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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.
September 24 Math Bee
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.
Visit the New York City Spelling Bee site.
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!
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]).
*Note: Jen has no idea why she looks like the Incredible Hulkstress in that photo. September 3 Trivia Night Winners: The Freeze Rays
August 27 Math Bee Winner: Tim Layman
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.
August 13 Vocabulary Tournament Winner: Ed Goldsmith
August 6 Team Trivia Winners: Team Venture
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.
July 23rd Team Geography Winners: Strangers with PBR
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.
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)
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?"
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.
June 25th Geography Bee Winner: Frank Chang
June 18th Vocabulary Bee Winner: Simon Astor
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:
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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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).
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 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:
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