life, I knew that you never know.

Teams were told at the outset that, with a prize pool of more than $21,000 at stake, the questions would be harder than usual. Great, I thought (seriously). I like hard questions, as would my teammates, and that would hopefully improve our chances to win.

Our team (“Pops and Mommers”) assembled at Burke’s Public House on Broadway, just before the start of the match. In the first half, we didn’t fare very well — we only got three of the first nine questions in the first half correct, though we were “in the ballpark” on three other questions (Steve Kerr, Ronald Reagan, Mad Men’s maypole) but our point wagering was sensibly maxed for the questions we knew and we finished with 15 points. Our saving grace in the first half was that we nearly swept the halftime question on famous bands’ first #1 hits (getting 4 out of 5 possible for 8 points total) and we nearly swept a bonus first-half question on celebrities’ real names (getting 14 points out of 15 possible, the most of any team, only missing Chris Angel). Despite our lackluster first half, we fared far better than I thought or hoped: The top score nationally at the time was 38 points, our halftime score was 35 points, first place in Chicago and third place in the country.

Then the second half, where the point values were doubled. There we fared better — we got five of nine second-half questions correct (Angus, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, the World Wildlife Fund, “silent”, and Oingo Boingo). We had a respectful performance in the second-half bonus question on countries with the world’s tallest mountains which included a gotcha that wrong answered would have point values deducted (we responded with six answers, getting five right and one wrong, net plus-eight points). However, we were beside ourselves when in the category Games, we responded with “20″ rather than the correct “24″ to the question “How many points are on a backgammon board?”, losing the chance to earn another six points.

Even so, we were able to build our point total to 65 points, putting us both first in Chicago and first in the whole country, with a four point over the second-place team. Hot diggity — if we can get the final question correct and wager enough, we would win the national championship and $10,000. But if we were wrong, we would lose whatever we would wager.

When I surveyed the list of questions thus far, I noted aloud “You know, there hasn’t been a movie question yet.” The final question was: “Name two of the five movies which were nominated for all of the following: the 2012 Academy Award for Best Picture, the 2012 Golden Globe for Best Picture, and the 2012 Critics Choice Movie Award for Drama”.

In short order, we were able to figure out a number of contending films: The Artist, The Help, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Descendants, Hugo, Moneyball, Warhorse. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was out. The Artist, which swept the Oscars but which was a comedy, was out. The Descendants was in — nominated for a lot, critically acclaimed, and a drama. So of the remaining films, which should we pick. At that point, we heard:

“The Tree of Life?”

This resonated with us. Terence Malick routinely gets nominated for awards, and his movie even won the freaking Palme d’Or at Cannes. Plus, time was running out — we had to make a choice and so we did: The Arist, and The Tree of Life, for 17 points (which we determined to give us an unreachable 82 points and the championship).

Shortly after we had submitted our final answer, the list of correct films was announced:

Moneyball
Warhorse
The Descendants
The Help
Hugo

Ouch. Heartbreaking. Not only did we miss the correct answer, we chose the only incorrect answer in a set where any other answer we could have chosen would have been correct. Instead of 82 points, a national championship, and $10,000, we finished with 48 points and fourth place in Chicago, resulting in a $75 gift certificate to Burke’s Public House which we spent that day on a lot of food. We walked home, morose, shocked, vowing to come back next year. Why not? After all, we showed we could compete and come as close as anyone could to winning the championship without actually winning the championship.

In Michigan where I grew up, Jeopardy! was always a prime time staple — it aired at 7:30PM local time, even when it switched from the local CBS affiliate to the local ABC affiliate and back again. But when I moved to Illinois, I had assumed that it always aired at the same or similar time around the country and was shocked to find that it aired at 3:30PM on Chicago’s ABC affiliate (whose scheduling division is evidently managed by stupid idiots). This sucks since I was seldom home at that time to watch the show. But it got me thinking: if Jeopardy! doesn’t air for every station in prime time, how widespread is the pattern of not airing Jeopardy! in primetime?

This is a question which we can quickly answer, and also inspire a geochart mashup, but more on that in a moment. The Jeopardy! website kindly provides a list of showtimes and channels, grouped by U.S. state, with an interactive map. One Python script later, and I have my answer: 229 stations air the show — 90 of which (39%) air the show in daytime (which I define to mean before 6PM local time), while the remaining 139 air the show at 6PM local time or later.

But we can go further, thanks to the Google Visualization API and its Geochart function. When I take the results of that Python script and input the results as a Javascript list into the API, here is the result:

For whatever reason or reasons, the vast majority of stations that air Jeopardy! in daytime cluster around the Mississippi River and nearby states. But why is this the case? Moreover, on what basis do stations decide to air the show at one time versus another time? Can any generalities be drawn? Whatever the pattern is now, was this always or predominantly the case during Jeopardy!’s almost-three-decade-long run?

Lots of questions about a show that prides itself on its answers…

This is Six:

Six a humanoid Cylon played by Canadian actress Tricia Helfer in the remade Battlestar Galactica series.

And this is also Six:

Six is also a board game where players take different-colored hexagons to make either a six-sided ring or a triangle made from hexagons or a line of six hexagons in a row — and try to prevent their opponent from doing the same.

So last Christmas, I got for my cousin Stefanie (who I knew was a fan of the remade Battlestar Galactica) a copy of the board game Six, but wrapped like this:

Clever, eh? (The gift, and the way it was wrapped, was a big hit.)

For a time, I played competitive Scrabble. I even won a couple of tournaments. I don’t play very much these days, what with a new baby and being busy changing the world and all.

But as a lark, I decided to try something: ranking Scrabble players’ last names by using Scrabble’s own scoring system. I figured my last name, with three Z’s (30 points), two C’s (6 points), and a K (5 points), would make me very competitive.

So I downloaded the full list of Scrabble players from the North American Scrabble Players Association. Then I ran a couple of Unix commands and wrote a quick Python script to find the answer.

Here’s are the Unix commands and the full source code of the script (don’t blink):

cat current_2011-01.txt | awk '{print $1}' > current_2011-01-2.txt
time ./scrabble_last_names.py > current_2011-01-3.txt
more current_2011-01-3.txt | sort | uniq | sort -nr | head -30

rows = open('current_2011-01-2.txt').readlines()
for row in rows:
sum = 0
row = row[:-1]
for letter in row:
sum = sum + letter_values[letter]
print sum, row


And the results of the top 30 last names, with their respective Scrabble scores, are listed below. I was right to think I was competitive.

52 SZCZEPANCZYK
48 PRZYBYSZEWSKI
43 MROCZKIEWICZ
42 MIKOLAJCZYK
41 ZXQKJ
41 KAZMIEROWICZ
38 JANOTA-BZOWSKI
37 ZMORZYNSKI
37 VAZQUEZ
36 KRAWCZYNSKI
35 SZYMKOWIAK
34 MARTINEZ-WOMBOLD
34 KLEMASZEWSKI
34 IMPELLIZZERI
34 GAJDEROWICZ
34 EZEKOWITZ
34 CZERNIKOWSKI
34 CRAWFORD-MACKAY
33 SCHECKWITZ
32 SUJJAYAKORN
32 SCHWARTZBERG
32 NAHACZEWSKI
32 MATLOCK-WASHINGTON
32 JANKOWITZ
32 GRZYBOWSKI
32 GIOVINAZZO
31 ZEBOVITZ
31 ROHATYNSKYJ
31 QUACKENBUSH
31 MACQUEEN-SMITH


Some thoughts:

• Polish names dominate. By my assessment, the top four, eight of the top ten, and 15 of the top 30 scores are Polish — what with a preponderance of Z’s, that’s little surpriZe.
• Having a hyphenated last name also helps; of the top 30, four have hyphenated last names; the leading hyphenated last name (JANOTA-BZOWSKI) has both hyphenated parts being Polish.
• I won; good thing I studied hard. Cue Queen.