No-So eXcel Team Trivia!

Well, I have bad news. I am NOT $110 richer after the Trivia Championships last night! It was quite the experience, though! We caravaned down to Harrah's casino to go to the VooDoo lounge for the BIG event! I didn't really know what to expect since we've never gotten this far.

I had seen pictures online, but I don't think that really helps you imagine the scene very well. We walked in and the place was lined with tiny tables and lots of chairs. Each table had a team name tent on it. We happened to be up close to the stage, which was nice. We were excited and thought that would mean that we could hear the questions better. What we didn't factor in was the decibel level of the LARGE speakers AND that everyone was actually there to listen to the questions. We normally have to compete with Loudy McDrunkersons at Tanner's who are talking loud enough for the whole bar to hear!

This is a small picture to show was it looked like with close to 60 teams and about 600 people crammed in there! There were teams up on the top level, too!

Here is our table. It was a bit hard to hear each other since we didn't want to be too loud. The tables surrounding us were teams from "our" Tanner's that had also qualified. We also seemed to be sitting in tables according to who "our" DJ was from our home bar. Our DJ happened to be the DJ for the whole night, which was nice ... because he seems to be one of the only normal ones.

In the front of the this picture is our answer packet. Normally we just write our answers on a small sheet of paper. This time they had the questions typed up for us and printed in packets. This did help a bit because we could look ahead to see what type of question it might be. Since Trivia is all auditory, the questions only helped so much. Examples: "Name the person who wed this artist in April of 2008." They played a clip of a Mariah Carey song ... so we knew the answer was Nick Cannon. "Name the character played by Whoopie Goldberg in this movie." We guessed it was going to be a clip of Ghost, and sure enough it was ... so our answer was Oda Mae Brown. We have sucked BIG time on "What year did ... happen?" questions. We have consistently been off 1 year every time!

This is the view I had from my chair. I could see the stage at the front. On the left, the DJ (in the blue shirt) played videos and songs and on the right, they had all the team names and the scores.

Here are Mitzi and Jill waiting patiently for the next round. Trivia normally consists of 10 regular rounds, 3 montage rounds, and a wager round. It starts for us at 8:30 and we are done by 11:30! Last night had only 10 regular rounds and 1 montage. It started at 7:00 and we got out at 11:30! It took FOREVER to tally all the scores after each round!

Here is the table next to us that left after round 7. They must have had to work today (suckers!) and they weren't doing that well. We stuck it out for the whole thing!

My post title comes from the fact that they spent probably 30-45 minutes last night (in between rounds) trying to figure out the Excel part of the score sheet. It was SO frustrating! Even more so when we found out that the guy they got to help fix the spreadsheet was on the winning team! they happened to have a perfect score for the first 4 or 5 rounds of questions. Hmmmm ... that sounds fishy! Here they are all just staring at the score sheet. This was the most frustrating part because it seemed to slow down our momentum of answering the questions.

Overall, it was a fun night! It would have been more fun had I come home with some cash in my pocket, but of course, we'll continue to play! The next "season" starts next week! Yippee!