Hello folks, long time.
This review post is so delayed that it’s going to be a struggle to even remember what the top moments of the final 2 weeks were. But we’ll do the best we can. Let’s go.
Question Sets: Game Week 7-8
Feeback: Feedback Form
Tell us how the season was for you, and whether you’re likely to sign up again
Contents (it’s a long post)
Winners!
Quick Stats
Game Score
Seat Averages
Triples-Doubles and Triple-Triples
Toughies and Softies: Triad stats and “Triad of the Week”
Game Week 8
Game Week 7
Parting Notes
Triads - yay or nay?
Will B612 return?
Winners!
Grand Final
The Grand Final this season saw Achyuth Sanjay continue his 8-week run of consecutive first place finishes, to complete a perfect season. Congratulations Achyuth!
More Winners
Tier 2 Winner: Pat Gibson
Tier 3 Winner: Debanjan Bose
Tier 4 Winner: Ajit Nayak
Tier 5 Winner: Sanat Pai Raiker
Tier 6 Winner: Adheesh Ghosh
Tier 7 Winner: Mario Fernando
Tier 8 Winner: Sudarshan Aji
Tier 9 Winner: Zubaer M
Tier 10 Winner: Abel Gilsing
Tier 11 Winner: Kushan Patel
Tier 12 Winner: Sreekanth RP
Tier 13 Winner: Pravar
Tier 14 Winner: Sreyashi Dastidar
Tier 15 Winner: Anup Kumar
Tier 16 Winner: Akshay Parale
Tier 17 Winner: Jing Feng
Tier 18 Winner: John McKenzie
Tier 19 Winner: Swaroop Ramaswamy
Tier 20 Winner: Sudhir Pai
Tier 21 Winner: Shashank Sharma
Tier 22 Winner: Shyam Shreyas
Tier 23 Winner: Kuriakose George
Tier 24 Winner: Vivek Tejuja
Tier 25 Winner: Sanveer Singh Puri
Tier 26 Winner: Dibyesh Hota
Congratulations for making it through the knockout phase of the season and earning yourself a win!
Quick Stats
Game Score
Game Weeks 7 played slightly tougher than weeks 5 and 6, which seems apt for an elimination week.
Seat Averages
The end of the season allows us finally take a look back at all of our attempts at seat balancing, and here’s what we get. Still no missteps as big as the one in GW4, and we ended the season nicely. GW7 still shows lower median owns than any previous weeks, supporting the statement that it was a tougher set than most.
Triple-Doubles and Triple-Triples
Game Week 7 saw a total of 55 musketeers, of whom Anupama, Aswath Venkataraman, Madhavi Das, and Swaroop Ramaswamy managed to score 2 muskets each. No triple-doubles this week, which makes me happy cos there should be one week like that no?
Game Week 8 was a reduced affair, with only 36 quizzes taking place. It still threw up 34 musketeers, of whom Debanjan, John McKenzie, and Nikhil all aced 2 triads each. No triple-doubles this week either, but we did have a non-competitive (and therefore unbalanced) game that saw Jayashree M becoming the second player (after Pranjal in Week 3) to ace 4 different triads. She correctly answered all 3 questions in each of the following topics: Tombs of Mughal Padshah Begums, Luxury Car Divisions, Flatbreads of Western India, and Blue and White Craftworks.
Toughies and Softies
Game Week 8
For the burial place of Hamida Banu Begum, we asked for the name of a specific structure AND the city it's in. That simple city addition appears to have waylaid some players, who reasoned that if the city was a relevant part of the answer, then the answer couldn't be Humayun's Tomb, since there's only one of those and it's in Delhi!
Hamida Banu Begum was the third Padshah Begum and was conferred this title by the son of the padshah. **Where is she buried** - the first garden tomb in the subcontinent and a UNESCO WHS since 1993? [Need a specific structure & city]
Answer: **HUMAYUN'S TOMB** in **DELHI**
(Hamida Banu Begum was Akbar's mother)
Personally I think this is overthinking it, and it would never cause issue in a team quiz when you can think out loud and be guided by your teammates. In a solo quiz though, with 30 seconds of silent thought, it's easy to fall into holes like this. So why did we ask for city? No reason really, it was a result of an editing round where all the 3 questions in the triad were being touched up for consistency. A different question was changed from asking “where” to “which mausoleum complex”, so this one had to be changed to be more specific too. It’s a curious case of good intentions backfiring, and we apologise for the confusion it caused.
Uniqlo’s collab with Lisa Larson was correctly answered by just one person all week, making it the hardest question of the season1, so take a bow Sanat Pai Raikar. For everyone else, you can see more of Lisa Larson’s work (and even buy some) on this website. Fun fact for your future quizzes, Larson was born in Älmhult in Sweden, the same place IKEA was founded.
Bro how is Mulan the most widely answered question of this week (answered in every single quiz), I hadn’t even heard of this movie, is this just a gap in my education, I think it is, yes.
I enjoyed the little piece of trivia that the name Lexus was deliberately chosen to sound Western/Latin. Here’s an extra for you: In 1986, the original name chosen by the agency handling branding was ‘Alexis’, but concerns were raised that that name sounded like it referred to a person. Specifically, it was too closely associated with the character Alexis Carrington from the hit 80s TV show Dynasty, and that’s why they decided to change to just ‘Lexis’.
I think 2024 Word of the Year is a triad that most of you ought to have seen coming. Brain Rot and Demure did well, but too few people were able to recall Enshittification.
In the National football league logos triad, we showed you a logo that said BUNDESLIGA in large capital letters. Leaving it at that might’ve been cruel, so heavily did it point towards Germany, so the question ended with “Careful now!” This might seem trite, but it saved a bunch of people and guided them towards guessing Austria instead.
The University of Twente publishing a list of health issues faced by fairytale characters definitely made for a fun triad. Please accept our apologies for insisting that you give us Aurora, the real name of Sleeping Beauty. The seat balancing demanded it 🙈
Our science triad this week was a nice concept: identify a pair of frequently confused terms, from their clashing definitions.
Mass and Weight was answered in every quiz.
I thought the distinction between Disease (known cause) and Disorder (unknown cause) was well known, but the data says otherwise. It was the hardest question of the set after Lisa Larson.
I did expect Molarity and Molality to be the harder question, but it actually played easier than above mentioned.
My Favourite Triad of the Week: Adventures of Mike Horn (Soumya Sharma 🙏)
This is a shady pick, because the questions themselves played quite tough, but this is more a result of our editing than the triad concept itself. The answers were all workable, and you should try them on your friends. Maybe change a few words here and there to make it a bit easier though. For example I would add a letter count to Q2, as done below, and definitely add another clue for Q3. Possibly mention that the second blank is a number written out.
In 1997, the adventurer Mike Horn began his adventure titled ______ (6), an attempt at traversing the South American continent from west to east. In this mission he started from the Pacific and climbed the Peruvian Andes. Then, using a hydrospeed, he followed the titular entity to the Atlantic. **What was the route he followed**, which titles the adventure?
Answer: **AMAZON**
In 2016, Mike Horn embarked on a mission called '____(4) To ____(4)' where the blanks are the same. Starting in Monaco, Mike used his sailing vessel Pangaea around Africa to Antarctica, crossing the landmass on foot, then covering Oceania, Asia, the Arctic and back to Europe. **What was this mission called**, named for the key landmarks on the way?
Answer: **POLE TO POLE**
In 1999, Mike Horn started a mission called ________ ____ (8, 4). He left Gabon and crossed the Atlantic to Brazil on a trimaran. He then crossed Brazil and Ecuador on bike, canoe and on foot. After that he crossed the Pacific Ocean reaching Indonesia, before crossing the Indian Ocean back to Africa. **What was the mission called**, an alternative term for the entity he traverses?
Answer: **LATITUDE ZERO**
Game Week 7
Can we say something about the average age of our participants judging from the fact that a Twitch Lingo question was the most widely answered question of the week? No, probably not. But ‘Press F to show respect’ was answered in every quiz and rarely if ever passed.
Dialect also played quite easy, but I’d like to show you an earlier version of the question:
**What 7-letter word (singular)** refers to a regional variant of a language, with its own pronunciations, grammatical rules and vocabulary? For example, Parisian, Quebec, Louisiana, with respect to French. Linguists warn against the tendency to see these as inferior to the main language.
Answer: **DIALECT**
It’s practically the same question, but it does allow one to guess “creole” as an answer, and the use of French as an example even suggests it. This was solved by simply swapping out Louisiana with Louisiana Creole, thus eliminating that guess.
We received some nice feedback for Krishna's Flutes triad, something about it being very ‘fresh’ Indian content.
For the question on Complete Blood Count, the answer included a particularly strange bit of prompt instruction: “You may prompt if 2 of 3 words are correct.” I can see the reasoning, but this kind of instruction can backfire very easily. Going by this instruction, even Complete Bile Count would merit a prompt!
Time to clear something up.
The ‘Progress Live’ Tour in 2011 saw the original 5 members of **which band** reunite? The setlist covered songs like 'Rule The World', 'Relight My Fire', and solo hits of the lead singer like 'Rock DJ' and 'Let Me Entertain You'.
Answer: Take That
Big misstep here, brought to our attention by Aishwarya Subramanian. ‘Rock DJ’ and ‘Let Me Entertain You’ are Robbie Williams songs, but Robbie Williams is most certainly not the lead singer of Take That. That role has always belonged to Gary Barlow, and him being the lead singer is a big part of why Williams left in the first place. Sorry to all Take That fans, hope you all still scored the point.
My Favourite Triad of the Week: Shakespeare's Terse Stage Direction (Rajat Gururaj 🙏)
A weird and wonderful triad, focusing on a very very specific of trivia about the greatest English writer of all time, and yet (usually) leaving enough room for educated guesses. 10/10 triad.
Shakespeare provided very little stage direction in his works, apart from terse notations of entrances and exits. In Titus Andronicus, known for its violent depiction of murder, the set and prop designers had it rough. One stage direction reads: *Enter messenger with two [BLANK] and a hand*, where the blanks refer to those of Quintus and Martius. **Fill in the blank**.
Answer: **HEADS**
In The Tempest, Shakespeare provides a bit more stage direction in relation to the spirit Ariel but yet leaves some direction open to interpretation. One of these reads: *Enter Ariel, [BLANK], with music*. **Fill in the blank with an adjective**, impossible to achieve physically on stage and hence done through smoke devices or camouflages.
Answer: **INVISIBLE**
In 'Winter's Tale', Antigonus has to abandon a baby off the coast of Bohemia as he is chased by a wild animal. Shakespeare simply directs it as: *Exit, pursued by a [BLANK].* **Fill in the blank.**
Answer: **BEAR**
Parting Notes
Alright folks, another season is wrapped. What have we learned?
Well we learned that a quiz league season is much much easier to run if you get lucky with reader recruitment. In the first week of the season, Ankit Bisht, Fiza, Priyojit Saha, Shrotam and Rajdeep Saha joined our team of dedicated readers and since then we’ve simply never had a problem with reader availability. This is no small feat, because reader availability has been among the top 3 logistical problems of running a league for 7 seasons now. Just a few seasons ago, we were enthusiastically celebrating Nagendra Jamadagni’s milestone of reading 50 games in a single season. This time around, 4 of the 5 dedicated readers managed to cross 50 games, and two of them crossed 100! It’s quite a change.
There’s a downside to this too. Several players complained about not getting a chance to read any games at all this season, because they were picked up too quickly by the team. There was even some arguments within the team itself about how rescheduled games should be handled. It does feel like we’ve incentivised reading a bit too much, and players not getting to read seems like a loss to the community. Next season we may have to add restrictions on how many games a reader can take in a single week, or else add a few games every week that can only be taken by players. A strange problem to have, to be sure.
Oh and triads. What did we learn about triads?
Triads - Yay or nay?
We make our questions in sets of 3 this season, instead of the more traditional format of sets of 4. This wasn’t a well-thought-out, data-backed decision. It was very clearly a change made for the sake of change, a sort of enforced shift just to make this season seem different in some way. How has it panned out?
Before I share my own opinion, let me share what I’ve heard from others. We’ve received both positive and negative feedback about triads.
Let’s start with the negative. Triads are simply fewer questions on a subject, so as a setter you can’t go quite as deep into a subject as you could with a quad. In fact if you waste one question on the triad ‘intro’, you really only need 2 questions to make a triad. It ends up feeling a bit incomplete, to both setters and players, although it’s possible we’re only imagining this because we’re comparing it to quads.
There are a lot more positives than there are negatives, but there’s a chance not all of them strictly pertain to triads, and are instead describing shorter, 3-player quizzes.
Shorter quizzes have been well received. While still not usually doable within the 40-minute time limit of a free Zoom call, most quizzes this season were completed in under 50 minutes, meaning they were easier for players to fit into their workday.
This also contributed to readers being able to read back-to-back games, which is valuable to organizers.
Quizzes are definitely easier to schedule too, which is to be expected when 3 people need to coordinate instead of 4. This isn’t to say there were scheduling problems this season. Plenty of you ran into a particularly unresponsive quizzer at some point this season, but there were fewer instances than usual.
Setters have reported that triads are generally easier to set than quads, which again seems logical. No more need for a ‘forced’ fourth question.
Note here that only one of these points is strictly about triads. #1 is about the 48-question format (instead of 60 from last season) and #2 is about 3-player games. It is quite possible to maintain both of these attributes while still making questions in sets of 4. For example, 12 quads of 4 questions each would add up to a 48 question set, which can be distributed among 3 players with each player getting 16 directs. It’s doable, and that I think would be my recommendation for Season 9. Shorter quizzes, but deeper topics.
Do you feel otherwise? Or do you think there’s more to it that I haven’t covered?
Will B612 Return?
…probably?
I’d say there’s about a 70% chance we’re going to do another season. The reason it isn’t 100% is the same reason we experimented with triads this time around, i.e. something needs to be different. There are a lot of quiz leagues now and we need to make sure we’re actually building something worthwhile.
Our reasons for running this league at all have changed dramatically in the last few seasons. There was a time I felt very passionately that the world deserved a ‘non-competitive’ quiz league, but we threw that idea out the window when we started publishing a leaderboard2. This season we lowered our registration fee (fewer questions per quiz) but continued paying out our readers at the same rate per game, meaning it was the first season we’ve done where we weren’t even trying to turn up a profit. So if it’s not for profit, and if it’s not conceptually different from other quiz leagues, then does it need to exist? I certainly had that question when I was playing ZQL last season. That was a damn good season, with high quality questions. The sort that made me think “Wow these guys are doing this as well as it can be done, so what are we bringing to the table?”
We will need to answer that question before we announce Season 9. Something will need to change, even if it’s a “change for the sake of change”.
See you in a bit.
Vikas’s Parting Notes
Some of you messaged me this season to say that you'd like to learn more about the art of editing or, as someone put it, turning coal into diamonds. I'd say it is less coal, but more of a diamond in need of polishing. I'm hoping to write something up soon to share some tricks I follow, but hey - the real heroes are the ones who find the gem from under the soil. Polishing it in a lab is all good, but you need something to polish at the first place.
The editing was also made significantly easier by the advent of triads. Why? There are fewer questions forced into a quad. There are fewer questions that act as an 'opener' to establish a quad idea itself, the hardest type of question to fit nicely. This meant that there were more uniform triads where parity was maintained in terms of what each seat got as a question.
Anyhow, more of that later. For now, I'm glad to not be scurrying on a Monday evening to edit or letting go of my lazy Sundays to polish gems. Harman is less convinced about us being back soon, but I'm more positive. Maybe we will do a bridge league between now and the next season, simply because I miss the thrill of setting, editing, and watching people compete. Jump on the Pick-It bandwagon maybe? Run a smash tournament? Or, go back to long form weekend quizzing? I don't know, but if my energy remains this way, a return will be swifter than what Harman feels like. I'm feeling less existential at the moment. That can quickly change, so in that feedback form, tell us if you'd like some of these suggestions.
Until next, shabba khair3
We didn’t have a single unanswered question in all of Season 8!
I’m not salty, you’re salty.
See Utkarsh, I've finally learnt to say it correctly, or have I?