As I approach the end of my PhD, I’m racking up a lot of lasts[1]. Specifically, I have now played my last Tolkien Varsity Quiz and my last British Student Quiz Championship. What’s interesting is how I felt very differently about them.
The Tolkien Varsity Quiz was, perhaps unsurprisingly if you’ve met me, a smooth victory. Cambridge[2] won 72 – 50.5. It wasn’t a complete thrashing of Oxford, but we led from the start and there was never any real danger of us falling behind. And my main emotion when it was over was relief. I’d never have to compete in it again. It was, really, a bit of a hollow victory. If I’m honest, I’m not really sure I can say I even enjoyed it all that much. It felt like a bit of a chore. The problem is that it wasn’t remotely competitive – I was expected (and expecting) to win and no one else really had a chance. But I’m not enough of an egomaniacal narcissist that I really got anything out of that being the case. I think, now that I’ve won four in a row, with a lifetime score of 6-1 in my favour[3] and the last two having been plain sailing, I’ve sufficiently proven to myself that I can learn virtually everything about a topic and recall it with a high degree of accuracy, and therefore be the best at it. I think everyone else thought I’d proven this a while ago, but now even I am slightly fed up with my own dominance of the quiz. So, no one really enjoyed the day – Oxford almost certainly didn’t, I didn’t and probably the rest of my team didn’t either[4]. Which means it’s probably a good point to stop doing it. I’ll write it next year, which will, probably, be a lot more fun. For me, at least.
BSQC was also a victory[5], but a rather less smooth one. We (Cambridge A)[6] made it through the morning and the first half of the afternoon undefeated in a fairly leisurely manner. We didn’t have any especially close games and were cruising along, having topped the morning standings, ahead of Oxford A and Southampton A, our main rivals, on the tiebreak metric of points per bonus set[7]. It was a bit dull again, to be honest. Then we came up against Oxford B and were rudely awakened. We won, but only on the last question after mounting a final quarter comeback. Things had got a bit more interesting. We then had to play Oxford A and, being on a bit of a roll, we actually beat them quite easily, which surprised us more than anyone[8]. This set us up for an advantaged final against, as it turned out, Southampton A[9]. We were, frankly, all a bit hopped up on quiz at this point and raring to go, despite the fact that it was nearly 20:00 and we’d all got up before 06:00 and started the tournament at 10:00. So, we played the first final. At the halfway point, we looked dead and buried, but then pulled off a ridiculous comeback to win by 5 points[10]. The adrenaline was through the roof. Except we didn’t actually win – our opponents protested one of the questions, because they thought they’d given an acceptable alternative answer. After a lot of conferring among the tournament moderators, it was decided that they had indeed given an acceptable alternative answer[11], so the match was awarded to them and it was into the second part of the advantaged final. We came out swinging in an adrenaline-induced frenzy and, in a mirror image of the first match, Southampton A looked to be out of the running at the halfway point. But then, with us needing pretty much only one question to clinch things, they rallied impressively in the second half to close to within 40 points at the end of the match. So we’d won. Except, because Fate has a sense of humour, there was another protest (again, from Southampton A) to resolve. If that protest was upheld, our winning margin wasn’t big enough to ensure we won[12], so all 8 contestants sat around nervously, waiting for the final verdict, like two parties in a particularly nerdy litigation hoping that the judge would send the other lot down. Eventually, the protest was resolved in our favour, so we actually had won. By this point, it was 21:30, we hadn’t had any dinner, and we were too tired to celebrate properly, but we were all very happy. We felt sorry for Southampton A – the final really couldn’t have been any closer – but the real winners were the audience, who’d got to watch 90 minutes of nail-biting stuff[13]. From my point of view, never having taken quizbowl too seriously, I’d had a lot more fun. I hadn’t been expecting to win particularly, I hadn’t tried to learn everything and, consequently, I’d had some really good close matches and had enjoyed myself much more. It was a very good way to finish my student quizbowl career. I should probably officially thank my teammates, the organisers and the moderators too, before I finish.
I suppose, really, what I’m saying is that being mildly crap and never taking things too seriously is the way to go. Sure, you can work and become the best at something, but what then? It stops being fun and just becomes a bit dull – of course you’re going to win and no one can really give you a good run for your money. Even so, you’re always paranoid about someone else beating you. Being at the peak of something is an achievement, but there’s only ever space for one person on that peak. Whereas, if you’re adequately competent at something, you can feel proud that you’re reasonably good at it, certainly better than average, and you can have some interesting match-ups. Sure, you’ll lose a few to people who are taking it too seriously[14], but you’ll have more fun in the long run.
Never be the best. It sucks in the long-term.
[1] Mostly positive. I’m really looking forward to my last month of not being employed, for instance. Or the last time I have to look at my thesis. Or the last time being on student committees. Sometimes, ends are better than beginnings.
[2] Realistically, me. If I’m honest.
[3] I lost the first one I competed in when I was a callow fresher. At which point I was really annoyed and decided I wouldn’t do so again. I suppose at least I can be proud of having achieved that aim.
[4] Maybe they did – they got an easy victory out of it. But they mostly spent the afternoon sitting in silence, so I can’t imagine it was all that fun.
[5] Perhaps surprisingly. We weren’t necessarily favourites to win. What it does mean is that I currently hold the BSQC trophy, the Varsity Quiz trophy and the Tolkien Varsity Quiz trophy. That’s a very niche triple crown.
[6] I should also note that I am by no means the main motive force of Cambridge A. We – Joseph, Boyang, Eli and myself – put together a real team effort all day. And, clearly, Joseph was the person who was really driving us forward. The stats can be found here, by which you’ll see what I mean. The man’s a marvel of useless knowledge accumulation.
[7] We’d all won all our morning matches, so were tied in that regard. But, we turned out to be the best at bonuses, and remained so all day. It’s an interesting thing about Cambridge – Oxford tend to be better than us on the buzzer, on average, but we tend to do better on the bonuses. It’s been a pattern for years and, I suspect, reflects the differences between the two societies. Oxford tend to read a lot of questions and emphasise getting buzzes in their practices; ours are more free-form and messy, but perhaps lead to us having more fun and retaining more things. As it turned out, us coming top in the morning was really useful, because it gave us a more favourable afternoon draw. So those few extra bonus points essentially swung the entire tournament in our favour.
[8] Essentially, the variation in competence between us, Oxford A and Southampton A is smaller than the variation in content between packets of questions. So, if a packet comes up that just happens to play to one side’s strengths, that side will win, potentially with a scoreline that seems rather too flattering. This is what happened here – we just lucked out with a good packet for us; on another day and another packet, it could very easily have been us being soundly beaten.
[9] Advantaged finals are complicated. The idea is, the winning team should have cleared the field by two games. We’d gone undefeated all day, but Southampton A had only lost one match (to Oxford A – we hadn’t played them earlier) and Oxford A had lost two (once to us and once to Southampton A – yes Oxford A and Southampton A played each other twice because of the vagaries of the tournament draw). So, as we were only one match clear, we had to play an advantaged final. This meant we’d play Southampton A in one match. If we won, we won the tournament. If Southampton A won, we then both played a second final, with the winner actually winning. Essentially, we had two chances to win once; Southampton A had one chance to win twice.
[10] The smallest possible margin of victory – like University Challenge, everything is scored in multiples of five.
[11] Despite the best efforts of the tournament writers and editors, this does indeed sometimes happen. There’s a lot of knowledge and strange coincidences out there, so sometimes you unwittingly let something through that can apply to more than one thing.
[12] Given that a starter and bonus set is potentially worth a combined 40 points and we were only 40 points ahead, a swing of one starter would have wiped out our lead.
[13] To put this in a more relatable sporting context, let’s pretend this was a football match. At halftime, we were 3-0 down and then fought back to take a 4-3 lead at the end of normal time. But then Southampton A scored a 95th minute goal that was awarded after a lengthy VAR consultation, taking us into extra time. We fired in another three goals in the first half of extra time, then shipped a couple with a third dribbling over the line in the 4th minute of extra time stoppage time, which was then subsequently denied after another frenetic VAR session, leaving us exhausted 7-6 winners. I’d work penalties into the metaphor somehow, but quizbowl doesn’t really have an equivalent for that.
[14] Not that that happened on this occasion, unexpectedly. But, in my quizbowl career, there are plenty of matches I’ve lost to people who take the whole thing a bit too seriously.
Aiya Helcarda 