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Last updated: October 17, 2005. Last New Entry/Entries: '...for glory?' and Zeecraft

The newsgroup has been entirely supplanted by a number of message groups and boards. Quite frankly, you get the same kind of spam in your inbox...

ACF:
Academic Competition Federation (1997-present), Academic Competition Foundation (1990-1996). Known for harder questions, a disdain for pop culture (see "trash") and current events, and for scaring away the faint of heart.

ACF Virgin:
(No, you can't have sex with ACF.) Anyone with no experience on ACF questions; people often feel somehow violated upon their first experience with the format.

In recent years, it's said that ACF has striven to be more accessible to beginning players (mainly by those within the organization and hardcore ACF players.) As such, whether or not they have in practice depends on who you ask.

Backloaded:
A tournament schedule is said to be 'backloaded' from your point of view if most of your tougher matches take place later in the tournament. This can be good, giving you time to warm up for your tougher macthes; it is harder, however, to pull off an upset when the other team is warmed up too. Favored teams prefer backloaded to 'frontloaded' schedules.

Bastard Team:
A team made up of people from more than one school. First used by Matt Colvin, then of Maryland, to describe a Virginia team that also featured John Edwards (as if the Viriginia team of the time needed any more help) at Princeton in '95. They are not always fearsome foes, but that's the general implication. Also known as a Chimera team.

Beltway Bandits:
Taken by Dave Vacca from the title of a Frank Zappa song, the name of GW's intercollegiate trash tournament. To date, the series includes:
Beltway Bandits, Fall 1995
Beltway Bandits II, Fall 1996
Return of the Son of Beltway Bandits, Spring 1999
Beltway Bandits IV: Slick Willie the Pimp, Spring 2000
Beltway Bandits V: Who Could've Imagined That They Tould Freak Out in Washington, D.C.?, Spring 2001
Beltway Bandits VI: The Things That Pass For Knowledge, I Can't Understand, Spring 2002 

We're hoping to run this again in the Spring of 2006... fate willing. 

Blah-Blah-Blah:
A handy substitute for excess verbiage devoid of clue content, or ultra-obscure information in practice when we come across either a particularly inane (usually CBI) question or one of those novel-length tossups ACF is so famous for. Another thing to do during ACF science questions that are sure oh-fers for your team and that drone on and on that will crack the moderator up is to imitate the sound of an adult character in a Charlie Brown cartoon as he/she reads the bonus.

Sadly, there is no known transliteration of the language of adult characters in Charlie Brown into any known Indo-European tongue. It is thereby assumed that these persons favor ACF.

Bracket of Death:
In any bracketed tournament where the brackets are of grossly uneven strength, the more/most difficult bracket is called the 'bracket of death.' This was a rather frequent problem at CBI Regionals in Region 4 until recently. Coined by Brian Goldenberg of Penn State, later of Maryland.

Breezewood:
Small town in central Pennsylvania about halfway between Washington and Pittsburgh. Here you will find everything that is wrong with American culture, all in one convenient location for your viewing pleasure. Scary looking truck stops, penis-size large sign contests, cheap fossil fuel, and copious amounts of artery-clogging fast food. Be afraid. Be very afraid. And what kind of interstate highway requires people to drive through a place like this, anyway?

Many will tell you that Breezewood, Pennsylvania is the most hideous place they've ever been. Incidentally, there appears to be a "South Breezewood." We can only guess at the horrors contained therein.

Butt:
Used to describe a question or set of questions worthy of the moniker "find your ass." See "find your ass" below.

It is not unknown that players, instead of saying "butt", will actually stand and pat themselves on the buttocks while facing away from the moderator. Despite this, some people continue to say that there are no homoerotic undertones to QB.

Canon:
Mythical entity comprising all the useful information in the world, and therefore the only topics worth writing questions about. The myth of the Canon is the direct cause of tournaments in which seventeen questions get asked all on Tartuffe.

A canon is also a specific musical form in which a theme or motif is developed upon itself and embellished, remaining strictly within a theme-and-variations form. Canons are typical musical inventions of the baroque period and two of the most common examples are J.S. Bach's "Musical Gift" and Johann Pachelbel's "Canon in D." Pachelbel's Canon epitomizes the canon form in that a single harmonic-rhythmic sequence (I-V-vi-iii-IV-iii-IV-V) remains constant throughout the piece, while "The Musical Gift" embellishes upon canon form in that it follows a specific pattern relative to itself, on each iteration ending a whole step higher than on the previously. The art of writing a true canon is a very difficult one, as the very best canon writers introduce elements such as retrograde (reversing the order of notes), inversion (turning the relative intervals between each note "upside-down"), and the legendary "talis." This last means involves selecting a theme of a length which does not evenly fit into the phrase length of the piece, creating a necessary reharmonization upon each iteration which finally resolves itself when the talis finally, in the last phrase, aligns with the continuo. Although such formal and, in a way, restrictive means of composition are often ignored today, the canon remains engraved in the mindset of society, surviving in such songs as "Row, Row, Row your Boat," "Christmas is Coming," and other such rounds.

If you bothered to read this whole entry, you're even more wanting for entertainment than we are. If, on the other hand, you read it and understood it, we could probably use you on the team.

Capitol Punishment:
Summertime trash tournament hosted at GW, but the creation, and directed by, Shawn Pickrell, of George Mason University at the time. Known for geek-unfriendly distribution, a largeish field, and the outright taunting of fate. Called "Capital Punishment" on its first run in July 1999.

CBI or CBCI:
College Bowl Company, Incorporated. Known for high prices, "find-your-ass" questions, and lots of red tape. It is, however, a user-friendly format, with lots of pop culture (see 'trash') and current events.

CBI delenda est.

Circle of Death:
A situation where there is a three-way tie at a tournament, with all three teams 1-1 against each other, especially when playoff spots or seedings are at stake. (It can also happen among five or seven teams, but those are very rare.) Teams dread it, and tournament directors dread it even more. Each tournament has a different method for breaking a circle of death.

GW  breaks Circles of Death with summary excecutions. If you missed the irony, read that again.

Really, though, unless otherwise noted, this shall for time eternal be GW's method for breaking circles of death:
1. Head-to-head record
2. Total points

Circuit, The:
Generally, shorthand for the community of devotees of academic competition. More specifically, the collective term for college-run quiz bowl tournaments, to the exclusion of CBI events. (Historically, the term also excluded NAQT, TRASH and even some ACF tournaments, but that is not the case nowadays.)

Chestnut:
Any supposedly obscure fact people like to use for lead-ins that is no longer obscure. Examples include : the fact that Dalton was colorblind, the fact that Olivia Newton-John is a direct descendant of Max Born, the fact that Spinoza was a lens-grinder, the fact that the band Steely Dan was named after a dildo in "Naked Lunch," and the fact that the word "kamikaze" originated from a failed 13th century Mongol invasion of Japan.

Chop Suey:
A buzz made by Tim Young to a question where the answer was 'leprosy.' (vs. VA Tech B, 1997 NAQT CCT) This term refers to any interrupt made by a player where the the response the player gave is several leaps of logic from the actual answer.

Other amusing wrong buzzes of the past have been "Furby" for "Twinkie," "Kenny McCormick" for "The Green Knight," and "Yankee Doodle" for "Honi soit qui mal y pense." A key feature of the chop-suey buzz is that they can all be justified as making perfect sense at the time.

These type of buzzes will certainly end up on the Gloriously Wrong Answers  page.

Colvin Science:
Named for Maryland-Cornell player Matt Colvin, science questions answerable without any particular knowledge of what science majors consider "real" science, but by knowing Latin and/or Greek, or memorizing a periodic table or other such list.

Examples include inventing the name of a science such as "goniometry" (the study of crystal-face alignment) by reverse-engineering it from Greek. I personally feel that this behavior is valid, since a) it's what the inventors of these terms did anyway and b) it gets us points.

Conferring:
Something you aren't allowed to do at College Bowl's tournaments. We're not really sure what is and what is not conferring, and neither do the people in charge of enforcing that particular rule. Apparently it includes bowing your head while your teammates aren't looking at you, but does not include talking while a teammate is answering a question.

Dinosaur:
Sometimes this term means 'anyone who's been in quiz bowl longer than anyone on your team and is better than you.' It has no real objective meaning, but it's fair to call someone a dinosaur if he/she has been on the circuit for six or more years, is 30 or older, already has two or more degrees, or giggles whenever the words 'moped' and 'South Carolina'* are used in the same sentence. This is particularly true for people that take one class expressly so they can be eligible for quizbowl.

GW 's iguanodontids are largely retired from circuit play, (with the exception of occasional Masters or Trash tournaments) and are advisors to the team. Dinosaurs most certainly appear with other teams on the circuit. A certain nameless nearby school, for example, has historically fielded one player whose QB career began when that school's own freshpersons weren't even thought of.

Duck-Duck-Duck:
See "Duck-Duck-Goose" below.

Duck-Duck-Goose:
Any tossup consisting of  several words entirely unhelpful to answering the question (either horrifically obscure clues or simply excess verbiage) followed by a giveaway clue so obvious that anyone with a pulse could get the answer. "Duck-Duck-Duck" questions, similarly, are questions that contain no useful clues to the answer at all; the answer is usually but not always something no one in the room recognizes. The way to make fun of these tossups is to say "quack-quack-quack-[giveaway clue]" or "quack-quack-quack."

Generally? When it comes to Quiz Bowl guys: The odds are good, but the goods are odd.

As of Fall 2005, the GWQT  boasts a gender ratio that bears a vague resemblance to reality.Quite honestly? We wouldn't want to have it any other way. 

FAQTP:
For a quick ten points. Rarely used anymore.

Still used in some trash tournaments, often as a lead-in to a demeaning physical-challenge question. Still used in CBI as a lead-in to the simply demeaning.

Fascist:
The historical GW Trivia Club epithet not only for supporters of the corporate state but for any employee of any entity whose job description primarily consists of treating customers like criminals; examples include the guy at Best Buy who searches all the bags and the security guard at the front desk at the Academic Center.

QB encompasses many political philosophies. However, when the occasional actual fascist does make an appearance, for the most part they're laughed at until they shut up.

'Find Your Ass':
Any insultingly easy tossup or bonus, one said to be as easy as finding your ass. From Maryland's lexicon, but coined by former GW player Guy Jordan.

For more information on finding your ass, consult your doctor or refer to chapter 1 of Gray's Anatomy.

'...for glory?'
Coined by one of our advisors, and picked up by other GWQT members,  it is short for the phrase, "Not for points, but for glory..." This refers to the practice of opening a question up to the rest of the room after it would be deemed dead in normal play, for the sake of knowledge (during practices only).

Yes, we realize that in the throes of normal college QB play, bonus parts do not bounce back and questions that die during a game stay dead.

Frontloaded:
A tournament schedule is said to be 'frontloaded' from your point of view if most of your tougher matches take place earlier in the tournament. This is usually considered bad, but drawing your toughest opponent first is your best chance at an upset victory. Teams picked to finish low in the standings often prefer to have their surest losses out of the way, or their shots at upsets early.

FSNP or FTSNOP:
For the stated number of points.

FTP:
For ten points. Also stands for 'file transfer protocol.'

For some reason, Swarthmore  teams of yore were convinced that the appropriate abbreviation for "For Ten Points Each" is "FTPA."

Gamow, George:
Russian-born physicist who taught at GW from the 1930's to the 1960's, known for mathematical predictions of the Big Bang and stellar composition, and for suggesting that the four bases of DNA might encode instructions for making proteins; namesake of the George Gamow Memorial Tournament, the high school tournament GW has run in past years.

Geek:
In quizbowl parlance, someone who knows about comic books, science fiction, fantasy games (e.g. Magic: The Gathering), and computer games. An affectionate term, teams wanting to play in trash tournaments are always looking for geeks.

The problem is, there needs to be as many geeks writing questions as there are answering them. Otherwise so-called "trash" becomes nothing more than a soulless pile of hockey sticks and jock straps. Good geek players tend to get questions that nobody else in the whole room would get, and also seem to usually be good at science and/or math.

By the way, geekery is nothing to be ashamed of; indeed, it is a condition of which to feel proud.

Great Exodus:
Two periods in GW quiz bowl history can qualify as periods of  "Great Exodus":

1) In the first half of the Nineties, GW's was a burgeoning but elderly team, including such legends as James Dinan and Dave Vacca, co-founders of TRASH, and Rick Grimes, in addition to Steve Sheiko, Guy Jordan, Amy Kroll...the list goes on and on and traces its CBI-trophy-laden path back to club founder Gary Greenbaum. However, in the time leading up to Edmund Schluessel's arrival in Fall 1997, Jordan, Dinan, and Vacca all graduated and got lives; Rick Grimes joined the CIA and, we think, was responsible for basically the whole -stan thing in central Asia; and Steve ran off to become a priest. We have basically no clue what happened to anyone else. GW spent a bit of time recovering from this mass evacuation (After all, we attended 1998 NAQT NCT as a two-person team.) Gradual recruitment,  alleviated the problem until....

2) ...The early naughts. The (second) Great Exodus refers to the end of the GWACC era (circa 2002-2003) to the beginning of the GWQT era. Many of the members of the GWACC stopped participating little by little, and there was very little recruitment in that span of time. Members of the student leadership graduated, retired or were otherwise not qualified by SA rules to take student leadership roles. (Staff member and final GWACC secretary Tricia Southard could no longer be student leadership -- she was no longer taking classes. Other associates were Alumni... )  The GWACC was dissolved, for lack of interest in Spring 2003 (until the advent of GWQT in 2005.)

Hardcore:
A prefix, usually followed by or even itself implying ACF. Refers to any question whose subject matter or answer are particularly obscure, or tournament filled with endless, mind-numbing questions.

Harvest Bowl:
Randolph-Macon's attempt to run a tournament; a failure so legendary that it causes laughter even to invoke its very name. Now used to describe any tournament where one of more things go disastrously wrong, and the example of nearly everything to avoid when running one.

Hello Kitty:
Japanese cartoon character, the inspiration for an extensive line of collectibles, such as waffle irons, clothing, and this; has no mouth; likes making friends most of all.

Heuristic, Mimetic, Titular:
In early 1999, Andrew Yaphe of Chicago, one of the Circuit's strongest players and best-known personalities, was interviewed for a brief article on QB in the New York Times. In the quoted portions of his interview, he used the words "heuristic" (capable of learning) and "mimetic" (capable of remembering), two words which the average person uses in conversation about once every seventeen to eighteen years. In Summer 1999, Yaphe wrote the majority of a tournament himself, and the word "titular" appeared so frequently as to raise Freudian suspicions in some players. At that point, the trilogy was completed.

Now, whenever a question has the word "titular" in it, people giggle. At the Chicago Open 2000 masters' tournament, Yaphe attempted to repeat himself with the word "seminal," but it didn't stick.

Horta:
Any player who is (among) the sole survivor(s) of a once-thriving organization, whose responsibility is the rebuilding of that organization. Tim Young was a Horta in late 1997. Tricia Southard reprised that role in 2005 (with caveats revealed in our about page). From the Star Trek episode "Devil in the Dark."

Hose Question:
Any question clearly pointing to a wrong answer, often designed that way on purpose. They suck.

Imhotep:
Egyptian priest and architect, known historically for the complex of King Neterikhet at Saqqara. Don't say it in the presence of alumnus Andrew Wiseman or any of the other members of the GW contingent of the early naughts unless you want to hold up practice, or a round for a solid minute.

It's Academic:
High school quiz show program in the DC area. GW has had some alums of it, but, oddly enough, our area opponents (particularly Maryland, Virginia, and Johns Hopkins) always seem to have several more.

Jar-Jar Bracket:
Lower bracket in divided play, containing all the teams ineligible for the championship; or the lowest if there are several of these brackets. So named after Gamow's Star Wars-themed division, in which contenders for the finals were in the "Chewbacca" bracket, while the bottom six teams fought it out in the "Jar-Jar" division. While the Chewbacca bracket ran pretty well in and of itself, the Jar-Jar bracket lived up to its name, becoming a mishmash of misunderstood directions and forfeit games. Jar-Jar brackets are apt to contain the worst moderators, worst buzzers, least meaningful results, or any combination of the above simply because, well, they don't really matter.

JCV:
Shorthand for Juan Carlos Viscerra Memorial Invitational, GW's annual invitational circuit tournament, formerly known as 'The Presidential.'

Named for GW College Bowl player JC Viscerra, who died tragically in 1993. We hope to be able to run this tournament again... eventually...

Judge, The:
GW's retired buzzer system. It's said to be indestructible (though one of our advisors has broken a Judge pedal, and the old GW Judge refused to lock players out... so much for indestructible!) It's tough to get into a House of Representatives office building, and even tougher to get onto an airplane, (Personally, we would be squeamish about accidentally leaving it *anywhere in public*  post 9-11.) because the thing really does look like a bomb.

Alas, poor Judge, we knew it well...

Junior Bird:
Generic term for any tournament in which entry is restricted to younger or less experienced players, so named for one formerly held by the Emory team.

Kidder's Law:
"There is no shame, (there are) only points". Named for former Cornell player and trash-maven Dwight Kidder.

Knot, The:
Short for the "Gordian Knot," One of Maryland's buzzer systems that has to be seen to be believed. Capable of accomodating up to 16 players, but a pain in timed play.

The Gordian Knot has no display lights and is designed for four-team play. Its existence and continued popularity at schools such as UMCP, Cornell and Berkeley serve as further evidence that the ACF system originated in a parallel universe or on a foreign planet.

Knowledge Whore:
Someone literally addicted to academic competition, so much so that they sacrifice their studies, their careers, or their social life for it. Coined by John Edwards, formerly of Chicago, to describe a number of people, himself included. GW has had several pass through its program over the years.

Lame:
Perhaps the one of the most useful terms in all QB... Several definitions:
1. A rule used at several trash tournaments whereby a team can choose to pass on a bonus and get another one once per game by shouting "Lame" during the lead-in. Beltway Bandits tournaments use this rule. Credit Fred Bush of Swarthmore and Rochester with its invention. 2. A magic word used in practice to skip questions or the reading the remainder of a packet, and jokingly at untimed tournaments when the bonus is something we're pretty sure we're not going to know.
3. A declaration issued by anyone, and immediately agreed on, that calls for a moratorium on the use of certain words and phrases during a trip or practice.

List:
Two overlapping meanings. In one sense, it can refer to questions which encourage rote list memorization of data such as birthdates, cities, such as mad libs (see below). In another, similar sense, it refers to questions, particularly tossups, which begin with lists of clues; whoever figures out the common element first usually gets the tossup. Of this class of question, examples include the question on New Jersey Turnpike rest stops from Philadelphia Experiment 6 and any question on "We Didn't Start the Fire."

Mad Lib:
Any tossup of the form "Born in (year), he was the son/daughter of a (occupation), and did (ultra-obscure work/deed) in (year), and then (obscure work/deed) in (year). He's better known for (another deed/work). FTP identify this (occupation), best known for (well-known work/deed.)" A favorite of list memorizers and once indicative of most ACF, people now thankfully feel self-conscious about writing questions too close to this form, particularly if a Nobel Prize is involved. Also known as "resume questions."

Maryland:
Shorthand for University of Maryland-College Park, a program that hosts a good number of tournaments in the area.  Maryland's current team has a lot of similarities to GWQT; historically, the Goliath to our David, their program is currently rebuilding. They, also like GW,  have a massive amount of quiz bowl alumni residing in the DC-Baltimore area.  Some of these alumni also attended GW at one time, some of these alumni are friends with GW Quiz Team Alumni, and many of these alumni (GW and Maryland alike) you'll see at Maryland tournaments.  (Not to be confused with the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, or UMBC.)

Or UM-AB. Or UM-ES. Or UM-UC, whatever exactly that is.

Maryland House:
Rest stop in the middle of I-95 just north of the Baltimore metro area. Somehow, we always seem to end up here on our way to or back from Philadelphia or points northeast.

Gasoline here is way more expensive than it has any right to be.

Memory Bowl:
Said after any answer has come up twice at a tournament, or more generally to describe any tournament plagued by repeat questions/information.

Meow:
Meow really deserves its own page.

Meow's QB career is longer than that of any of GW's full team members.

NAQT:
National Academic Quiz Tournaments. Attempts a happy medium between ACF and CBI.

The two people who garnered the largest amount of money in game show history so far, Ken Jennings of Jeopardy!  fame, and Kevin Olmstead (Who Wants to be a Millionaire?) both write for NAQT.

Neg:
Shorthand for "interrupt" or "neg five."

'No Soup For You':
From "Seinfeld" via Guy Jordan, it's said after a team gets an oh-fer on a bonus that just about no one would have gotten any points on.

Nonclue:
Any string of words in a tossup that someone obviously thinks is a clue to the answer but is either meaningless or does nothing to identify the answer. The most common nonclue refers to an artist "known for his use of perspective, light, and/or color." Another common nonclue involves pointing out that some work of literature was "a commentary on the author's society."  Duck-duck-goose and duck-duck-duck tossups tend to contain one or more nonclues.

Not to be confused with the Romulan ambassador from Star Trek VI.

Oh-fer:
As either a noun or a verb, it refers to the act of scoring zero on a bonus. Others refer to it as 'bagel,' or simply 'zero.'

Ouch:
Courtesy interjection given to another team's bonus if we wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole, particularly if we're winning by a landslide.

Philadelphia Experiment:
Summertime "master's," or advanced-player open, tournament, usually held in August at UPenn. Philadelphia Experiment 6, in August 2000, was hosted at GW due to a massive compilation of flukes of fate.

Playing Defense:
Refers to getting a bonus one's own team scores far fewer points on than the other team would have had the bonus been theirs. (Often invoked when GW gets a tossup followed by a bonus about obscure Reinassance art history against a Maryland team, or when a group of ACF specialists oh-fers a trash bonus against GW.)  Also refered to as a defensive bonus.

Power Tossup:
In NAQT, a correct buzz that is worth 15; in PACE (a high school format some of our associates are affiliated with), a correct buzz worth 20 points. Sometimes, they're just called "powers."

Pontifex Maximus:
Latin for "ultimate bridge-builder"; title bestowed on the president of GW Quiz Bowl. This title was created upon the graduation of Tim Young, and reflects the delegation of power at that time; ascendant Edmund Schluessel, though most experienced of the remaining active members, had little experience with administration or bureaucracy, so the dictatorial powers of the presidency were split between Schluessel, who managed the then GWACC's relations with other organizations, and Jon Needle, who managed room reservations, mailing lists, and other internal matters. The title itself was paired with a second title, "tribune of the people"; those two titles, taken together, represented the official positions of Augustus Caesar during his reign, high priest of Rome and "advisor" to the senate.

The titles have not been used since 2002; GW took to using the standard "President-Vice President-Secretary-Treasurer" system.

Quizbowl:
Generally, a term used to describe all academic competition - more inclusive than "the circuit." 

Quizbowl has its own Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiz_bowl

Rock Creek Park:
Not a good shortcut to anywhere, especially after dark.

Sitting:
Act of knowing the answer to a tossup, then, for some reason, not buzzing in. Commonly cited reasons include "I thought it couldn't possibly be that easy," "I was waiting for them to eliminate ___," and "I thought it was a bonus."

Slap Bowl:
Inconvenience resulting from a shortage of buzzer systems. The recent expansion of the QB circuit in most areas has not been coupled with a matching increase in capital investment; therefore, many area tournaments find themselves short of buzzers. Absolute Hell in timed play. By the way, if you're looking to buy a new buzzer system, don't get a Groupics. They break after exposure to just one devoted high school team.

Socialism:
Political philosophy based on redistribution of power and wealth away from, and in extreme cases the extermination of, rich intellectuals. Also, a political philosophy frequently followed by QB players who are, often, rich or intellectual or both. Life is full of contradictions.

Quiz bowl does, in fact, encompass members from all ranges of the political spectrum, from hardcore Objectivist atheists to hardcore Marxist atheists. There are also religious, moderate folk, but what fun is that?

Spoonfeed:
Our term for any overly easy bonus, courtesy of Dave Zuckerman. Whenever the other team is "spoonfed," we tend to simulate the act of eating soup with a spoon. Slightly more polite than "find your ass."

Sportsmanship:
To kiss ass, according to certain people in certain organizations. We'd mention what organization, but they'd likely threaten to sue.

Stump The Chump:
Any question packet that seems designed to make everyone in the room feel stupid; it usually has the effect of pissing off players and moderators.

Sumerian Love Poetry:
Used generally to refer to obscure ACF questions, whether or not they have anything to do with Sumerians or love poetry. The opposite of 'find your ass,' it's not so much used to describe actual questions as to warn ACF virigins of the subject matter going in.

Thirty-Thirty-Thirty:
Any bonus of the form 30-20-10 where the supposedly easier clues aren't easier, either because the writer ordered them wrong, used only obscure works of a known creator, even for the 10 point clue, used three clues of equal difficulty, or picked a creator so obscure (Muzio Clementi, whoever he was, comes to mind) that it's essentially a "no soup for you" bonus. (See "no soup for you.")

For what it's worth, Clementi invented the piano sonata. Not to be confused with Roberto Clemente.

Tossup!:
When said loudly, it's either a call to settle down and get back to business during practice or a plea to change the subject of conversation, especially if it has become embarassingly personal, inappropriate for a family setting**, or is rapidly turning into a heated political argument, whether at practice or not.

Trash:
Questions about popular culture (movies, TV, pop music, pulp fiction), sports and/or games, lowbrow current events (the Lorena Bobbit trial, for instance, as opposed to the currency crisis in Asia), and generally all-around weird stuff; sometimes includes so-called 'general knowledge' questions. Originally a perjorative term, it's now largely an affectionate one.

Trash Tournament:
A tournament where the subject matter of all questions is (or at least is supposed to be) 'trash.'

TRASH:
Testing Recall About Strange Happenings. An organization, modeled on NAQT, that runs trash tournaments. TRASH counts as founding members two former GW players, James Dinan and Dave Vacca.

Warm Body:
A player whose contribution to his/her team consists primarily of just showing up. Also referred to as 'stuffed shirts' or 'buzzer rocks.'

They emit blackbody radiation in accordance with the Stefan-Boltzmann Law.

Yellow Goodness:
Vanderbilt's term for CBI questions, since half of them are on yellow paper. We started using the term as well, and it has stuck.

Don't say it too often, or you will be dealt the smack-down.

Zeecraft
Our current buzzer system , replacing the sputtering GWACC judge. It arrived astonishingly quickly --  within days after president Kevan Duve ordered the system. It works great, but it's still not best to leave it unattended in a public place (given the system's encased in a heavy black suitcase).

One of the models of Zeecraft buzzers have very bright, strobing player lights, and as such, many call those "disco buzzers" or "epilepsy buzzers" (Duke has one of these). GWQT, did not choose to order this model. They chose....wisely....