Typos of the Week, June 21 through June 27

Small change to the format here this week. I've included the original questions for the ones I was there for. When you send me typos, if you send me the questions as well, I'll be happy to include them.

10. [17:36] Lette Ponnier: et to berute

9. [13:13] AnaMaria Quintessa: lisetine

8. [19:28] Cully Andel: firs id insturvoit

7. [20:04] Mongoose Chemistry: odillias

6. [20:06] Olmstead Fanshaw: clyudesda;e

5. [12:29] Gingo Gumbo: em porere

4. [12:35] Laertes Parx: ultrarioelt

3. [13:55] Trebor Shelman: bocyvle]

2. [20:22] Josie Hammand: bratkes

1. [18:28] Karmel Kips: lithe ampliufiacation dfeom stimulated emisstion of ratioatn

Laertes, me, and Ruth: Shakeys at Sharon's. (I'm trying to figure out why my photos get cut off on the right side, though... this framing is not meant in any way as a slight to Ruth!)

10. [17:36] Cully Andel: WHAT WERE THE ALLEGED LAST WORDS OF JULIUS CAESAR?
ET TU BRUTE (or as I apparently would have it, "and to Beirut!")

9. [13:12] Lebn Bucyk: The Great Pyramid is made of this sedimentary stone
LIMESTONE (but wouldn't it have been fun if it were made of Listerine?)

8. FIRST AID INSTRUCTOR

7. ILIAD & ODYSSEY (the producers are trying to save money by making one epic instead of two)

6. CLYDESDALE

5. [12:29] Lebn Bucyk: Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun, is said to be the ancestor of what modern personage?
EMPEROR

4. ULTRAVIOLET (as spoken by Scooby Doo)

3. BICYCLE

2. BEATLES (don't try to answer while craving potato pancakes)

1. [18:27] Cinna Xaris: 16 - WHAT DOES LASER STAND FOR?
LIGHT AMPLIFICATION BY STIMULATED EMISSION OF RADIATION (well, she spelled "stimulated" right anyway.. we know where her mind is)

********

Announcements - Seeking Contributors

So y'all might have noticed (or maybe not) that my productivity has fallen in the past couple of weeks. I've also been cutting back on trivia time a little, so if you miss me at events that I used to come to religiously, it's because I have a dissertation that needs attention sometimes, too. :)

I've been meaning to ask this for a couple of weeks now, but I'm interested in getting additional contributors to this blog for two main reasons. First, because keeping up a regular posting schedule is time-consuming, and I kind of knew I wouldn't sustain the energy forever; and second, so my opinion doesn't get presented as quite so monolithic on those topics that are opinion-focused. My views are merely that, and it might be good to bring in some point-counterpoint.

If you're interested in blogging on this page, please contact me in-world, and we'll chat about what kind of stuff you want to write and how often you think you can contribute. If you even have just one article you want to post, I'm happy to talk with you about it. If I don't hear from anyone (or possibly even if I do), I'll probably begin asking different people around the trivia circuit to interview each other or something of the sort, just to get things mixed up around here a little bit more.

Thank ya much, and I'll see y'all around!

Typos of the Week, June 14 through June 20

10. [10:14] Maelstrom Janus: morrooocop

9. [10:19] Claudia Mefusula: napoliena

8. [9:51] Cully Andel: ni moisrute

7. [22:32] Biker Galthie: kaadggikoo

6. [19:35] Rekeorb Wezzog: got a machinehead begtter than ther ereatst

5. [20:01] Olmstead Fanshaw: what isd emopire statrtbj;ls
[19:42] Olmstead Fanshaw: whati staeche\

4. [10:31] Weniki Oh: beetlel baileuy
[10:31] Karmel Kips: bettel bnalit

3. [12:31] Lette Ponnier: kzahstan
[12:31] Lotus Ceriano: kaxzaksatn

2. [19:45] Rach Borkotron: shoiuld i give up or should i just keeseine pavementsp cha

1. [11:41] Starla Gurbux: clho0rlophil



10. Morocco
9. Napoleon
8. no moisture
7. kangaroo
6. Got a machinehead better than the rest
5. What is Empire Strikes Back/What is teacher
4. Beetle Bailey
3. Kazakhstan
2. Should I give up or should I just keep chasing pavements
1. chlorophyll

Up For Discussion: Timing

I observed not too long ago that most trivia games run at a pace of ten to twenty questions per hour, usually filling two-hour event blocks. There's a huge difference between these extremes in terms of how the rest of the time gets used. A good host can make a game enjoyable regardless of the amount of time between questions, and some games seem to drag regardless of actual pacing. And of course a critical factor is whether trivia is the only thing taking place at the event or if there are other activities keeping players occupied, like sploders and dancing.

I've occasionally heard people complain about the pace of slow games, whether it's about starting too late, waiting too long between questions, or sitting through a forty-minute intermission that was supposed to be fifteen. These complaints are rare among trivia regulars (besides the one about the forty-minute intermission, which is an ongoing joke), and pretty much only trivia newbies lack the tact to do it privately. But I've never heard anyone complain about a game moving too quickly, which makes me wonder why most hosts tend to opt for games with sparser question formats.

When I started doing impromptu trivias, I made it a point to try wrapping up the twenty questions within an hour (though bonus questions extend past that) because they take place in my garden, not at a club, and there's pretty much nothing else going on there except the trivia and watching the turtle walk around when I happen to have it rezzed. Also, the concept behind them recommends it: I'm asking people to come over at the last minute for trivia; I'm not going to make them wait for it.

There are reasons for slower pacing, though, and one of my other games -- Chaos Trivia/Truth or Dare -- falls at the other end of the spectrum for that, and a lot of effort goes into managing the pacing of this game for exactly that reason. There's much more going on at Chaos than trivia: when a player gets a question right, he or she wins the opportunity to challenge another player to a truth or dare. Some of these are quick (such as the dare to shout across the sim that you want to have sex with a chosen person), while some are much longer (those who put the most effort into the dare to IM something erotic to three people in the group tend to spend a lengthy chunk of time composing their messages).

My cohost Reke Wezzog and I try to move things along by paying attention to how much time is elapsing and by allowing people to complete longer dares while we continue asking questions, but much of the pacing depends on the players, the truths and dares involved, whether people are afk when they're challenged, whether a person completing a truth is a slow or a fast typist, the time it takes to find props for certain dares, etc. As a result, it's not unusual for ten or more minutes to go by between questions, though we try to keep it closer to five. In addition, I've recently begun turning my typing animation on while hosting Chaos specifically so that I don't appear to be silent or absent when I'm typing in between the times when something is more clearly taking place or when I'm answering a truth question. I started doing this when I noticed that players who use typing animation make it easier for us to gauge timing because we can tell if they're finished completing a truth or a chatty dare.

The point, though, is that the best pacing for a game is relative and hinges on a number of factors, at least when there are factors other than the trivia to take into account. Nonetheless, the questions remain: What's your pacing preference, both as players and as hosts? Does timing affect which games you choose to go to? If you host, are you conscious of pacing and/or did you use it as a factor in designing your game? If you prefer a more relaxed pace as a player, why?

Jasmina Kline hosting trivia at Charitable Bliss

********

Event Profile: Destiny's Lounge

Yesterday, my efforts to attend new games brought me to a little place called Destiny's for a DJed event with dancing, sploding, and trivia hosted by Loraine Alter. What made the strongest impression on me there was the warmth and friendliness of the group. There were few familiar faces there and none who stayed from beginning to end, but the club's staff and regulars were very inviting and amiable. I had a nice time dancing and talking and will probably return sometime for that reason alone.

The event took place on a little "pirate bar" pier (if you've been to an event on Marine Park's Big Sky Bay sim -- the northern sim -- it's the same structure). DJ Mudge Ashbourne fed the stream, guests fed the sploder, we all clicked the dance kitty to boogie, and eventually the trivia kicked in. There were twenty questions with no particular theme, and for a correct answer, you had your choice of either L$20 or the opportunity to ask a staff member to remove one item of clothing. Since I didn't know any of the staff, it was an easy choice.

As for the questions... here's where I confess that I felt a little overexperienced there. There are some trivia events that attract a lot of very good players, and since we're a social group, too, we sort of gravitate toward each other and to those games. There are other events that seem to be more "grassroots," in a sense. A host at a club or a cafe decides to incorporate some trivia into the normal event. The regulars have fun with it, maybe one or two stand out and have a knack for it, but there's still a big difference between what this type of game is like compared to one in which a number of the players rely on trivia winnings as their primary (or only) source of income in SL.

When I go to those sorts of events, I find myself sitting on my hands a lot (to borrow a friend's favorite phrase). At this one, most of the trivia were questions I'd heard before, probably a couple of times each, a few of them word-for-word. I made it a point not to answer two in a row, and still I took enough of the questions that others at the event began commenting (though not enough to attract serious plinking). But like I said, they were very friendly people, and several invited me to come back and bring friends. Earlier today, I received a notecard from the host about the next event because it was to be at a different location and I didn't join the group for announcements. That kind of effort to reach out is impressive.

Sample questions:

[2009/06/15 13:25] Loraine Alter: What organization elects the 15 judges of the World Court?

[2009/06/15 13:35] Loraine Alter: What socialist writer's last words were: "Last words are for fools who haven't said enough"?

[2009/06/15 13:43] Loraine Alter: Who did Henry VIII have beheaded for witchcraft and adultery, along with her wolfhound?


The club was filled not with trivia sharks answering these questions but with people who just wanted to have a good time and one guy who evidently located Loraine's resource on the web and was copy/pasting the answers (correct spelling, everything capitalized, just the right amount of time between the question and his answer). I would be curious as to how the place would change if more hardcore trivia players came to take advantage of the friendly atmosphere and familiar question topics. Most of the regulars would likely get shut out of the running on the questions as the competition picked up, but I'm not certain whether the increase in attendance would make up for that, where the club is concerned. Are more people always a good thing if they change the whole vibe?

Of course, my profiling the event makes that more likely, though I'm not expecting a mass exodus, since other trivia events take place at that time of day. But if you're looking for a new crowd or a new setting, even just for a day, or if you would rather have a staff member (males and females were present) remove an article of clothing over taking lindens, check in with Loraine and all of Destiny's babes. You probably won't be humming the Jeopardy! theme song in your head on any of the questions, but the social atmosphere is as friendly as could be.

The Specs:
=> Time/Day: Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, 12:00 to 2:00pm, though the trivia didn't start until nearly 40 minutes after the hour when I attended.
=> Location: Destiny's Lounge, http://slurl.com/secondlife/Darling/114/79/22 ... different events take place in different parts of the sim, so check your mini-map when you arrive and follow the green dots
=> Host: Loraine Alter
=> Prizes: L$20 per question for 20 questions, though you can elect to have a staff member remove an article of his or her clothing instead of the money

Answers to questions in the article:
=> United Nations
=> Karl Marx
=> Anne Boleyn

What's your question-writing process?

I've asked this question in each of the profiles I've done so far and plan to continue so that readers and I can get an idea of the huge range of ways people develop to put together their games, all in the interest of sharing helpful knowledge and learning from each other so we can put on the best trivia that we can. So that it doesn't seem like I'm culling people for their secrets without sharing my own, though, I thought I'd describe a new question-writing method I've recently started that has made the whole process of finding new topics and speaking to a range of difficulty levels much faster and easier than it previously had been for me.

It's pretty basic, really, and I'm probably not the only one who does it, but I call it Wiki-hopping: I use Wikipedia's "Random Article" option, clicking from page to page until I find something that would make good trivia. That's pretty much it. It brings me to subject matter I wouldn't have thought to write about before, and it's educational for me, too. Of course, the drawback is that if it's a topic I don't know very well myself, I might have trouble gauging the difficulty level, but for Bucc Bowl, we started triple-checking each other's questions before the May game so that each of us with our very different areas of expertise has the chance to make recommendations before the questions "go live."

I end up clicking through a lot of useless sludge, but I also learn a lot in the process. All of the questions I wrote for the June Bucc Bowl except for the bonuses I produced this way, and it took me less time than usual. Some people question Wikipedia's accuracy, so I pay attention to the website's own cautions at the top of the articles and don't use entries that need brushing up. Even on articles without cautions, I'll sometimes seek corroborating information from other sources. And of course, there is always our triple-checking system. If Thorn or Lillian spots a problem, we revise and try again.

Here are a few I put together today by Wiki-hopping for your trivial pleasure:

1. Oscar-winning film and radio star Mercedes "Mercy" McCambridge was once called "the world's greatest living radio actress" by what filmmaker?

2. What country scored the most medals in cross-country skiing at the 2006 Winter Olympics?

3. What TV show was the first- and second-season character Janice Licalsi written off of because producers didn't want to have a murderous police officer as a central figure?

4. Mohammed Ali Hammadi is a Lebanese member of Hezbollah who was convicted for his role in the hijacking of an airplane from what airline in 1985?

5. Messali Hadj was a politician and activist who worked for his country's independence from France in the 1940s and 1950s. What country was he from?

Lotus, Orianne, Lette, Cerys at Lebn's trivia

1. Orson Welles. McCambridge won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in All the King's Men. She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She worked with Welles on the film Touch of Evil.

2. Russia, with two golds, two silvers, and three bronzes.

3. NYPD Blue. The character, played by Amy Brenneman, killed a mob boss and his driver because the mob boss wanted her to murder her lover, played by David Caruso.

4. TWA. Flight 847 from Athens to Rome was rerouted and its passengers held hostage for two weeks before being released.

5. Algeria. Ironically, after Algeria won their independence in 1962, Hadj went into exile in France because an opposing party had taken Algeria over as a one-party state.

Of course, any of these answers could be found via google pretty easily; most likely, people will find the Wiki page I used right at the top of their searches. But first, even if one question were googled, the googler wouldn't then find all the others along with it, and second, I try to write questions in a way that will make it possible to guess if no one knows the answer right away. Even if you've never heard of McCambridge, Hammadi, and Hadj, you've probably heard of Welles, TWA, and Algeria, which means spamming filmmakers, airlines, and former French colonies will eventually lead to the correct answer.

Anyone who likes to is welcome to borrow or adapt this method. Yes, I know there are flaws in it, but pretty much any method has flaws. Methods that are based on the trivia writer's knowledge or access to specific sources will be biased in favor of players with the same general area of knowledge as the writer. This obviously does not make bad trivia, but unbiased trivia would be preferable. Just ask anyone who isn't from the U.S. how it is to sit through yet another game speckled with questions about states, presidents, and baseball. There will always be a balancing of strengths and weaknesses.

So if you like, please comment on your own methods or recommendations or what have you.

Also, sorry I've been so quiet in the blog this past week. I'll try to pick things back up for y'all soon!

Typos of the Week, June 7 through June 13

10. [13:05] Ailin Triellis: mastrihcs
[13:05] AnaMaria Quintessa: mastricty
[13:05] Gareth8 Albatros: maastricght]

9. [20:43] Browman Griffith: big diiopepr
[20:43] Jude Constantine: big didppper

8. [21:21] Lette Ponnier: aurtlsia

7. [16:23] Chaddington Boomhauer: beatite obut

6. [20:22] Trebor Shelman: ap[dua

5. [15:48] Cully Andel: epoeropepenguin

4. [19:17] Olmstead Fanshaw: giragfefe

3. [10:59] Cully Andel: bohemioan rahspdostd
[10:59] Cully Andel: erm
[10:59] Karmel Kips: bohenmina rhapshotdy

2. [18:31] Rekeorb Wezzog: fiar and ablandance

1. [14:52] Sweejen Stourmead: belguiuk,
[14:52] Lotus Ceriano: belfijmn

Rain and Ruth at Double Standards

10. Maastricht
9. Big Dipper
8. Australia
7. Beastie Boys
6. Padua
5. Emperor Penguin
4. giraffe
3. Potemkin
2. Fair and Balanced
1. Belgium