Rotterdam cruise: My biggest disappointment was a stupid one, so all in all, a damn fine cruise!

[Linguist208]

My family and I are inveterate trivia buffs. We do pub quiz nights. My wife is coach of her school's "quiz bowl" team. My elder daughter is, even as I type this, on her way to one of two national championship college quiz bowl meets. I was the moderator/host for the county's high school quiz bowl championship.

 

We LOVE trivia, and we're good at it. We take it seriously.

 

So imagine our disappointment when, on the first night aboard at the Trivia game, the host says, "All our answers are checked, and what I have down is the final, correct answer," and then she asks: "What science fiction film franchise is 'Attack of the Clones' part of?" When the entire room says, "Star Wars!" she gets this sad look on her face and says, "Oh, I'm sorry, my answer says 'Star Trek.'" And when we ALL told her that was wrong, she said, "Well, these answers have been checked, sorry!"

It's the only question we missed, and we ended up in a tie. And then the tiebreaker question, "How many languages are written from left to right?" Well, as you can see by my username, this is something I'm knowledgeable about. She wants a number, so I write "200+" The other team writes "50". The host says, "Wow, those are some really high answers. The answer is TWELVE."

 

I said, "I can name 20 right now." She said, "Well, these answers have been checked, so sorry, the other team wins!"

 

I whip out my phone, and type "How many languages are written from left to right?" into Google. The first response comes up with a giant number 12 on the screen, but if you read what it says, it says, "Although most languages are written from left to right, there are 12 main languages that are written from right to left."

 

Honestly, we couldn't even play a single game of trivia after that. Not if incorrect answers are "checked and verified."

Imagine if the question had been, "What color is most associated with Holland America and the Dutch royal family?" and the host says, "I'm sorry, the answer I have is blue. Orange is incorrect."

I really was looking forward to "running the table" at the trivia events (or at least having a fun rivalry against some other cruisers!)

[Sgwscruiser]

We’ve found this is SOP when playing trivia on every cruise line.  These games have a time limit so this keeps someone from arguing with the emcee. When we cruise we play trivia for fun and we do win sometimes.  However, we have played against several excellent teams, that have won every time they played. It would get so annoying the way the acted when they won that we stopped going because it was no longer fun.

[Woofbite]

18 minutes ago, Sgwscruiser said:

We’ve found this is SOP when playing trivia on every cruise line.  These games have a time limit so this keeps someone from arguing with the emcee. When we cruise we play trivia for fun and we do win sometimes.  However, we have played against several excellent teams, that have won every time they played. It would get so annoying the way the acted when they won that we stopped going because it was no longer fun.

Maybe it's the loss of those exquisite, highly desirable, collectable HAL

pins awarded to winners that has Linguist208 upset.🙂

[Mary229]

 I quit playing cruise ship trivia when it became so competitive that it required RULES.     The Star Wars/Star Trek thing might have caused a mutiny 😀

[ShipWalker]

Well, looking at e-bay there are several "Star Trek Attack Of The Clones Card Tins" for sale at $5.99.

Edited April 2, 2022 by ShipWalker

[leerathje]

5 minutes ago, ShipWalker said:

Well, looking at e-bay there are several "Star Trek Attack Of The Clones Card Tins" for sale at $5.99.

 

And if you look at them, they are Star Wars memorabilia....

 

L.