Worst Question EVER...

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Mike Bentley
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Post by Mike Bentley »

Oh, and at that tournament with the Oscar Meyer Weiner bonus, earlier bonuses had delightful bonuses like:

"Add the number of players on a soccer team to the number of championships that the Yankees have, then multiply them by the number of goals in a hat trick, ..." etc.
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Maxwell Sniffingwell
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Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

Actually, I like questions like that. Panasonic uses questions like that - one that I remember was take the standard frequency of the tuning A of an orchestra, divide by the number of keys on a standard piano, subtract 5, subtract the number of symphonies by Beethoven.
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Post by MJG »

At an unrecalled varsity tournament:

What are buildings for?

A: People.

Last night at a HORRIBLE local meet:

Why is it bad for your health to be overweight?

How many days of the week end in y?

From a Wheaton North fresh-soph:

Bonus: Stand up and point to the location of the following body parts on another member of your team.

From a Moline meet: Given the following car models, name the specific type of yellow that each is produced in. (Answers were like "baby yellow", "sunshine yellow", and "electric yellow")
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Post by David Riley »

I have to defend the Wheaton North question, which I believe was an anatomy question; the answer was simply different than speaking the names of the body parts. What's wrong with a little variety?


--David Riley, wearning a fern shirt and charcoal gray pants....
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Post by Tegan »

MJG wrote:From a Moline meet: Given the following car models, name the specific type of yellow that each is produced in. (Answers were like "baby yellow", "sunshine yellow", and "electric yellow")
I also recall my very first tournament at Moline there wasa question asking for the leading (or best selling) journal of the Meat Indutry.

My poor suburban team looked at me with a "are you kidding me" look, while my assistant turned to me and asked if they were all like this.

Even the rural team we were playing couldn't answer it .... so it wasn't just us!

Of course ..... lllinois is less beef country and more soy country.
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Worst Question

Post by Phil Castagna »

For the dinosaurs out there....


The "Hare Krishna - Muppet Movie" running gag of.....


1. Who wrote Paradise Lost?

the next year - Who wrote "Who wrote Paradise Lost"?

2 years later - Who wrote "Who wrote "Who wrote Paraside Lost"?

To explain,

#1 was the in toto tossup at a modified ACF tournament at a tournament in the Potomac River basin (look up which one it was, I'm not giving it away.)
The answers are...

John Milton (duh)
Johns Hopkins C
John Edwards
MJG
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Post by MJG »

True, Mr. Riley. It might have been bone names or something like that, I don't remember clearly. I guess it's not a bad question, just an exceedingly odd one IMHO, and not very different from common bonuses asking "what part of the body contains the following bones".
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dtaylor4
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Post by dtaylor4 »

MJG wrote:Bonus: Stand up and point to the location of the following body parts on another member of your team.
According to legend, my old team lost a match on this bonus:

Given a ballet position, demonstrate it.
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Post by MJG »

I would pay a LOT of money to see that! Sad that it cost the match, though. Under different circumstances, that could be gold. Perhaps we shoul make "funniest question ever" a new thread.
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JohnAndSlation
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Post by JohnAndSlation »

Then there's the immortal "This red-nosed reindeer..."
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Post by Tegan »

I think that, as long as we can all be honest and not invent our own questions (Cornfused, I'm looking right at you!), We should have a poll at the end of the year to pick the worst question of the year. Kind of like the Golden Raspberrys ...... Maybe we could call them the Golden Hose Awards.
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Post by David Riley »

I can think of another name for these awards (other "old timers" will know what I mean).


Though as Alice Roosevelt Longworth said,

"If you don't have anything nice to say about someone, come sit next to me".
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Post by Tegan »

David Riley wrote:I can think of another name for these awards (other "old timers" will know what I mean).
I was thinking we could call it the "Golden Diminished Seventh Award" .... but I think that question will be in the running.

:twisted:
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Post by Tegan »

If there are no objections .......

If a question is asked this year in competition (no 15 year old questions that came up in practice), AND (important) it is OK to post it (see "question posting guidelines before posting).

1. Try to post it word -for-word, with the date and locale of the tournament.

In early May, I will pick the 10 or so best, and we'll take a vote.

Thus is born the Golden Hose Awards.
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Post by Stained Diviner »

Maybe we should call it the Elephant Molar Award, and the trophy should weigh exactly 9 pounds.
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Post by quizbowllee »

ReinsteinD wrote:Maybe we should call it the Elephant Molar Award, and the trophy should weigh exactly 9 pounds.
That would pretty much ensure the first winner of the award, would it not? Also, do we notify the guilty tournament director and/or writer of this dubious distinction?
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Post by CHSplayerRohan »

i'll tell you a dumb one. it was a bonus.
it was "Identify the following coaches at MSU"
football
men's basketball
women's basketball
baseball
how the heck should anyone know that?
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Post by Belgarion89 »

From my junior high days: "This is an educational facility, or a group of fish."

My captain and I still turn red whenever someone brings that question up.
We didn't start the fire.....
MJG
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Post by MJG »

Stupid, yes. But at least it was a middle school question.
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Matthew D
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Post by Matthew D »

Just because it is middle school doesn't mean it is "okay" to have bad questions.. all of those middle schoolers need to have good questions also... not the elephant tooth
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Re: Worst Question

Post by colonial »

A few more classics...

Actual tossup read at a college packet submission tournament in 1994 (believe it was TIT, but I'm not 100%).

TU: For a quick 10 points, what is the minimum age to legally drive a moped in South Carolina?

The question, you guessed it, was written by a South Carolina team.

(Four years later, I was moderating at TIT when a South Carolina team -- completely different from the 1994 squad -- walked into my room. I welcomed them to the tournament and told that there was this question I had about SC that I couldn't get an answer to, and I needed their help. I proceeded to ask the above question :smile: )

Going back further to high school and 1990, came this HS student-written question at a tournament in Morris Hills, NJ.

Q: The new editions of Playboy and Penthouse appeared on newsstands last week. Name either this month's Playboy Playmate or this month's Penthouse Pet.

Note the following:

1. This is a HIGH SCHOOL TOURNAMENT, and at least one or two teams were made up entirely of 7th-8th graders.

2. I attended a Catholic high school, and our principal, who happened to be a priest, was in the room He glared at us as the question was being read, and we promptly passed the question to the other team (the rules for this version of QB was very different from what many of you are used to -- I'll try and explain how this worked if you wish).

As you may guess, close to 25-30 coaches raised holy heck to the host school's principal, and the student who wrote the question, as well as the coach who approved the question's use, were punished.

James
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Post by Hoborobo »

CHSplayerRohan wrote:i'll tell you a dumb one. it was a bonus.
it was "Identify the following coaches at MSU"
football
men's basketball
women's basketball
baseball
how the heck should anyone know that?
The football coach was just recently fired, and the men's basketball coach is rather famous...(Come on, who doesn't know Tom Izzo?)

The other 2 are pretty obscure though.

But kids from Michigan would get them :-)
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Post by Djibouti »

Was he talking about Mississippi State (he's from Clinton, MS) or Michigan State?

Sylvester Croom for MS State football is pretty easy, as is Tom Izzo for MI State basketball. As for the others (MS State: Rod Barnes - basketball, Sharon Fanning - women's basketball, Ron Polk - baseball; MI State: John Smith - football, Joanne McCallie - women's basketball, David Grewe - baseball), they are pretty much completely obscure unless you live in the respective states. In Maryland, the average team's sports person would have gotten 3 out of the 4 for Maryland schools very easily, so that's not a bad bonus if they're asking it for the host state's schools.
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Post by swwFCqb »

here's a question that i had the unfortunate pleasure of hearing last year on WHIV-TV out of New Concord, Ohio:

Q: What is the biggest diamond in the world?
A: A baseball diamond
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Post by quizbowllee »

swwFCqb wrote:here's a question that i had the unfortunate pleasure of hearing last year on WHIV-TV out of New Concord, Ohio:

Q: What is the biggest diamond in the world?
A: A baseball diamond
Because cheesy riddles make great quiz bowl questions!
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Irreligion in Bangladesh
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Post by Irreligion in Bangladesh »

quizbowllee wrote:
swwFCqb wrote:here's a question that i had the unfortunate pleasure of hearing last year on WHIV-TV out of New Concord, Ohio:

Q: What is the biggest diamond in the world?
A: A baseball diamond
Because cheesy riddles make great quiz bowl questions!
This reeks of "Which 4 Presidents are not buried in the US?"
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Post by catsasslippers »

I think my favorite moment this year was the strangest (albeit well written ) tossup at the Harvard tournement.
The answer was: Serta Sheep.
Sheep, Mattress-selling sheep, and Mattress-selling sheep with numbers on them, were the answers my teammate provided, but none were sufficient.
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Post by Tegan »

styxman wrote:
quizbowllee wrote:
swwFCqb wrote:here's a question that i had the unfortunate pleasure of hearing last year on WHIV-TV out of New Concord, Ohio:

Q: What is the biggest diamond in the world?
A: A baseball diamond
Because cheesy riddles make great quiz bowl questions!
This reeks of "Which 4 Presidents are not buried in the US?"
Well.....at least the presidents question actually required you to know presidents ...... To borrow from Bart Simpson: This question both sucks and blows.
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Post by Kyle »

catsasslippers wrote:I think my favorite moment this year was the strangest (albeit well written ) tossup at the Harvard tournement.
The answer was: Serta Sheep.
Sheep, Mattress-selling sheep, and Mattress-selling sheep with numbers on them, were the answers my teammate provided, but none were sufficient.
I didn't write it (credit instead to my roommate, Adam), but I will take responsibility for its inclusion in our tournament. Anyway, if you're going to ask a question about advertising mascots, it seems fair to require that teams know the company that they advertise. Just saying "sheep" is ambiguous.

Anyway, I'm just going to take your post as a compliment and not worry about the fact that it's posted in a thread called "worst question ever" right after the question on the world's largest diamond.
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Post by Kyle »

(Sorry for the double post)

Incidentally, here's my vote for worst (or should it be best?!) tossup ever:

This (noun) (verb) kids with (amount of time) of fun in the (decade). Usually ordered through Weekly Readers, you played by filling in a skeleton with (noun) and (noun). For (number) points, name this word game.
ANSWER: mad libs

(http://quizbowl.stanford.edu/archive/theme/1980s.html)
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Post by Captain Sinico »

Kyle wrote:...if you're going to ask a question about advertising mascots...
Worst hypothesis ever?

MaS
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Post by Kyle »

ImmaculateDeception wrote:
Kyle wrote:...if you're going to ask a question about advertising mascots...
Worst hypothesis ever?
MaS
For precedent in high school quiz bowl, I refer you to Stephen, the Dell guy (http://www.naqt.com/samples/t1160packet_1.pdf). Serta sheep, at least, are cute.
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Post by Vance »

This came up during practice, when we were using a really old packet...

Q: What kind of bird doesn't know the words?
A: A hummingbird.
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Post by quizbowllee »

Now that I think about it, I've seen both the "baseball diamond" and "hummingbird" examples on popsicle sticks.
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Post by CHSplayerRohan »

Djibouti wrote:Was he talking about Mississippi State (he's from Clinton, MS) or Michigan State?

Sylvester Croom for MS State football is pretty easy, as is Tom Izzo for MI State basketball. As for the others (MS State: Rod Barnes - basketball, Sharon Fanning - women's basketball, Ron Polk - baseball; MI State: John Smith - football, Joanne McCallie - women's basketball, David Grewe - baseball), they are pretty much completely obscure unless you live in the respective states. In Maryland, the average team's sports person would have gotten 3 out of the 4 for Maryland schools very easily, so that's not a bad bonus if they're asking it for the host state's schools.
i was talking about MS state university.
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Post by OP_Huskies »

Well, while we're here, my friends and I are planning a "tournament" filled with questions like:

TU 3: Literature.

The derivative of x squared plus 5 x is 2 x plus 5. Who wrote "War and Piece?"

(Leo) Tolstoy (prompt on 2 x plus 5)
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Post by The Time Keeper »

OP_Huskies wrote:Well, while we're here, my friends and I are planning a "tournament" filled with questions like:

TU 3: Literature.

The derivative of x squared plus 5 x is 2 x plus 5. Who wrote "War and Piece?"

(Leo) Tolstoy (prompt on 2 x plus 5)
Yeah don't do that.
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Post by e_steinhauser »

OP_Huskies wrote:Well, while we're here, my friends and I are planning a "tournament" filled with questions like:

TU 3: Literature.

The derivative of x squared plus 5 x is 2 x plus 5. Who wrote "War and Piece?"

(Leo) Tolstoy (prompt on 2 x plus 5)
Sounds like :chip:
--eps
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Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

OP_Huskies wrote:Well, while we're here, my friends and I are planning a "tournament" filled with questions like:

TU 3: Literature.

The derivative of x squared plus 5 x is 2 x plus 5. Who wrote "War and Piece?"

(Leo) Tolstoy (prompt on 2 x plus 5)
I have trouble telling if this is a joke, or if you're really planning this.

Seriously, don't do that. Any talented player worth their salt will leave halfway through the first game, and any coach worth their salt will leave at the same time. No good teams will bother staying, and no good teams would ever come back. It sounds like Chip Beall crap, and their's a reason good teams don't go to his tournaments.
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Post by QuizbowlPostmodernist »

From the finals 1999 Falcon Fall Classic at Bowling Green State University in Ohio:

To tell time, to check the temperature, to turn on and off a videocassette recorder, to track grades, to prepare notes, to communicate long distances and to run satellites. FTP, these are all different functions of what kind of machine that you can check your email on.

The author of the question was an experienced, if not particularly good, college player who proceeded to defend the question in a later conversation. For me, that makes it so much worse than questions written by either a) inexperienced people who can't be expected to know better and b) certain individuals/companies who don't care and just crank out (or recycle) questions based on how easy it is for them. I don't think any of the authors of previously mentioned questions here thought that they were writing one of the greatest tossups ever.
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Post by OP_Huskies »

note to everyone who took my last post seriously, i was completely and utterly unserious.

jb
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Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Glad to hear it.
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Post by Golden Tiger 86 »

CHSplayerRohan wrote:
Djibouti wrote:Was he talking about Mississippi State (he's from Clinton, MS) or Michigan State?

Sylvester Croom for MS State football is pretty easy, as is Tom Izzo for MI State basketball. As for the others (MS State: Rod Barnes - basketball, Sharon Fanning - women's basketball, Ron Polk - baseball; MI State: John Smith - football, Joanne McCallie - women's basketball, David Grewe - baseball), they are pretty much completely obscure unless you live in the respective states. In Maryland, the average team's sports person would have gotten 3 out of the 4 for Maryland schools very easily, so that's not a bad bonus if they're asking it for the host state's schools.
i was talking about MS state university.
OK, Rod Barnes was at Ole Miss. Get the two right, you heathen named after an African country!!! The basketball coach at The Oktibbeha County Correctional Facility---I mean Moo U---I mean Mississippi State, is Rick Stansbury. FWIW, the basketball coach at Ole Miss now is Andy Kennedy, as Rod Barnes was fired last year.
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