Princess Trivia Cheating - is this common?

[geocruiser]

1 hour ago, denmarks said:

I always play the morning and afternoon trivia on sea days. I have seen some teams that always win but I always assumed it was due to a member who has been on many cruises and knew all the questions. I have never seen cheating. My team has won many times and I have lots of pens and bag clips to prove it.

Like you I enjoy playing trivia.  Some team do will a lot.  And there are a lot of smart people out there.  I was on a team for geography trivia and we got 20 out of 20 right.  It was hard because they show you a out line of a country and you had to name the country.  Sure if the showed me the U.S,, Canada or Italy I would get them right.  So other than that it was really hard for a person like me.  But we got 20 out of 20.  People were complaining about our score.  Well, how did we get 20 out of 20?  It was thanks to a high school student on our team who had won his state championship in Geography.  This student was so smart.  It was a joy to have him on our team.

Edited September 13, 2019 by geocruiser

[denmarks]

Years ago the trivia included a slide show of about 25 world locations. You had to name and locate each picture. This was in addition to the regular trivia. It continued in the background over and over and was scored after the regular game.

[KruzPrincess]

Yes. I was on a cruise with a friend who lives for trivia and is very good at it. She tries to find others who are very good at it in order to have a good team. My friend doesn’t cheat, but we met a woman who would get out her phone to look up answers. I told her it was not acceptable and she put the phone away. I refused to play with her, but my friend continued to play with her because she just loves the game. During other games where I sat off to the side, “the cheater” would look at me for answers and I would just shrug. For the rest of the cruise I just referred to her as the cheater. I forgot her actual name. LOL. It’s so annoying that people can’t play fairly. I’ve seen other people cheat as well. Winning is apparently more important than self-respect. 

 

 

PS. The cheater was a grade school teacher. 

Edited September 13, 2019 by KruzPrincess

[Level six]

I have also been on teams that got 20 right without cheating, so just because someone gets 20 right doesn't mean they are cheating at all.  BUT, when there is a binder and a smart phone or laptop and the team wins time after time????

 

Anyway, I think those that do cheat must lead a sad, pathetic life if winning trivia on a cruise ship is their dream. And to argue with the staff is the worst and really sad to see.  

[ohnonotmeagain]

17 hours ago, Coral said:

Who cares that much about winning a trivia game?

Sad people. 

[majortom10]

Very sad people who feel they have to cheat to win the "crap" prizes given out.

[99Cruiser]

It was funny on one cruise my wife decided to play trivia and I had some work to do so instead of sitting in the cabin I took my laptop to the lounge  where trivia was and sat in the back to do work.  An older lady came up to me and said "that's cheating".  I said excuse me, I'm not here for trivia, I'm just sitting in the back working.  She said "my team will sit next to you to make sure you don't cheat".  I said ok, but I don't have a trivia answer form AND, the money it costs to be on the internet isn't worth the $1 coaster you can win.  She ended up sitting next to me and kept watching me.  I asked since she was so interested in what I was doing if she wanted to help me with my spreadsheet 🙂

[voljeep]

13 minutes ago, majortom10 said:

Very sad people who feel they have to cheat to win the "crap" prizes given out.

Insecure ... and seek self-satisfaction from showing others how 'smart' they are ...

signed

volfreud

[john watson]

17 hours ago, capriccio said:

We were accused of 'cheating' the first time we ever played Trivia (on Princess or any other line).  My DH and I were a team of 2 and tied after the 20 questions with a team of 6.  There was a playoff round and we won.  At which point the other team immediately said "they are cheating because they don't have 6 team members!"  There was silence in the room and then all the other teams started laughing at them. 

 

I recall one trivia quiz which I participated on Princess where we amalgamated until we had the maximum number of team members, I think it was eight.  Half way through the quiz one of our team member's husband showed up and sat by us.  He contributed nothing except at one point the quizmaster asked "What is the famous beach at Rio de Janeiro called?"  He shouts at the top of his voice "COPOCABANA!" which was a bit irritating as we knew anyway but some other teams did not.  In the end we had the highest score, were declared the winners until someone said "They have got nine team members" and we were disqualified. The "extra guy" had given no answers to us except shouting out one answer for everybody.

 

 

Regards John

17 hours ago, capriccio said:

 

 

 

 

 

[MissP22]

I suspect the prizes will change someday.

Straws & balloons for the winners. 

[toads45froggy]

37 minutes ago, MissP22 said:

I suspect the prizes will change someday.

Straws & balloons for the winners. 

Balloons are killing the world. Save the turtles.

[jparker10508]

Once on a 28 day cruise we watched a group that played every trivia held.  The wife would get there early everytime so they would have the same table.  The husband would show up with his book that he supposedly wrote down all the questions and answers.  The others at the table would shout out at the top of their lungs the answers while the staff read us the answers  just trying to look like they knew it all. After days of no one other than this group winning, I went up and questioned how they would know everything.  One said the  wife studies everyday at home, one said he never looked  back into the book while playing (so why have it on the table and be writing in it during the game)  and they all admitted to taking many Princess cruises and being most travelled.Finally during a tie breaker, the cruise staff was in the middle of asking the question and got out "how many years did it take to build ... and with that the lady jumped up to make sure she was the first standing to be able to answer first  and the question was then finished. She then turned to her table to get the answer after the team discussed it since she didn't know it.   On the last day of the trivia, she arrived early as usual with all the bottles of that horrible champagne their team had won and had the waiters pass it out in glasses to share with all the trivia losers. They thought they were something! If they only knew what we really all thought of them. I think they ought to give out a prize for fewest answers correct sometime just to switch it up. Maybe I'd have a chance!

[coo359a2]

38 minutes ago, jparker10508 said:

. I think they ought to give out a prize for fewest answers correct sometime just to switch it up. Maybe I'd have a chance!

 

They did this at one Trivia game I was at.  The CD staff asked who had some low scores.  No one raised their hand until he said that the lowest score would get a prize.  Then hands went up.  All had a good laugh over giving out a prize for the lowest score.  The  "winning" team got a bottle of Champagne to share.

[Knickearth]

On 9/12/2019 at 3:43 PM, ram1977 said:

Hello, I'm new to this website and quite new to cruising in gerenal. My husband and I have done 3 Carnival cruises over the last 2 years and did our first on Princess earlier this year. While we thoroughly enjoyed the Princess cruise we did come across one thing that we never saw on our Carnival cruises.  Let me start by saying that we are not Trivia experts and do not take it seriously, but we do really enjoy meeting people, having a drink and having a good time while answering the questions. We didn't ever win any of the quizzes on Carnival but had a great time meeting people. There were usually only a couple of quizzes a day on Carnival but we were happy to see days when there were 4 or 5 trivia contests on Princess.

 

Now comes the problem! We teamed up with new people virtually everytime we did the trivia, and we usually got about 15 out of 20 answers correct. However the winning team always got all 20 correct. And it was always the same team (An older couple). This went on for a few days - no big deal we thought as the prizes were pretty awful! There's only so many plastic coasters you can want...right? Anyway, on about day 5 we teamed up with a couple who said they knew the people that won all of the time and they're long time Princess cruisers who keep all of their previous quiz answer sheets in a book and look at them while the quiz is going on! I actually thought they were joking but as we were sitting closer to the 'winners' for this quiz I did look over and sure enough, out came the little book filled with old answer sheets! Now I have no problem with people remembering answers from previous quizzes but this seemed like some pretty strange behavior to win a naff prize! the 'cheats' were an older couple too, probably in their early 70's - definitely old enough to know better. As the cruise went on we talked to more and more people who knew of them and what they did! A lot of people in the trivia contests were getting quite angry by their always perfect scores and it did make the atmosphere a little uncomfortable sometimes. I really don't want to sound like a bad loser but it is nice to go to a trivia contest and know you have a small chance of winning!

 

Now this cruise was out of San Pedro and we are thinking of doing a Mexican riviera cruise on the Royal later this year, also out of San Pedro. The trivia contests aren't something that will make us decide not to take a cruise but I just wondered if anyone else has encountered something like this on board?

 

Thanks in advance for any feedback

many years ago on Holland America, people who did back to backs knew all the answers.  So our little trivia group explained privately to the activities person that we can all afford the key chains, coasters etc without having to win, but we all come to trivia for the competition.  Is there any way the staff can prepare fresh quizzes (not the preset ones) just so passengers can enjoy the competition.

 

You know what = she did just that and all was good.

 

I can't imagine that couple being able to look up answers on ALL their sheets in enough time.  It means they are waiting toooo long between questions.

[JF - retired RRT]

On 9/12/2019 at 4:18 PM, c-boy said:

huh 🤨,   that's somethin' new, gettin' man handled by  conniving super seniors in trivia.  Kinda hard to police people at these events.  Princess should  mix it up and pull random question cards from the trivial  pursuit game .  

Super Seniors???

Nope. I'm 73 and just getting started.

[azbirdmom]

Years ago we were on the Star Princess cruising from Valparaiso Chile to Rio.  We joined with 4 others we met through our Cruise Critic roll call and had a diverse enough team that we only missed an answer or two at every trivia session.  But we repeatedly came in second to a team that kept getting all of the answers right.  We learned that their team included a single older woman who had been on B2B2B.  They repeated the exact same questions on the same days of every cruise.  That woman disembarked the cruise at Buenos Aires and after that the previously winning team couldn't even get half of the questions right.  I did mention on the post cruise survey that for the enjoyment of all cruisers they should mix up the questions a little to give everyone a fair shot at winning.  We haven't been regulars at trivia since then as we continued to hear similar stories - it's not fun when others cheat.

Edited September 14, 2019 by azbirdmom

[HJH]

Interesting, very easy to identify the offending couple from the behavior descriptions. We encountered them several years ago and everything mentioned is accurate, Stacks of previous questions/answers, same seats in the rear and 19/20 scores in every game. They are 1000+ days travelers and usually book at the last minute and obviously spend a great deal of there lives onboard playing Trivia. Can’t imagine winning at Trivia is that important. Sick Puppies! 

 

 

[POF1234]

I played trivia once on RCI.  The coordinator said no one had ever been able to answer this question and there would be a special prize. 

 

the question : Who said - the best diet tip is never eat more than you can lift. the answer .... my favorite character of all time Miss Piggy !. I got a mug I think or maybe a key chain.  

 

I'm great at trivia, but would not be able to deal with these intense type players ! Yikes.

[suzyed]

9 hours ago, majortom10 said:

Very sad people who feel they have to cheat to win the "crap" prizes given out.

I heard that many of those people give these crap prizes to their cabin steward as their "tip".  Don't know if that's true but have heard it several times!

[Level six]

3 minutes ago, suzyed said:

I heard that many of those people give these crap prizes to their cabin steward as their "tip".  Don't know if that's true but have heard it several times!

OMG!!  You have got to be kidding.

[UT-Volsfan]

My wife and I enjoy playing the trivia games onboard whenever we cruise.  We also play trivia once or twice a week when we go out to eat .We usually find some teammates on the first day of the cruise so that we have 6 people playing.  We have found it helps to have some people from the North America as well as overseas so we can have a better shot at the questions.   Unfortunately we have seen several examples of cheating, including:  1) use of phones and tablets, 2) reference sheets (both notebooks of old quizzes as well as sheets with notes for topic specific trivia games, 3) changing wrong answers after being graded to correct answers and rescoring their paper, 4) using teams big enough to make up two or three teams, 5) grading their own papers, or 6) just lie about their scores always being 1 higher than the 2nd place team.  Most of the cruise director's staff doing trivia anymore make announcements about the team size and not to use electronic devices, but the other methods still seem to occur.  I think the Q/A notebooks should be explicitly banned at trivia and if seen looking at them your score doesn't count.

 

Worst example of trivia we have seen was a couple of years ago.  We passed our paper to another team to score it.  Before they handed their paper over, they had a person at the far end of their table copy answers off of our paper to fill in blanks on their answer sheet.  We went and grabbed our answer sheet back and told them we saw them cheating.  Fortunately they had some other wrong answers and did not win, but that is very brazen to cheat like that.

 

Some of the people hosting trivia have done it enough that they have a large collection of questions to use and do make an effort to not repeat trivias while repeat passengers are on board.  On our last cruise we had music trivia every evening, which does seem to frustrate the cheaters and people who have heard the questions before.  A couple of trivia hosts have told us they have enough trivia questions to get thru about 4 weeks of cruises without repeating a session.  Newer crew members have not had a chance to build up their collection of trivia questions - it might be nice for Princess to provide more questions for the crews, but some of the people we have competed against would probably still try to get hold of all of these for their Q/A books to use.  We have even seen some very knowledgeable passengers put together trivia contests and fill in as the trivia host.  Their team would not compete during these sessions - they did this because they wanted to make the trivia more competitive.  Teams playing certainly had never seen any of these questions before!

 

Are the prizes worth the effort some people put into cheating?  No, of course not.  Some of the prizes we have used at home, but there are only so many water bottles or plastic clips you need at home or for friends/family.  We also enjoyed the old prizes such as the reversible Princess tote mentioned earlier and the Princess caps that we never see offered anymore.

 

Teams and individual players do score perfect scores playing trivia and we are glad for them.  They may know the particular topic of the trivia session.  We saw a country music disc jockey win the country music trivia with a perfect score once; did we think he cheated?  No, he just had a large knowledge base to draw on in his head.  He certainly didn't know what songs would be played.

 

Do some hosts have incorrect answers?  Yes.  Do they have time to correct it during the short time set aside for the trivia?  No.  What we do when they have an incorrect answer is to wait until after prizes are awarded and then tell them about the error  - they are more receptive when not being shown up in front of the crowd and they usually do want to get it right.  Asking questions dealing with a country you do not live in is difficult and they rely on the internet which, believe it or not, does have errors posted on it.  Plus with the ship's internet, it can be a very slow process to look up trivia online.

 

As far as people leaving prizes for the crew as tips instead of leaving money, we have seen that mentioned before on cruise critic.  We have never seen it personally, but we have certainly heard the rumors of certain couples.

Edited September 14, 2019 by UT-Volsfan

[Aus Traveller]

I hope anyone who gives their trivia prizes to their cabin steward has left their auto gratuity on. At least that way, the trivia trinket isn't really their tip. 🙂

[Aus Traveller]

I agree with the comment that if the trivia host has an incorrect answer, the best way to address this is to talk to him or her politely and privately after the trivia has concluded. Some hosts are more receptive than others.🙂

[coo359a2]

6 hours ago, suzyed said:

I heard that many of those people give these crap prizes to their cabin steward as their "tip".  Don't know if that's true but have heard it several times!

Yes it is, We have been on the ship with them and the crew knew exactly who they were.  I haven't seen them on board for several years and heard they were asked not to sail with Princess any more.  Years ago, Trivia was what I considered to be a cutthroat game.  Besides the winning part, one cruise there were trivia players who were extremely rude toward the trivia host and made fun of her English accent and not being able to pronounce some of our American words.  After hosting about her second game, she was almost in tears.  The Cruise Director came to the next game and said that no one was to make fun  of or ridicule his staff

Edited September 14, 2019 by coo359a2

[geoherb]

I know some of the CD's staff members take pride in coming up with new trivia quizzes. Others don't seem to care. There are tons of trivia questions available on the internet if they'd bother looking. For instance, someone has archived the answers and questions from Jeopardy. There are 35 seasons worth: over 8,000 shows with up to 61 questions per show. That's a huge database of possible questions. 

 

And this talk about hosts with the wrong answers reminds me about the public radio quiz show Whad'Ya Know's four disclaimers. The first disclaimer was "All questions used on Whad'ya Know have been painstakingly researched, although the answers have not. Ambiguous, misleading, or poorly worded questions are par for the course. Listeners who are sticklers for the truth should get their own shows."