April 22 Warmup Quiz Answers

      

Identify the Organs of the Digestive System (1 point each):

esophagus liver gallbladder colon appendix small intestine stomach pancreas colon

April 22 Math Bee

Winner: Scott Matthews

Winner Scott Matthews (2nd from right) with hosts Andrew and Jen and runners-up Viveca and Alex

This month's math bee began, as usual, with "Fifteen Seconds in Math Heaven."  For instance, imagine I start the clock and then ask you:

12 times 11! (132)

Fifteen quarters and five dimes! ($4.25)

80 minutes after 9:32! (10:52)

Etc....  Contestants picked up anywhere from zero to four points in this endeavor.  

In round two, contestants answered longer, more involved questions, and could use the whiteboard.  Here is one question from this past week (written by Andrew Singer):

You're on a distant planet when you run into a hot babe. When you first see her, she has 12 arms, 18 legs and 5 heads. Each leg weighs 30 pounds, each arm is 20 pounds, and each head is 40 pounds. All of a sudden, she morphs so that she has 8 heads and 12 legs. Assuming her weight remains the same, how many arms does she end up with?

Jen commented that this problem illustrated "the law of conservation of hot babe."  (The answer is 15).

In the third and final round, in which all questions are posed to all contestants and speed is of the essence, Scott pulled ahead by calculating with lightning speed.

See you next week for Team Trivia!

April 15 Warmup Quiz Answers

Name all 4 of the Monkees (first names only):

Micky

Davy

Michael

Peter

All 3 of the Jonas Brothers (first names only):

Nick

Joe

Kevin

All 3 authors of The Federalist Papers:

Alexander Hamilton

James Madison

John Jay

All 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council:

US

UK

China

France

Russia

9 Reflexive Pronouns:

myself

himself

herself

yourself

itself

oneself

ourselves

yourselves

themselves

thyself 

(That's 10 -- any 9 would do.  "Theirselves" is a regionalism on par with "y'all" and is listed in dictionaries only as "Vulgar English."  Incidentally, the "Vulgar English" lexicon also includes "hisself," at which point you really ought to just start playing the washboard as an instrument.)

A final challenge asked participants to guess the blacked-out words on these covers:

Hilarity ensued.  Here are the complete covers:

    

In other words: muscle, fat, sex, abs, pains, rich, health, fantasy, confidence, boxers, sex, gay, and rape.  Many people suggested that perhaps the boyfriend had not changed his sheets; one person suggested that there might be a new kind of date "rap" we should know about.

April 15 Geography Bee

Winner: Halina Pavels


Winner Halina (second from right) with hosts Abbi and Jen and runners-up Altin and Raeli.

Given the word list Republic, Kingdom, Sultanate, Principality, State, States, Federation, Confederation, Islamic, Arab, Hashemite, Oriental, Bolivarian, Democratic, Federal, Socialist, People’s, United, and of, could you tell us what kind of country Mauritania is? (It's an Islamic Republic). Spain? (A Kingdom). Somalia? (A Democratic Republic). This and other challenges faced contestants at last Wednesday's geography bee. (In case anyone's wondering, word order doesn't count, since many country names are, of course, translated from other languages).

Rather wonderfully, Libya's full name is "Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriyya," although, for that, reason, Libya was not a question at Wednesday's bee.

Click here for more photos.

April 8 Warmup Quiz Answers

Each week at 6:30 we put out a warmup quiz.  The quizzes are due at 7:30, and the rule is "anything goes" -- logic puzzles, history, math, geography, pop culture, etc.  

The idea is that no one person could possibly get the whole thing right -- a winning score is often something like 22/40 points (so don't feel intimidated!)  

Last week's warmup was won by Rich Zwelling.  

Warmup winners win a small handful of free beer tickets, which we hope will keep them from totally dominating the game to follow ;)

April 8 Vocabulary Tournament

Winner: Jenny Brown


Winner Jenny Brown with host Jen and 2nd runner-up Paul (runner-up M. G. Duke not pictured).

In round one, in which contestants are given three words that they must use correctly in a single sentence, our two child competitors, Ryo and Ayumu, gave us, "My mother is a murderous warlock who is sometimes intellectual" and "My brother is a rhythmic nuisance, and that's really tardy."  And from one of our adult contestants: "I went to visit my grandmother, who was looking really oblique because her bones were ameliorating, as she was suffering from a bad case of antithesis."

In round two, contestants were given a list of three words (one of them made up) and two definitions, and asked to match the words with the definitions.  For example:

THE WORDS:

ceruminous
apious
susurrant

One of these words means "WHISPERING." One means "EARWAXY." Which is which? (Answer at bottom).

In the third round, we tried a new challenge called SYNONYM ANTONYM TRUE FALSE: contestants were given thirty seconds to answer as many questions as possible with only the answers synonym, antonym, true,or false. Most contestants were able to answer between 3 and 7 of these within 30 seconds. Here is a sample (imagine you and me speeding through these as fast as possible -- answers are below):

lachrymose ebullient

bastinado is a form of torture

reticent taciturn

pastime has two t’s in it

the plural of neurosis is neuroses

gammon is a meat

withdrawal contains two a’s

ingenuous candid

deciduous trees do not shed their leaves

Jenny Brown led the pack, with 8 correct in the final round and 18 points overall!

Click here for more photos.

Come on out next Wednesday, April 15, for Geography!

(Answers: Ceruminous is earwaxy; apious is made up; susurrant is whispering.  ANT, TRUE, SYN, FALSE, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, SYN, FALSE. Obviously, the spelling-related ones are pretty obvious when you're reading them, but much more challenging when read aloud).

Welcome to the Chelsea Mind Games Blog

I've been posting "Winners and Photos" on a page of that title on the Chelsea Mind Games site for awhile, until that page started looking a lot like a blog, and I figured this would be easier. Want to see previous games' results?

Click here for the Winners and Photos from April 23, 2008 (the first-ever Mind Games) through April 1, 2009.