The world of trivia is a strange one indeed. Some of you may remember Celeste DiNucci, who won $250,000 on Jeopardy a few years ago. Well, she was one of the contestants who was invited back to take on Watson, the IBM computer that will be appearing on Jeopardy starting tonight. Though her match with Watson was not televised, she did receive an award (above) for knocking him off. And she gets major badass points for doing so while wearing a John Henry shirt.

Not long after knocking off Watson however, she ran into the buzzsaw that was the Adam Sandler round at quizzo. I think we’ve found Celeste’s weakness. After crashing hard in the Sandler round, her team finished last at O’Neals. And so, not long after earning an award for knocking off the most advanced trivia computer in the world, she won some Double Platinum Wild Honey blunt rolling papers for finishing last at O’Neals (below). I don’t think blunt rolling papers are ever a prize on Jeopardy. That said, she’ll have a shot to redeem herself this Saturday…rumor has it she’s putting a kickass team together for Quizzo Bowl.

Last week’s question of the week was, “Who originally played McFly in Back to the Future?” The answer was obviously Eric Stoltz. Unfortunately, there is very little Stoltz as McFly footage out there. Here is a short splice of the footage that has been released. The only place where I see Stoltz make any reference to it is in this short interview about it. On Thursday I had a round about actors who were initally offered major roles but turned them down. Here is a site that I got some of my info from, including Robert Deniro as the star of BIG.

Released in 1915, directed by “A. Wise Guy” and starring “The Jazz Girls” this is believed to be the first porno film in American history.

Several things to look forward to in the next few weeks. First of all, big Quizzo Bowl announcements coming next week. Venue and band will both be revealed. Also, I am still looking for sponsors. If anyone is interested in donating either prizes or having their name on the marquee, so to speak, shoot me a line. This is gonna be a great event with about 300 people in attendance, and website activity always shoots up around Quizzo Bowl time. All I ask is that you don’t spell the event “Quzzo Bowl” on the banners.

Also, in case you were unaware, me and a crew of geeks are heading back out to Denver at the end of the month. The Denverites ripped Philly a few months ago. Well, I’ve been working on a battle rap since. It’s finally written, and hope to get the video done and up by early next week. I’m not sure Denver and the surrounding suburbs will ever recover from the verbal assault I am about to launch.

As for regular quizzo next week, Mike Minion’s got a pretty interesting quiz going down at the Westbury on Monday. The entire quizzes topic is Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll, and in addition to the questions Mike will have some rock music to give away at the quiz. (After checking with our lawyers, we discovered that he is not allowed to give away either sex or drugs at the quiz, however.) As for my quiz, another week of the unusual insanity, plus more Face Off, where some players win within seconds, and others get booed after blowing easy questions, such as the players  involved in this exchange at the Rendezvous…Q: How does Humpty Hump like his oatmeal? Player 1: Runny Me: No Player 2: Extra Thick? Me: No, lumpy. Humpty likes it Lumpy. Crowd: Booooo!

Anyhow, I hope everyone has a great weekend and we’ll see ya next week!

Trivia questions have to come from somewhere, so a good quizmaster will search a variety of sources, from trivia books, to trivia websites, to trivia video games to (alas) wikipedia. But some people just flat out steal every question from somewhere verbatim to make their pub quizzes.

That’s part of the reason why Dicker from Denver doesn’t post trivia questions on the Geeks Who Drink blog, because he doesn’t want people to steal them. I’m a bit more relaxed about that, but I get where he’s coming from.

So I was interested when I stumbled across the following message board on the Straight Dope earlier today, in which someone posted that their quizmaster was stealing all of his questions from a trivia book the guy had recently read. While the discussion itself is interesting, it becomes even more interesting when you learn via a link in the thread that the guys who made millions on Trivial Pursuit basically stole a lot of their questions from a book called Super Trivia by Fred Worth (You see me holding a slightly updated version of it in my promo photo to the right. And no, I don’t use it. The questions are outdated). I had heard this story before, but never the full version. This from a website called triviahalloffame.com, which was linked to on the message board.

But it wasn’t just jealousy that had Worth upset. A lot of the questions bore a suspicious similarity to material from his books. In fact, he would decide that a third of the questions had been lifted from “Super Trivia.” In some cases, the game even copied the typographical errors and misprints. (Not to mention the book’s many unintentionally false facts.) It was time for Fred to set off his bomb. He began looking for the false fact he had planted in his game. And there it was. What was Lt. Columbo’s first name? “Philip,” said Trivial Pursuit.

“Ah ha!” shouted Worth. He had simply made up this business about Philip Columbo. His false fact had been stolen and he now had the evidence. On October 23, 1984, he filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for Southern California, against John and Chris Haney, Ed Werner, and Scott Abbott, who had created the game, as well as against the game’s US and Canadian distributors, Selchow & Righter and Horn Abbott Ltd. Worth wanted $300 million in damages.

Unfortunately, that’s about as far as he got. The trap he had sprung proved useless when the Trivial Pursuit people admitted copying from “Super Trivia.” However, they also copied from lots of other people. As one Web site puts it, “When you copy from one source, it’s called plagiarism; when you copy from many sources, it’s called research.”

And that was that. Worth’s case was thrown out of court by Judge Wm Matthew Byrne, Jr. It never even came to trial. In 1987, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal, declaring that Trivial Pursuit was “substantially different” from “Super Trivia”. The courts decided that the presentation of facts in an encyclopedia, where entries are listed alphabetically, was very different from the rewriting of those same facts as questions, and their division into categories randomly picked on a Trivial Pursuit card. On March 28, 1988, the United States Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Worth’s lawyers.

Note that this is very different from simply stealing the questions and doing some minor reformatting or editing, which we consider stealing. Ahem!

So it probably wouldn’t be worth it for me to go chasing after question stealers (or for people whose trivia books I read to go chasing after me). But quizzo is a sport of gentlemen, and while grabbing a question here and there from various sources, checking them out and then giving them your own spin is par for the course, full on copycatting is extremely poor form.

• Yes, the rumors are true. I am now an honest man. Got married Saturday. It was an incredible weekend. Thanks to everyone who was a part of it, and thanks to everyone who sent us your best. And thanks, Steve-O, for playing “Last Christmas” by WHAM! on piano right before the service started.

• Just a quick reminder that the Westbury is having their holiday party tonight, and therefore Westbury Quiz is cancelled for tonight. The Westbury quiz is back on in two weeks. Quizzo for Terrace Taproom tomorrow is on as planned.

• Quizzo pics of last week’s winners will be posted either later today or early tomorrow. I got married on Saturday, so things were a little too hectic Friday to get photos up. Today it’s back to reality, which includes cleaning up the house.

• This week, it’s time for our annual Holiday Spectacular. This is always one of the highlights of the year. Should be a blast. This year, I’m also going to throw in a few “Year in Review” questions. And what the hell, I’ll even write two quizzes this week, as a present to all you quizzo uber-nerds.

• First of all, does anyone remember who won at the Rendezvous and Black Sheep last week? I haven’t been able to get a hold of the old scoresheets, and after investigating on Wednesday night, I found out who finished 2nd and 3rd but not first. Apparently we had upsets at both bars. If you’re team won, please give me a heads up so I can give you your just rewards.

• Also, let me know who won Liberty 360 tickets at the Autumn Invitational. I have your tickets, I just forgot to hand them out after the event. Let me know and I’ll bring them to quizzo this week. It is a pretty cool show. I went a couple of weeks ago. And if I owe you any other prizes, whether from here or isportacus, let me know. I want to get caught up on all that stuff. Hit me up at johnny@johnnygoodtimes.com or on facebook.

• The Chip Chantry One Man Show returns this Monday! Chip and I will be hosting the fun at a new location, the Shubin Theatre on 4th and Bainbridge. We have a great lineup and it’s gonna be an awesome show. Here’s some more details.

• A quick reminder to you Harry Potter geeks. Mike Minion will be hosting his Harry Potter quiz on Monday, December 12th at the Ugly American at 8 p.m.

• Here’s the latest sports podcast with Lee and I where we get into a heated debate about transvestite golfers.

• If you want to upgrade your team avatar just put one together and hit me up on facebook. If you haven’t sent me one, I’ve made one up, but you are still welcome to make one yourself and send it to me.

• And finally, quizzo semi-regular, Andy Reid impersonator, and man about town Steve Odabashian is considering a run for City Council. We like his policies, but we’re concerned about his clock management.

What type of plague struck Strasbourg, France, in 1518, killing dozens of people?

A wild, wild, Spooktacular week. Steak Em Up finishes 3rd twice, Satan’s Minions (above) get a perfect score, I blow a tie breaker at O’Neals, and two new teams win for the first time ever.

We start at O’Neals, where I didn’t realize until I was announcing final scores that we had a tie. I ran over to Insert Topical Team Name Here and said “When was Dracula born?” Not knowing that it was the tiebreaker, one of them started looking it up on his phone. They were disqualified. Bad call by the ref: In a rush, I had neglected to tell them it was a tiebreaker. Savage Ear got the win. A tough loss, but the fact that they tied means they only lost one point on the JGTAI. Also getting a win on Tuesday night? The Tubular Two, whose City Tap House win was their first ever victory.

No tiebreakers needed at the Black Sheep the next night, as Satan’s Minions went 40 questions up, 40 questions down to record a perfect 120. Remarkably, after 7 years and over 350 quizzes without a single perfect game ever at the Black Sheep, we’ve had two in the month of October (Duane’s WOrld had one a few weeks ago.) It’s a funny sport.

Earlier in the night, 1022 kept their incredible hot streak going. Through September 10th, these Rendezvous regulars had won three times all season, and hadn’t won since early June. In the last 6 games, they’ve won 5 times.

Onto Thursday, where the serial killer wild card round was an instant classic (The Ghost Movie Speed Round, on the other hand, not so much. A fair amount of anger over what constitutes a ghost). And when the dust settled, the Exhausted Nihilists were the 2nd team this week  that won their first ever quizzo.

Then to a packed Bards, where incredibly 4 teams finished within two points of each other. Eschaton escaped with the win. Lots of surprises in the Halloween Spooktacular. Going to be interesting to see how the standings shake down on Monday.

There is little consolation to take from the Phillies loss. But if there is one, it is this: for the first time in 3 years, we will have an uninterrupted Halloween Spooktacular. And to celebrate, for the first time ever I am going to write two different Halloween quizzes. Scary songs, mass murder, and horror films will dominate the questions. This will not be a quiz for the weak of heart. We start tonight, on Big Money Tuesday. Winning team at O’Neals gets a $50 gift certificate. And considering that there have been 6 different winners in the past 7 weeks, anybody could take this thing. And $50 can buy you a lot of $3.50 margaritas.

On to the City Tap House. Our first quiz last week was a huge success. Great turnout, great venue, and great prizes make this an awesome quiz. Winning team gets a free two hour Happy Hour for 10 friends. Specials include the $10 personal pizza and a beer. That’s hard to beat. You better be there tonight…or else!