Trivia Championship of North America

Quote:

The Trivia Championships of North America — the first event of its kind — will take place in Las Vegas, Nevada
on July 8-10, 2011. The website found at www.tcona.com includes a preliminary schedule, FAQ, and link for
application to participate. Registrations received by May 1 will help determine the precise location in Las Vegas.
Questions and other inquiries may be sent to tcona@comcast.net, by fax to 303/957-5487, or via postal mail to
TCONA, PO Box 3037, Boulder, CO 80307.

Could be a good excuse for a WoVCon if enough people drop out of the original date.

More info

It's ba-ack! TCONA returns for a second year. It will be held at Circus Circus on August 10th-12th.

More information and registration here.

I know at least a couple of the people involved in this. There used to be an organization called T.R.A.S.H. (Testing Recall About Strange Happenings) that ran a couple pop culture team trivia tournaments every year, mostly for college students, held on college campuses. The tournaments were always a fun time, if a little competitive and maybe too male-centered. T.R.A.S.H. folded a few years ago, but I think some of the members moved on to this group.

There should be a separate event for cocktail waitress trivia. Seems like they already have like 50 events, so what's another.

A few years back VH1 had the "World Series of Pop Culture". I liked watching those.

Game Show Network has that short lived trivia series with several big time game show champions..I forget the name of it. THey would go head to head answering questions while their bank of time ticked down. when they answered correctly the other person's clock started. Whomever ran out of time first lost.

Quote: slyther

Game Show Network has that short lived trivia series with several big time game show champions..I forget the name of it. THey would go head to head answering questions while their bank of time ticked down. when they answered correctly the other person's clock started. Whomever ran out of time first lost.

Grand Slam, which was a 16-player single-elimination event. Ken Jennings ended up winning; Brad Rutter lost in an early round as he appears to have a significant problem with math problems. The way the show worked was, there were four rounds; general knowledge, math problems, word problems, and the final round had questions from all three categories. In each of the first three rounds, both players started with 60 seconds, and alternated questions; the player's clock counted down until he got an answer correct or passed the question (each player had three passes per game, and the same question could be passed back and forth multiple times). In the final round, any time left over from previous rounds was added to that player's 60 seconds, and whoever had his opponent run out of time first won.

I was under the impression that world, or at least national, trivia championships have been going on since at least the 1970s (ABC's 1970s late night slot had the finals one year - the format was similar to College Bowl, but with three-player teams). Also, I thought the King's X Pub in Oakland had at least one national trivia championship team before it was sold in 2005 (it is now the Kona Club).

Quote: ThatDonGuy

Grand Slam, which was a 16-player single-elimination event. Ken Jennings ended up winning; Brad Rutter lost in an early round as he appears to have a significant problem with math problems. The way the show worked was, there were four rounds; general knowledge, math problems, word problems, and the final round had questions from all three categories. In each of the first three rounds, both players started with 60 seconds, and alternated questions; the player's clock counted down until he got an answer correct or passed the question (each player had three passes per game, and the same question could be passed back and forth multiple times). In the final round, any time left over from previous rounds was added to that player's 60 seconds, and whoever had his opponent run out of time first won.

I was under the impression that world, or at least national, trivia championships have been going on since at least the 1970s (ABC's 1970s late night slot had the finals one year - the format was similar to College Bowl, but with three-player teams). Also, I thought the King's X Pub in Oakland had at least one national trivia championship team before it was sold in 2005 (it is now the Kona Club).

I don't think math problems should be part of a "Trivia" contest.

Quote: Ayecarumba

I don't think math problems should be part of a "Trivia" contest.

Grand Slam was a game show, not a trivia contest.

As for "math problems" in trivia contests, they would fit if it was something like, "Divide the number of Fingers of Dr. T in the title of a movie by the number of characters to appear in all six Star Wars films; what is the result?". (Maybe, "In what number base is "42" the actual answer to "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?", but that's pushing it.)

Quote: Ayecarumba

I don't think math problems should be part of a "Trivia" contest.

The British Game show, countdown, has a trivial puzzle with numbers.

For instance, given the following six number 3,6,25,50,75,100 make an expression that equals 953
(6+3)*100 + 50 + 75/25 = 953

Now try to use the same six numbers (all six) and have the expression equal 952.

It's not that easy.