"Imélie, I trust you haven't forgotten about our meeting with a potential new client tonight" Keshav reminds his subordinate.
"No, I haven't" Imélie acknowledges her boss.
Oh boy, I guess diversity and CSR mattered to the potential new client the higher-ups wanted me to meet, Imélie thinks, while getting ready for the business dinner that was going to be held at a local bar. At the same time, she can't help but think of the size of that potential new account if the C-suite wanted to have dinner with the executives of that new client. That's a big potential client; I must be on my best behavior tonight. They must have good reason for them to bring an UX engineer over, maybe even in the absence of CSR motivations.
There are three people total in the party that Imélie goes with for the dinner at a New Orleans bar on a Monday night in February 2034. And, outside the bar, they advertise trivia night. In my entire career here, my bosses never brought me along for business dinners in bars when they had those on Mondays or Tuesdays, the other clients in past dinners preferred fine dining, she keeps thinking about her past experiences of business dinners at her current employer upon entering the door of the bar.
Quickly the rest of the party orders food and drink, but Imélie didn't; her bosses notices something isn't quite right with her.
"Why didn't you order anything?" Keshav asks her, sensing something is amiss.
"I'm not hungry yet. Oh and we're going to enter trivia night" Imélie answers her boss.
"Is that the entertainment this bar provides?" a client's representative asks Imélie.
"Yes. I'll probably be hungry by the end of it anyway. Be prepared for this to last for the entire duration of the dinner, however"
That night, winning the trivia night was about a free bar tab for the team. As tantalizing the prospect of eating and drinking for free is to her, she knows that the other people in the party are with her at the bar for the actual business dealings, in which she feels she mustn't interfere. Because there are only six people in the party, Imélie has the entire party enter trivia night as a single team; 6 people is the maximum allowed team size.
The trivia night host gives Imélie a numbered set of sheets of paper along with a pen and realizes that the host is pretty old-fashioned in running the trivia night. She writes down the team name, Bulletins Vectoriels (or Vector Report Cards in French) on all seven sheets of paper included in the set.
"The winning team will win a free tab. You then get free food and drink. Smartphones, tablets and other electronic devices are prohibited for the purpose of the trivia night. Each correct answer is worth one point. Contestants, round one is about history. Here's the first question: On April thirtieth, twenty-twenty-two, name the country of origin of the attackers of Sakhalinskaya GRES-two thermal power plant" the host reads the first question.
What exactly are those questions? So many people thought back then that these Russian mystery fires were caused, in whole or in part, by Ukrainian sabotage, so while attacks on Bryansk, Kursk and even more so Belgorod might have been perpetrated by the Ukrainian army, in the context of 2022, no way Sakhalin Island could have come under attack by Ukraine, Imélie thinks while writing down "Japan" on the slot #1 of the first sheet of paper, and she keeps thinking about how that attack could have led Russia to declare war on Japan back then, and how Russia was in denial over the war in Ukraine.
"Second question: name the battle at which Edward Braddock was killed in 1755, which caused the failure of the Braddock Expedition"
They seem to be discussing important business matters so I will not disturb them until spoken to. So, I'm afraid I'm on my own. So far this feels like playing Trivial Pursuit more than it did playing quiz bowl, high school or collegiate, Imélie keeps thinking, realizing that she is essentially on her own for the entirety of the round since her colleagues are busy negotiating what looks like a preliminary agreement, starting with the scope of the project they attempted to negotiate. She then writes down "Battle of the Monongahela" on the slot #2 of the first sheet.
Trivia night continued and, by this point of the night, she had the impression of both reliving her collegiate quiz bowl days and bottling up how she feels about the questions. That said, she is very confident about her answers which, by extension, are the team's, to this questionable packet of questions. Questionable to her eyes anyway.
"Round one is over, please hand over your answer sheets!" the host announces a minute after the tenth question was asked.
Once the six teams' answer sheets are scored, everyone in the bar is surprised at how well Imélie's team performed, including but not limited to, her colleagues at work. Or rather Imélie on her own. Because her colleagues were of no help on history.
"After the first round, the Bulletins Vectoriels are in the lead, with ten points!" the host, a barman, announces, with a Cajun accent on bulletins vectoriels.
But the second round begins, which is more about film and television, and, unfortunately for her, it's not a topic that she feels comfortable answering questions about. Especially since she used to call film and television trash when she played varsity quiz bowl and as such, made no real effort to learn more about. Other teams, however, would sense that they may stand a chance because they were stumped on history questions. As disgusted as she is by the prospect of answering ten trash questions, the prospect of free food was too delicious to pass up.
Then came the third round, her old standby as a quiz bowler in high school as well as in undergrad: science. What the hell are these low-quality questions? This is middle school-level bonus kind of housewrite questions, and maybe not even that! Give me even an invitational series packet from NAQT any day over this! This is worse than bad quiz bowl that I am playing mostly solo here! The good news is that at least there are no hoses being asked thus far, Imélie thinks, while wondering how the other teams will feel going into the later rounds of the night.
Hoses, in the world of quiz bowl, are questions, more commonly toss-ups, that mislead players that make attempts at answering questions too early. By and large, invitational series sets, which are intended for use in high school quiz bowl tournaments, and harder sets from NAQT, are mostly exempt from hoses.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"Round three scoring is over! The Bulletins Vectoriels are back in the lead, with twenty-four points!"
"Who makes the Bulletins Vectoriels so good anyway?" a bar patron asks, bewildered by the Bulletins Vectoriels' domination on the leaderboard after three rounds.
"If that's the work of one person, that person should audition on a game show! I bet that, if it was the case, that person will do well" another bar patron comments on the BVs' performance.
For each new round, a new theme is introduced and it turns out that odd-numbered rounds had "good quiz bowl topics" for themes, as Imélie called these, and even-numbered rounds had "bad quiz bowl" or trash. Such as round four being about sports trivia. Round five was about literature which, despite it having been her weakness in "good quiz bowl" historically, she was still able to answer just fine. Not as well as in science and history, but still enough to hold on to the BVs' lead.
I get they tend to mostly stick to bonus parts on MS series sets for middle school quiz bowl tournaments, with the hardest questions on "good quiz bowl" topics being on the level of bonus parts on IS sets, to ensure that it's not too hard for the bar patrons, but is this the price to pay for a bar to host a trivia night on Mondays? Just try to imagine asking S/ICT toss-ups in a bar trivia night; these would be a complete nightmare and not many people would even be able to answer any of these before they get to the "For ten points" signal, Imélie thinks, while flashbacks of vulturing on opponents incurring "neg fives", that is, answering a toss-up, or TU for short, the opponent got wrong before the TU is read in full, are being replayed in her mind, both from herself and from past teammates.
"After five rounds, the Bulletins Vectoriels are in the lead by six points! Round six: mathematics!"
Why? Why has the host suddenly started asking computational math questions? This is NOT like these open-air math pageants my high school used to hold, and I used to be able to mentally calculate a two-variable integral in ten seconds back then! This is not even bad quiz bowl anymore! That said, I don't expect people in the bar to be able to solve even high school algebraic or geometric equations by hand, much less a double integral! Here's my chance to secure victory in this trivia night because the others were so busy that I was more or less on my own for this! Imélie thinks while she effortlessly solves every problem the host gives the bar patrons. Which saddens her especially since she feels like everyone else is struggling with the problems being asked. I secretly hope that everyone else will score at most five points and then the trivia night will end with one less round to play!
However, in the middle and high school quiz bowl circuit, even elite mathletes seemed to accept that computational math does not test the same skills as the rest of "good quiz bowl" does. (In a quiz bowl context, an elite mathlete isn't necessarily taken to mean someone capable of competing in "isolympic" competitions, such as the EGMO or the IMO. Usually even a 10 on the AIME is construed as an elite mathlete in the high school quiz bowl world. Or even a medal at the Vans Math Contest final.)
"After just six rounds, we have a winner. The seventh and final round is therefore declared void!" the host exclaims after scoring the sixth round. "Come forward, bulletins vectoriels! You won tonight's trivia night! Your tab will be on the house!"
"Right, so we just ate and drank for free! Thank you, Imélie!" Keshav comments before she can even grab a menu.
"This makes me hungry!" Imélie then admits her hunger.
"Imélie, what makes you so good?" the host asks while turning his attention to her.
"Honestly, it takes more than just a hunger of knowledge, or a good memory. You also need some good listening skills. At the same time, some people seem to have more fun drinking while I would rather drink after the trivia ends" Imélie then answers the host.
And sometimes think quickly but the lead time given is much greater than in quiz bowl. Bad questions lead to buzzer races, but so do evenly matched teams. People seem to like watching players engage in buzzer races, Imélie reflects while glancing at the menu. Upon looking at the menu in question, she starts feeling as if her brain was playing tricks on her.
"You're the last to eat, so please hurry up!" Keshav reminds her. "Don't be shy, don't balk at the meals' price tags. You earned it"
"Yes, I totally earned it, but I think that this kind of questions doesn't accurately reflect one's knowledge" Imélie then complains about the questions.
"What do you mean, it doesn't accurately reflect one's knowledge?" the trivia night host asks her. "If that's what you want, how would you structure questions then?"
"I guess this is better suited for a head-to-head trivia night format, but the pyramidal question. Ideally trivia questions should have the hardest clues first, and the clues get easier the longer you wait. It should also make clear what is being asked early on"
"Please provide an example" the host asks her.
"This process was first studied in 1877 by Wilhelm Pfeffer, making him a pioneer of plant physiology. Contractile vacuoles are used to counter this process, whose namesake "pressure" is a colligative property since it depends on the molar concentration of the solution instead of its identity. The "reverse" form of this process is commonly used to purify drinking water. For 10 points, name this process by which water moves along a concentration gradient across a semipermeable membrane" Imélie asks a question from memory. "I confess this is a little long, but this kind of questions is not suitable for things other than head-to-head trivia formats. Pyramidal questions are good for head-to-head trivia but not solo or when you have a lot of teams"
Why is it that this particular question popped out of my head? This was a question I was asked ten years ago during a game, and we powered through it to win against Stuyvesant! Or rather, Marcia powered that specific question, Imélie ponders while more flashbacks from her first quiz bowl season flood her mind. And the girls on the math team during that same season, too, of which the "third girl" on the depth chart was the other mathlete on the quiz bowl team. And the one that powered that very question.
Yet, among this sea of memories from her past that this trivia night somehow triggered, there she finds the one suggestion of what she should eat. Spare ribs.
"Oh and I'll order spare ribs"
"You seem to have some experience of different formats of trivia games" the host comments while the order is taken.
"Quiz bowl is the format I have the most experience of. Another drawback of using pyramidal questions is that it's more difficult to write questions in" Imélie then explains to the host.
"I suppose"
"I could discuss pros and cons of question types and trivia formats at length, but I think it would not be a very interesting discussion. One last question: why is it that questions asked here tonight seem to be mostly on a middle school level, and maybe high school?" she asks the trivia night host.
"When you're using a trivia night to draw in patrons on Monday nights, you want your potential patrons to be able to answer them. It's the best balance I could strike to make it work. You're the first patron in many months that complained about question design: past patrons that complained about questions instead complained about inappropriate content, and especially politics or religion" the barman answers her.
"Now I understand why you kept asking questions that are on the level of bonus parts of middle or high school quiz bowl!"
"Bonus parts?" a confused barman asks her.
"In quiz bowl, when a team answers a toss-up correctly, they have an opportunity to answer a bonus set, usually in three parts, each part being its own question. Bonus parts are typically about one sentence each, and the questions within a set have a relationship to each other, but generally no relationship to the toss-up that unlocks it" the UX engineer then explain the relationship between tossups and bonus questions.
Imélie is certainly very knowledgeable, but she was never spoken to by our prospective client's representatives at all. I guess they had no real technical questions regarding UX, Keshav thought, while Imélie was left to discuss the intricacies of trivia gaming with the host.