July 15 Grand Finale

33 contestants and many spectators came out to the Chelsea Market for the final installment of our long-running intellectual game show.  Players completed challenges in geography, math, vocabulary, and trivia.

Winner: Carolyn D'Aquila

Runner-Up: Johnny Lu

Finalists (in no particular order):
Rich Zwelling
Tristan Higgs
Keith Burdette
Chris Wyant
Isaac Greenbaum

Winner Carolyn with hosts Soce and Jen

Soce with Johnny Lu's perfect-scoring answer to the challenge "Draw Panama, label its capital, and draw and label its border nations."

I should also like to point out that Carolyn D'Aquila has managed to win the Grand Prize at both the Williamsburg Spelling Bee and the New York City Spelling Bee. I had no idea she could also do math, which she did, both in completing her individual challenge and in nailing the following bonus question to put her over the top:

If a=1, b=2, etc., add the values of the letters in the name of the capital of Belgium. Divide by the cube root of 125. Add the number of Angelina Jolie's children who are not adopted. If the seasons were numbered 1-4 with fall as 1, winter as 2, etc., divide by the number of the season the word "hiemal" refers to, add the number for the season the word "vernal" refers to, and multiply your answer by the fourth digit of pi.  (Post your answers in the comments?  Carolyn knows!)

What fun looks like!

A new Mind Games someplace else? I shall keep you updated!

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xo,
Jen

The End of Mind Games; Long Live Mind Games

Chelsea Mind Games, sadly, has been canceled by Chelsea Market.

We lasted a year and a half! We gave out lots of silly prizes, and a smaller number of the more-coveted envelopes-of- cash-that-also-prove-you're-a-genius (the best kind of currency). And, of course, hundreds upon hundreds of smart people from all over the city — from ages 7 to at least 70 — came and competed, and, I think, enjoyed second dates free from the bar scene, and met people who wanted to discuss probability and combinatorics, and shouted out “Ouagadougou!” when asked for the capital of Burkina Faso.

I will keep you updated on what's next.

July 8 Geography Bee

Winner: Trent Williams

Winner Trent (2nd from right) with runners-up Noam and Sarah and hosts Jen and Abbi

Is it a principality? A sultanate? A federal democratic republic?

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July 1 Vocabulary Tournament

Winner: Tristan Higgs

Winner Tristan (tall, kneeling) with runners-up Chris and Brooke

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June 24 Team Trivia

Winners: Yellow Fever

Team Yellow Fever with hosts Michael and Jen

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June 24 Trivia: Sample Questions

Pirates

Name the pirate who captained the Queen Anne’s Revenge and was said to fight with lit cannon fuses in his hair to intimidate opponents.

Name the pirate knighted by Queen Elizabeth who later went on to serve as second-in-command in the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

Name the two US Presidents to have fought declared wars against the Barbary Pirates.

In pirate lingo, what is a hogshead? 

In pirate lingo, what is “Davy Jones’s locker”?  

 

Jeans

The word “jeans” comes from the French word for the town of the Italian sailors who were known for wearing them.  What town?  

What denim dye was imported from India to Europe as early as the Greco-Roman era? 

What innovation did Levi Strauss and his partner Jacob Davis add to jeans and receive a patent for?  

From what language does the word “dungarees” come into English?

Why did the US Navy introduce bell-bottom trousers in 1817? 

Advertising Catchphrases

What “Tastes Good Like a Cigarette Should”? 

What is a relief when it goes “plop, plop, fizz, fizz”? 

“We’re number two; we try harder” 

"With a name like ________, it has to be good."

And a historical favorite: what company's slogan was once “Born in fire, blown by mouth”?

 

Answers: Blackbeard, Francis Drake, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, a keg, the bottom of the sea (death by drowning, etc.); Genoa, indigo, copper rivets, Hindi, to roll them up while washing decks or to take them off quickly if thrown overboard; Winston, Alka-Seltzer, Avis, Smuckers, Waterford Glass.

 

June 17 Math Bee

Winner: Rich Zwelling

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June 10 Geography Bee

Winner:  Trent Williams

Trent with hosts Abbi and Jen and runner-up Kate.

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June 3 Warmup Quiz Hilarity

On the June 3 Warmup Quiz, I challenged players to draw a firkin, a bodkin, a yurt, a thurible, a byre, and a narwhal. (Roughly speaking, these are a keg, a knife, a hut, an incense burner, a cowshed, and a whale with a horn).

I got a lot of narwhals, and a good number of yurts.

Some people decided to draw something, anything -- just in case it turned out that a thurible was, for instance, a clown on a bicycle. Here are some of my favorite entries:

June 3 Vocabulary Bee

Winner: Ted Phillips


Winner Ted Phillips with runners-up Marcia and Travis

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