October 1 Trivia Night

Winners: Romantic Bickering

This twosome (also known as "Team Fleshbot") bested three larger teams in a varied contest that asked them to name historical vice presidents, identify fonts, name the poet behind various famous poems, complete missing lines from anthems and lullabies, and fill in the life history of the late, great Paul Newman.


Winners "Romantic Bickering" with hosts Jen and Michael Malice.


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September 24 Math Bee

Winner: Viveca Gardner

Here's a fun question (courtesy Soce the Elemental Wizard) from this month's math bee:

You go out on a date.  At the end of the date, you and your loved one kiss!  After your second date, you kiss twice.  After your third date, you get in an argument and don't kiss at all. After your fourth date, you make up and kiss three times.  Fifth date leads to four kisses.  Sixth date leads to another argument with no kisses.  Keeping up this pattern, after how many dates will you have kissed at least 100 times total? (Answer at bottom).

Viveca Gardner dominated this month's math bee, especially killing in the speed round. Next math bee is October 22nd!


Winner Viveca with hosts Soce and Jen and runners-up Syd and Rich


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(Answer: 20).

Special Affiliated Event: September 20 Spelling Bee

Winner: Carolyn D'Aquila

Over 55 people and over 35 contestants came out for this past Saturday's bee at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe! Spellers breezed through "acknowledge" and "renown," persevered through "pomological" and "accipiter," and the final few pushed on through "schipperke" and "papeterie." Carolyn D'Aquila triumphed and took home an adorable bee-themed trophy and a Housing Works gift card.


Winner Carolyn D'Aquila with hosts Jen and bobby


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Visit the New York City Spelling Bee site.
http://www.nycbee.com

 

September 10 Geography Bee

Winner: Frank Chang

Frank wins again! However, he was sad to report that his job is making him work Wednesdays, thus giving everyone else a clear shot at next month's title. Congratulations, Frank, and we'll miss you!


Winner Frank Chang (left, kissing prize) with runners-up Bertis and Jordan and hosts Meg and Jen


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September 10 Vocabulary Tournament

Winner: Myrna Kilkenny

Myrna took this week's contest over four rounds that asked contestants to construct sentences with three difficult vocabulary words, to choose a real word amidst a list of made-up ones, and -- in a very fun round designed by Jonathan -- to come up with specific three-, four-, and five-letter words constructed from the letters in the word "disestablishment" (for instance, a three-letter word for a young louse [nit], a four-letter word for the end of a loaf of bread [heel], and a five-letter word for a common herb [basil]).


Winner Myrna Kilkenny (second from left) with runners-up Max and Anne and hosts Jen* and Jonathan. 


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*Note: Jen has no idea why she looks like the Incredible Hulkstress in that photo.  

September 3 Trivia Night

Winners: The Freeze Rays



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August 27 Math Bee

Winner: Tim Layman


Winner Tim Layman (middle) with hosts Soce and Jen, and 2nd place winner Keith (taller) and 3rd place winner Andy (precocious).


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August 20 Geography Bee

Winner: Rich Berger

The Geography Bee, after a brief flirtation with a team format, has returned to an individual competition format (like a spelling bee, but about The Entire World!) Rich Berger handily cleaned up in rounds asking him about major rivers (as in, "What is the major river that runs through Dublin?"), state flags (as in, "What state does this bizarre looking 18th-century design disaster belong to?"), and even in a round that stretched the very definitions of "geography" by asking questions about the moon. Musician Jim Parenti, who played before the bee, was an excellent sport for staying to compete.


Winner Rich Berger (center) poses with hosts Jen and Meg and tied-for-second-place finalists Chumma and Devin.


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August 13 Vocabulary Tournament

Winner: Ed Goldsmith


Winner Ed Goldsmith with hosts Jonathan Lill and Jen Dziura.


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August 6 Team Trivia

Winners: Team Venture


Winners Team Venture with hosts Michael Malice and Jen Dziura.


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July 30th Math Bee

Winner: Mark Levine At this mathstravaganza, contestants answered questions such as "A man is less than 70 years old. His current age is 5 times the sum of the digits of his age. 9 years from now the order of the current digits of his age will be reversed. How old is he now?" and "One day, you get 20 pieces of mail. 10 are important and 10 are junk. If you open up 2 of them at random, what are the odds (in fraction form) that they will both be junk?" (45 and 9/38) Winner Mark Levine knows all these things. Mark Levine knows all.


Winner Mark Levine (second from left) with hosts Jen and Soce, and 2nd and 3rd place winners David and Heath.


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July 23rd Team Geography

Winners: Strangers with PBR

This was our first foray into using a team format for the Geography Bee.  Many seemed to enjoy the more relaxed atmosphere, although the more competitive among the players were still able to come up to the front to represent their teams in the Final Drawing Challenge, in which one contestant from each of the top three teams was asked to draw a borough of New York.  Previous winner Frank Chang drew an admirable Queens, but, in the end, Strangers with PBR came into the drawing round with a winning margin of points, allowing a pretty decent rendering of the Bronx to give them the win.


Your Hostesses


Winning Team "Strangers with PBR"


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July 16th Vocabulary Tournament

Winner: Wendi Hoffenberg

Wendi triumphed in Mind Games' most highly-attended Vocabulary Tournament ever, an event in which the highlight may have been one flummoxed contestant's attempt to use "obfuscate," "paltry," and "paragon" in a single sentence: I went to the store to get some obfuscate and walked down the paltry aisle, all in a store called Paragon.

Wendi had no such difficulties, finally triumphing in a round that asked each contestant, with the use of the whiteboard, to find "kangaroo words" -- synonyms hidden inside certain words, made up of letters appearing in that word in the same order. For instance, by crossing out letters in "unsightly," it is possible to spell the word's synonym, "ugly." Wendi nailed two out of three of these in a tough final round and won eternal verbal glory.


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July 9th Team Trivia

Winner: Tart Cherry Stompers

The Tart Cherry Stompers did indeed stomp! They knew the two nations that begin with "Z" (Zimbabwe and Zambia), what Gandhi famously said when asked what he thought of Western civilization ("It would be a good idea"), and various wonderful facts about Stockholm Syndrome, the Symbionese Liberation Army, Vichy France, the Trojan War, and the band Urge Overkill.

One fun round asked teams to identify what recording artist was behind each of the following songs proclaiming what "love is":

Love is a Battlefield (Pat Benatar)
Love is a Rose (Neil Young)
Love is a Cannibal (Elton John)
Love is a Dangerous Thing (Bruce Springsteen)
Love is a Contact Sport (Whitney Houston)


Winning team with hosts Michael Malice and Jen Dziura


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July 2nd Math Bee

Winner: Margaret Winchell

We didn't ask how old Margaret was, but we're pretty sure a bunch of adults got stomped by a high school student. She was lightning-fast and came to the fore in the speed round. Contestants competed to do speedy arithmetic in their heads, and then to answer questions such as, "What is the maximum number of times 5 lines can intersect?" and "Six Jell-o wrestling champions are going to compete in a tournament in which each wrestler wrestles each other wrestler three times. How many matches will be fought?"


Winner Margaret with hosts Soce and Jen


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Special Affiliated Event: June 28 Spelling Bee

Winner: Robert Moy

27 contestants and many more spectators came out to this second-ever NYC Spelling Bee. Contestants in the new "challenge" round got to select words for their fellow spellers to spell, and challenge they did, asking each other to spell "panegyrical," "ginglymus," "fastigium" and more.  An enthusiastic Robert Moy (presciently, perhaps) signed up first and, indeed, came in first.


Winner Robert Moy with hosts bobbyblue and Jen Dziura.


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June 25th Geography Bee

Winner: Frank Chang

CAN ANYONE BEAT FRANK CHANG?  Frank Chang was again victorious in a competition that asked audience members about the Wonders of the World (being that there is no Wonder of the World authority, there are a lot more than seven) and where various languages are spoken (Malagasy = Madagascar), and, finally, asked each of the five finalists to draw a particular country, also labeling its capital.  Some attempts were more successful than others:

japan
Japan

spain
Spain

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Winner Frank Chang with hosts Jen and Meg, in front of "Canada."  (We took several versions of this photo, and seriously, this is the best one.  It's not a photography bee).

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June 18th Vocabulary Bee

Winner: Simon Astor

Contestants at this month's vocabulary bee correctly used words like "jingoist", "expeditiously" and "panache" in the same sentence, guessed that "pomivorous" meant "apple-eating" but had difficulty figuring out that "hippophagia" meant "horse-eating" (rather astoundingly) knew what a "puggree" is (a cloth band around a hat or helmet), and performed admirably in a speed challenge giving them a word and asking them for synonyms ending in -sion ("lack of emotion" = "dispassion"). Simon Astor leaped into the lead early with a gorgeously-delivered sentence, and maintained his lexical domination to the end.


Winner Simon Astor with hosts Jon and Jen.


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June 11th Team Trivia

Winner: Elrond Hubbard

Participants came in groups, in pairs, and alone to Team Trivia, cordially joining up into four teams to compete for the win. Sweet Soubrette opened the night, and then contestants hunkered down at their tables to answer questions in various categories including:

Presidential Politics:

  • What did John McCain say on The Today Show this morning was “not too important”? (bringing troops home from Iraq)
  • Name the Indian-American governor of Louisiana whose name has been bandied about as a McCain VP (Bobby Jindal)
  • If elected, Obama would be the first black president. Who was the first Episcopalian president? (George Washington)


Lesbians:

  • Name the actress who currently appears on The L Word, and who played a stripper/welder in a popular 1983 film. (Jennifer Beals)
  • In what year was the first openly lesbian representative elected to Congress -- or --what is her name or state? (Tammy Baldwin from Wisconsin, 1998)
  • Gertrude Stein’s longterm partner published a French cookbook in 1954. What was her name? (Alice B. Toklas)

    Subways:


  • How many stops from 125th Street to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall, inclusive, on the 6? (20 -within 1)
  • Where, on the G, could you transfer to the A and C trains? (Hoyt-Schermerhorn)
  • What is the second to last stop on the Brooklyn-bound L? (105th St)
  • Name all 4 trains that stop at the Coney Island/Stillwell Ave stop? (D,F,N,Q)

    Lyrics:

  • Write down the next lyric after the Pussycat Dolls' "I’m telling you to loosen up my buttons baby" (but you keep fronting)
  • From Pink's "Stupid Girls," the next lyric after "What happened to the dreams of a girl president" (She's dancing in the video next to 50 Cent)

Team "Elrond Hubbard" cleaned up, also gaining 6 points in a bonus challenge engineered by host Michael Malice, giving each team ten guesses to try to list 10 of the original 31 flavors of ice cream introduced by Baskin-Robbins in 1945.


Winners "Elrond Hubbard" with hosts Jen and Michael


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June 2 Math Bee

Winner: Keith Burdette

Contestants this month converged on Chelsea Market and conquered questions such as "You have three kinds of human teeth—front teeth, bicuspids, and molars. You are making a necklace in the pattern front, bicuspid, molar, molar. What is the 26th tooth in the pattern?" and "You are a serial killer who only kills on prime-numbered days of the month. If you are caught on July 22nd, how many people will you have killed that month?"  

Keith Burdette vanquished all math, also correctly telling us that the smallest integer that 16!/16 is NOT divisible by is 17 . Co-host Abbi Crutchfield hilariously offered numerical facts throughout the bee, and everyone was totally clear on the fact that if you walk 12 blocks to a booty call at 2 blocks per minute and do the walk of shame back home at 1 block per minute, your average walking speed is NOT 1.5 blocks per minute (it is 1.33 blocks per minute, which makes more sense if you think about the fact that you spent more time doing the walk of shame, even if the distance was the same). Not that anyone at the math bee would ever do the walk of shame.


Winner Keith Burdette with hosts Abbi and Jen.


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May 28 Geography Bee

Winner: Frank Chang

At this month's Geography Bee, contestants were asked world capitals (with an option to downgrade to a state capital for fewer possible points) and irregular demonyms ("What do you call a person from Montenegro?"), and were asked to draw various states.  Contestants took wild guesses, drawing Rhode-Islandish lumps and squarish Dakotas, mixing up South Carolina for North Carolina and Washington for Oregon, and in some cases drawing a very fine Oklahoma or Utah -- just backwards.  One man who was not daunted by these challenges was Frank Chang, who emerged victorious through three rounds and a final speed round in which the top three named as many former Soviet republics, Canadian provinces, or Eurozone nations as possible in under a minute.

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Winner Frank Chang with hosts Jen and Meg.

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This rendering of Washington helpfully includes the Space Needle.

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Special Affiliated Event: May 24 Spelling Bee

Winner: Ashley Newman

The first-ever New York City Spelling Bee brought out 26 contestants and many more friends and spectators to the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in Soho.  Drinks were drunk, free popcorn was consumed.  It was a sesquipedalian bee, as spellers gave us p-a-r-a-c-h-r-o-n-i-s-m (a chronological error), q-u-a-d-r-u-m-s-n-o-u-s (having four hands), c-o-l-l-y-w-o-b-b-l-e-s (a stomachache), and many more.

Twelve spellers made it into the final round, one in first place and two tied for second.  After a suspenseful runoff between Geoff Cardillo and Jonathan Lill, prizes were awarded to Jonathan in 3rd place, Geoff in 2nd, and -- leading the pack with eight words correct over the course of the bee -- Ashley Newman in 1st.

Be sure to come out in June for the next installment of the New York City Spelling Bee.

beewarmerss
Jen Dziura and bobbyblue perform the New York City Spelling Bee Theme Song they co-wrote.

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2nd place Geoff Cardozo, host bobbyblue, 3rd place Jonathan Lill, host Jen Dziura, and Grand Prize Winner Ashley Newman.


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May 21 Vocabulary Tournament

Winner: Rich Zwelling

Chelsea Mind Games' second-ever Vocabulary Tournament brought out 15 contestants and a full crowd of spectators.  In round one, contestants used hard vocabulary words in a sentence ("The yeomanly sea captain, spying a bunch of bees on his ship, perspicaciously remarked 'Look at the apiary!'")  The sentence round is always enjoyable to behold because contestants, given three difficult words and asked to use as many of them as possible, often take a stab at unknown words, with hilarious results: as one contestant told us,  "There's a lot of pulchritude in my orange juice."

The next round asked contestants to identify words for professions, as in "What does a Resurrection Man do?" (robs graves) and "What does a chandler make?" (candles).  The third round asked for synonyms, and the top three contestants went on a to a final speed round in which they were asked to come up with words ending in -ate that met certain definitions (as in, drool = salivate, rob of energy = enervate, move in waves = undulate).


Emerging victorious was Rich Zwelling, who took home tickets to Comix as well as a copy of the Yo Momma Vocabulary Builder, source of such gems as "Yo momma is so sybaritic, she makes Liberace look ascetic!"


Winner Rich Zwelling with hosts Jen and Jonathan.


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May 14th Team Trivia

Winning team: Shogun Tampon

In the first-ever Team Trivia night, winning team "Shogun Tampon" (did they really have to name themselves that?) correctly told us -- among many other things -- that the cookie named after a 19th century novel heroine is a "Lorna Doone," that the 1980 "Billygate" scandal was about Jimmy Carter's brother Billy, that the train that goes to Rockaway Beach is the A, that the XYZ Affair of 1798 was about France, that the formerly scandalous political figure who graduated in 2006 from the London School of Economics was Monica Lewinsky, that Lil Mama's hit song is about lip gloss, that the Beatles' "Taxman" wants to tax "your feet" when you take a walk, and that the fruit referenced in Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" is "bananas" (or B-A-N-A-N-A-S).

Co-host Michael Malice, in a bonus question he insisted we "all know the answers to," asked teams to list, in descending order, the last 10 prices of stamps, of which Shogun Tampon was able to list five, all the way back to those halcyon days of the 34-center.

Hosts Michael and Jen with winning team Shogun Tampon, who won autographed copies of Ken Jennings' "Brainiac," plus tickets to Comix comedy club.

Kicking off the night, musical guest Schaffer the Darklord stunned the unsuspecting crowd with nerdalicious rap songs about grammar, his love of nerdy girls, and cats. Capping off the evening, author Judy McGuire of "How Not to Date" gave us salacious stories and wise advice, and gave a signed copy of her book to the winner of a bad-date storytelling contest.

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May 7th Math Bee

Winner: Jahan Sagafi

Our first-ever math bee brought out a great crowd and fifteen competitors who answered questions such as "If there is a 1 in 10 chance you'll be fatally run over by the A train, and a one in 5 chance you'll be fatally stabbed in front of your local bodega, what are the chances that you will EITHER be fatally hit by the A train OR be stabbed to death?" (The answer is 3 in 10 - click here for more questions).

Musician Katie Pawluk opened up the night, and then hosts Jen Dziura and Charlie Kasov threw out a mix of guessable questions and trickier questions, some of which allowed contestants to write on the board, and some of which required them to do the problems in their heads. After a tough bee, a quick-thinking Jahan Sagafi emerged victorious.

Jen Dziura and Jahan Sagafi, who received a copy of the book "Geek Logik" and tickets to Comix.

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April 30th Geography Bee

Winner: Jeff Newman

Chelsea Mind Games' first-ever Geography Bee was a smashing, spatially-accurate success, with 16 competitors, another dozen or so spectators, and a five-year-old girl who really, really wanted to be behind a microphone.  Competitors named all the state capitals beginning with "b" (Boise, Bismarck, Baton Rouge), told us where the Little Mermaid sits (Copenhagen), and identified mountain ranges and Great Lakes with aplomb.

Erin and Her Cello started off the night:

Geography Bee co-host (and encyclopedia editor by day) Meg Van Huygen showed off her map-themed skirt:

And in the end, winner Jeff Newman took home the Boozes of the World Trophy (also known as Jameson's).  Behind him, second-place winner Jonathan Beatrice took home the Vodka Trophy (from Finland!).  Gregory Nissen took home Rum Trophy (from Barbados!)

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April 23rd Vocabulary Tournament:

Winner: M.G. Duke

M.G. Duke came in a clear winner with a perfect 10 (fives from both judges) in the "Use three hard vocab words in a sentence" round (his sentence was succint as well as unhesitatingly delivered, and even rhymed!) and a 5 of 5 in the synonyms round.  And a dip in the eponyms round ("Which word wasn't really named after a person?"), M.G. came back to conquer in the speed round: given one minute and a series of Latin and Greek roots, he named 21 words using those roots, for a total of 36 points overall!

M.G. Duke
M.G. Duke at the mic

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All photos by Brian Van.