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5-10-15 - a bonus format in which the UKAT routinely screws up the 5 point clue,
while nailing the 10 and 15. This is alternately called The Kentucky Method ASIA! - Any obscenely easy answer encountered in Academic Competition. Adapted from Saturday Night Live's send-up of "Celebrity Jeopardy!" in which the clue to an "Audio Daily Double" in the category of "Continents" is the very clearly-pronounced word "ASIA", which the character of John Travolta still manages to miss. Click here to hear it. Binary F*ck - Scenario in which a player, presented with one of two possible answers, chooses the incorrect one, a problem routinely encountered by the UKAT's Kelly McKenzie and Robert Osborne. Car Practice - tournament question answers which have been mentioned in discussions or reviewing made during the trip to the tournament itself. Kelly is frequently able to obtain Seth's anecdotes for himself via car practices. Roughly akin to CalTech's Things We Learned in the Car and Vanderbilt's Psychic answering, but for once not ripped off from them. Comedy Credit - the allowance one gets to make jokes. Good jokes extend your credit while bad jokes (i.e. any joke told by Lou) cost you credit, up to the point where you simply no longer have any credit to tell them. Conversation Poison - any phrase which immediately brings an abrupt end to discourse, usually due to the nature of its insipidity or to the revulsion it causes. H4x0r and Jessica Tandy (don't ask) are notable examples of conversation poison. Adapted from a phrase uttered by Norm McDonald suggesting that a good title for any film starring Carrot Top would be "Box Office Poison". Cover - the act of giving an answer to a bonus part which is identical to one given to the preceding part in the hope that one of the two of them will be the correct (see Hat Trick) Dig - to like, to show agreement with, or to have understanding of a concept or idea. Example: We dig the ACF. Taken from the popular slang usage of the word; often used in blaxploitation movies, such as Dolemite. Faux Subject Player - what arises when a player claims mastery of an academic subject in which they have no knowledge or expertise. It is usually witnessed in the form of posturing, self-promoting braggarts with large egos, of which there are many in academic competition. Taken from our conversation with the Detroit Catholic Central HS academic team who acknowledged a faux history player on their team. Greek - 1) ancient Indo-European language spoken in various dialects by people on the Greek mainland as well as in certain parts of Asia Minor and, after the conquests of Alexander the Great, Africa. An extremely useful language to know for AC purposes, as many scientific terms are derived from this language. 2) Latin. Hat Trick - similar to covering, the act of giving the same answer to three consecutive bonus parts in the desperate hope that one of them will be the correct one. While this reprehensible device often pays off, a true Hat Trick results in no points earned, bringing about a state of justice (see Justice). Justice - the establishment or determination of rights according to the rules of law or equity; the quality of being just, impartial, or fair. In AC, this occurs when someone who has greater knowledge of a subject gets points on questions about it, but, as in the real world, justice is rara avis indeed. Just Wrong - answers that are almost, but not quite, correct, often coming down to things like the number of a ruler, an article in the title of a work, or a letter in an acronym. Just wrong answers of the last type regularly plague UKAT member Kelly McKenzie. Kentucky Method - see 5-10-15. Latin - language spoken by the ancient Romans and for centuries the lingua franca of the scientific community. Though it is an extremely useful language to know for AC purposes, as many scientific terms are derived from it, the utility of Latin nevertheless suffers from the fact that it is routinely confused with Greek, often managing to screw players who know both languages, like UKAT member Seth Kendall. See Greek. Mandlebrotastic - 1) adjective pertaining to any situation which, while annoying, cannot quite claim the importance required to produce genuine anger; 2) any response ruled incorrect due to a pointless or trifling reason, such as incorrect spelling or pronunciation. Adapted from the phrase "mantastic", coined by by comedian Greg Berendt, combined with an answer irritatingly, while technically justifiably, ruled incorrect at 2000's UTC COTKU. Not Even Wrong - 1) answer so far divorced from the plausibility of being the correct one that it is imbued with a supernatural incorrectness, which earns its postulator a great deal of scorn. 2) Second on the wrong scale, following wrong and preceding ass-wrong. Taken from a comment made by physicist Wolfgang Pauli whom, when looking at research of a graduate student, is reported to have said "This isn't right. This isn't even wrong." See Wrong Scale. Osborne Line - point at which egregious defects in the personality of a player cease to compensate for his or her playing ability, or -more commonly- vice versa, resulting in a net loss for the team. Lying on the wrong side of the Osborne line virtually guarantees that a so-called player will not participate in out-of-state tournaments. Named for former UKAT member Joseph Osborne, no relation to Robert. Pack - A set of "questions" occasionally encountered in tournament play notable for Mandlebrotastic hoses, quasi-or completely un-academic content, "boni", and a preponderance of trash (usually at the expense of literature, mythology, or other legitimate subjects). "Packs" are the specialty of NAQT and writers from certain geographic regions and should be distinguished from "packets", i.e. a legitimate collection of questions which properly represent suitable material for Academic Competition. Questionsmithy - the craft of pounding out three-part ACF bonuses in the same repetitious manner, just as a blacksmith would make horseshoes. Such questions are frowned upon, particularly in the case cited by Vanderbilt's "The Only Three Answers." Along the same lines you will find the Question Smithee - a question so bad that it makes you wonder who would take credit for writing it, à la the practice of crediting a bad movie to "Alan Smithee." Science - area of knowledge pertaining to general truths or the operation of general laws concerned with the physical world and its phenomena, examples of which including physics, chemistry, etc. Often confused by question writers with science history ( i.e. biographical information about scientists) to the detriment of those who know the former but not the latter; math is often given similar treatment. _St. Johns Night on Bald Mountain_ - the complete title of a work by Modest Mussorgsky usually abbreviated to Night On Bald Mountain, whose complete underlining in a packet by an otherwise good certain question writer is used as the classic case of over-underlining by members of the UKAT. Similar examples (by the same writer, no less) include _Discourses on the First 10 books of Livy_, usually referred to as the Discorsi. Stank - see "Taint, The" Static - see White Noise. Taint, The - quality attached to certain subjects which immediately mark them as objects of revulsion and bringers of shame to those who know about them due to their assocation with certain unsavory individuals. Subjects under the Taint (also known as the Stank) are referred to as "Attainted" and include WWII Naval History, Space Exploration, and Aeronautics, among others. Title Boy - a particularly despicable sort of AC player whose sole knowledge of certain answers (particularly in the areas of art, music, and literature) comes from knowledge of titles as opposed to actual content. On the UKAT, Kelly McKenzie is a notorious title-boy. Ripped off wholesale from Maryland, who uses the term in their "Team Members" page but, perplexingly, not in their lexicon, perhaps thinking it too obvious to warrant a definition. Wangfest - a game which features an unusually high number of interrupts. Named for the former Illinois/current Syracuse player and AC legend Andy Wang, whose negging (and drinking) abilities have become proverbial. White Noise - words found in tossups (sometimes referred to as "static") which do not supply factual information or clues pointing to the actual answer, serving instead as purposeless noise from which an actual clue will seem to "jump out". Wrong Scale - paradigm by which the relative incorrectness of an answer given to a question may be evaluated. Responses which are reasonably related to the actual answers are merely wrong, while ones more bizarre and implausible are not even wrong; answers which apparently light years away from anything resembling the right ones are ass-wrong. Defibrillator - machine used by doctors to restart a human heart by means of an electrical charge, whose usage is occasionally deemed necessary on those unable to answer an obscenely easy answer in AC. Often "air defibrillator", accompanied by appropriate hand motions and sound effects, will be employed by members of the UKAT either apologetically by those who answer after such a question or condescendingly by teammates who failed to do so. Reno Style - enclitic phrase added to the end of a declarative statement in order to give it emphasis whose meaning is roughly equivalent to "very, extremely". Similar in definition to old-school. Usage: "Man, that last packet sucked Reno style." Taken from a phrase uttered by Saturday Night Live's Will Farrell in the character of Janet Reno. |