The newsgroup has been entirely supplanted by about twelve mailing lists. Tim says that people have begun to post to a.c.c-b again in "a trickle." I remind you, gentle reader, that "a trickle" was also the quantity of sin that returned to Satan from Purgatory in Inferno.

ACF:
Academic Competition Federation (1997-present), Academic Competition Foundation (1990-1996). Known for harder questions, a disdain for pop culture (see "trash") and current events, and for scaring away the faint of heart.

ACF is a much more successful format in parallel universes in which people actually care about Caravaggio.

ACF Virgin:
(No, you can't have sex with ACF.) Anyone with no experience on ACF questions; people often feel somehow violated upon their first experience with the format.

As Schools Match Wits:
High school quiz show based in Springfield, Massachusetts. GW is probably the only team south of the [historical] Mason-Dixon line to have two alums of As Schools Match Wits playing quizbowl, or to have more than three hear of it.

Edmund Schluessel notes: in three years of play on ASMW, I was rewarded with many gift certificates to Friendly's. This is more than I've ever been materially rewarded playing at the college level.

Backloaded:
A tournament schedule is said to be 'backloaded' from your point of view if most of your tougher matches take place later in the tournament. This can be good, giving you time to warm up for your tougher macthes; it is harder, however, to pull off an upset when the other team is warmed up too. Favored teams prefer backloaded to 'frontloaded' schedules.

Bastard Team:
A team made up of people from more than one school. First used by Matt Colvin, then of Maryland, to describe a Virginia team that also featured John Edwards (as if Viriginia needed any more help) at Princeton in '95. They are not always fearsome foes, but that's the general implication.

Beltway Bandits:
Taken by Dave Vacca from the title of a Frank Zappa song, the name of GW's intercollegiate trash tournament, usually held in the fall. To date, the series includes:
Beltway Bandits, Fall 1995
Beltway Bandits II, Fall 1996
Return of the Son of Beltway Bandits, Spring 1999
Beltway Bandits 4: Slick Willie the Pimp, Spring 2000
Beltway Bandits V: Who could've Imagined that they would Freak Out in Washington, D.C.?, tentatively Spring 2001

OK, from now on it looks like Beltway will be traditionally in the Spring, the day after ACF regionals.

Black Saturday:
October 23rd, 1999, the date of Illinifest at UIUC and Nittany Lion Invitational IX at Penn State. On this one day, four Illinifest packets were lost in a computer accident and the tournament was decided on a coin flip; Edmund Schluessel and Team GW, based on just one wrong turn, almost ended up in Altoona, Pennsylvania while going to NLITIX; the Nittany Lion tournament was marred by a largely-plagiarized packet in Round 3, leading to the leading team's disqualification; and on the way back to DC from NLITIX, Edmund Schluessel and Team GW got a speeding ticket for going 76 in the left lane in a 65 zone.

Blah-Blah-Blah:
A handy substitute for excess verbiage devoid of clue content, or ultra-obscure information in practice when we come across either a particularly inane (usually CBI) question or one of those novel-length tossups ACF is so famous for. Another thing to do during ACF science questions that are sure oh-fers for your team and that drone on and on that will crack the moderator up is to imitate the sound of an adult character in a Charlie Brown cartoon as he/she reads the bonus.

Sadly, there is no known transliteration of the language of adult characters in Charlie Brown into any known Indo-European tongue. It is thereby assumed that these persons favor ACF.

Bowman's Virginia Vodka:
"The Vodka of Virginia," as the label oh-so-helpfully points out. Would you be impressed by "Kansas-style crab cakes" or "The Beer that Made New Jersey Famous"? Then you can understand why it took seven months to finish off one half-full bottle of this superb distilled spirit. Brought, of course, by Raj Sinha, and of a drinking quality akin to windshield-washer fluid. It even tastes bad in screwdrivers and electric lemonades.

Bracket of Death:
In any bracketed tournament where the brackets are of grossly uneven strength, the more/most difficult bracket is called the 'bracket of death.' This was a rather frequent problem at CBI Regionals in Region 4 until recently. Coined by Brian Goldenberg of Penn State, now of Maryland.

Breezewood:
Small town in central Pennsylvania about halfway between Washington and Pittsburgh. Here you will find everything that is wrong with American culture, all in one convenient location for your viewing pleasure. Scary looking truck stops, penis-size large sign contests, cheap fossil fuel, and copious amounts of artery-clogging fast food. Be afraid. Be very afraid. And what kind of interstate highway requires people to drive through a place like this, anyway?

I have travelled on three continents. Breezewood, Pennsylvania is the most hideous place I've ever been. Incidentally, there appears to be a "South Breezewood." I can only guess at the horrors contained therein.

Butt:
Used to describe a question or set of questions worthy of the moniker "find your ass." See "find your ass" below.

It is not unknown that players, instead of saying "butt", will actually stand and pat themselves on the buttocks while facing away from the moderator. Despite this, some people continue to say that there are no homoerotic undertones to QB. For more information on finding your ass, consult your doctor or refer to chapter 1 of Gray's Anatomy.

Canon:
Mythical entity comprising all the useful information in the world, and therefore the only topics worth writing questions about. The myth of the Canon is the direct cause of tournaments in which seventeen questions get asked all on Tartuffe. A canon is also a specific musical form in which a theme or motif is developed upon itself and embellished, remaining strictly within a theme-and-variations form. Canons are typical musical inventions of the baroque period and two of the most common examples are J.S. Bach's "Musical Gift" and Johann Pachelbel's "Canon in D." Pachelbel's Canon epitomizes the canon form in that a single harmonic-rhythmic sequence (I-V-vi-iii-IV-iii-IV-V) remains constant throughout the piece, while "The Musical Gift" embellishes upon canon form in that it follows a specific pattern relative to itself, on each iteration ending a whole step higher than on the previously. The art of writing a true canon is a very difficult one, as the very best canon writers introduce elements such as retrograde (reversing the order of notes), inversion (turning the relative intervals between each note "upside-down"), and the legendary "talis." This last means involves selecting a theme of a length which does not evenly fit into the phrase length of the piece, creating a necessary reharmonization upon each iteration which finally resolves itself when the talis finally, in the last phrase, aligns with the continuo. Although such formal and, in a way, restrictive means of composition are often ignored today, the canon remains engraved in the mindset of society, surviving in such songs as "Row, Row, Row your Boat," "Christmas is Coming," and other such rounds. If you bothered to read this whole entry, you're even more wanting for entertainment than I am. If, on the other hand, you read it and understood it, we could probably use you on the team.

Capitol Punishment:
Summertime trash tournament hosted at GW, but the creation, and directed by, Shawn Pickrell, of George Mason University at the time. Known for geek-unfriendly distribution, a largeish field, and the outright taunting of fate. Called "Capital Punishment" on its first run in July 1999.

CBI or CBCI:
College Bowl Company, Incorporated. Known for high prices, "find-your-ass" questions, and lots of red tape. It is, however, a user-friendly format, with lots of pop culture (see 'trash') and current events.

CBI delenda est.

Circle of Death:
A situation where there is a three-way tie at a tournament, with all three teams 1-1 against each other, especially when playoff spots or seedings are at stake. (It can also happen among five or seven teams, but those are very rare.) Teams dread it, and tournament directors dread it even more. Each tournament has a different method for breaking a circle of death.

GW breaks Circles of Death with summary excecutions. If you missed the irony, read that again.

Really, though, unless otherwise noted, this shall for time eternal be GWACC's method for breaking circles of death:
1. Head-to-head record
2. Total points

Circuit, The:
Generally, shorthand for the community of devotees of academic competition. More specifically, the collective term for college-run invitational tournaments, always excluding CBI events, usually excluding NAQT events, and sometimes ACF events as well. (See also 'Quizbowl')

Chestnut:
Any supposedly obscure fact people like to use for lead-ins that is no longer obscure. Examples include : the fact that Dalton was colorblind, the fact that Olivia Newton-John is a direct descendant of Max Born, the fact that Spinoza was a lens-grinder, the fact that the band Steely Dan was named after a dildo in "Naked Lunch," and the fact that the word "kamikaze" originated from a failed 13th century Mongol invasion of Japan.

Chop Suey:
A buzz made by Tim Young to a question where the answer was 'leprosy.' (vs. VA Tech B, 1997 NAQT CCT) This term refers to any interrupt made by a player where the the response the player gave is several leaps of logic from the actual answer.

Other amusing wrong buzzes of recent past have been "Furby" for "Twinkie," "Kenny McCormick" for "The Green Knight," and "Yankee Doodle" for "Honi soit qui mal y pense." A key feature of the chop-suey buzz is that they can all be justified as making perfect sense at the time.

Colvin Science:
Named for Maryland-Cornell player Matt Colvin, science questions answerable without any particular knowledge of what science majors consider "real" science, but by knowing Latin and/or Greek, or memorizing a periodic table or other such list.

Examples include inventing the name of a science such as "goniometry" (the study of crystal-face alignment) by reverse-engineering it from Greek. I personally feel that this behavior is valid, since a) it's what the inventors of these terms did anyway and b) it gets us points.

Conferring:
Something you aren't allowed to do at College Bowl's tournaments. We're not really sure what is and what is not conferring, and neither do the people in charge of enforcing that particular rule. Apparently it includes bowing your head while your teammates aren't looking at you, but does not include talking while a teammate is answering a question.

Connecticut Quorum
Ahmed Ismail, Samer Ismail, Dom Ricci, Edmund Schluessel, Julie Stahlhut -- five QB players of varying prominences, all studying the sciences, and all from various places in Connecticut. They have an occasional tendency of dominating the Yahoo! chatroom.

Deb Fuller Award:
Ad-hoc, impromptu award handed out to someone who says something outrageously ludicrous on a public forum of AC players. Previous recipients include Dan Reaume for suggesting that AC emphasize 'practical knowledge' like engineering and business administration (though he is credited with coining the phrase 'Sumerian Love Poetry'); Gabe Desjardins for suggesting that the top four Canadian players are better than the top four Americans; CBCI and its various spokesman and toadies for claiming that they hold some kind of patent, trademark, or copyright over all of AC; and, of course, the original Deb Fuller herself, who suggested that there were too many questions about science, and not enough about theater lighting.

CBI propaganda states that Quiz Bowl  is fundamentally based in knowledge of the liberal arts. I have never had any reason to believe them before. I must furthermore note that Fullerism, while occasionally the target of ridicule, is a perfect antithesis to the notion of the Canon. Were it not for Fullerism, the range of asked questions would never have expanded to include jazz, Asterix, and Dr. Who, which by an amazing coincidence are all areas in which I perform above the median.

Dead Goldfish Test: A modification of the Turing test introduced in 1999 by Edmund Schluessel to show the pointlessness of CBI. It shows how in exceptionally easy or hard tournaments (i.e. in which points obtained nears either 0% or 100% of points available) a hypothetical "dead goldfish," i.e. a non-knowledgeable, essentially inactive team, can through purely random factors (an inequitable packet, poor moderating, arbitrary application of QB rules) defeat an active, knowledgeable team. Although it is not so much an issue in the majority of the circuit -- though I must admit, GW has knitted wins out of strands of fog based on getting a trash question at just the right moment -- in CBI, the arbitrary behavior of officials and reflex-testing nature of the questions can increase the random point swing in a game to 50 or 60 PPG, more than enough to decide a low-conversion round. Although Edmund likes to pretend he came up with this all by himself and that he's all original, a limited set of applications of the Dead Goldfish Test had already been employed some years previously as an empirical argument, the "Colvin Unfair Result," against variable-value boni.

Delaware:
According to itself "The First State" and "The Home of Tax-Free Shopping." Our nickname for it is "The Tollbooth State."

The only reason why Delaware exists is because Maryland or Pennsylvania didn't have the guts to invade. Many have railed against the threat posed by Cuba, a mere ninety miles from God-loving American soil, but they are blind to the real threat, that of hordes of vicious, bloodthirsty Wilmingtoniams seeking to ravage our fields, molest our livestock, and make us listen to Poison albums.

Oh, hi Hayden.

Dinosaur:
Sometimes this term means 'anyone who's been in quiz bowl longer than anyone on your team and is better than you.' It has no real objective meaning, but it's fair to call someone a dinosaur if he/she has been on the circuit for six or more years, is 30 or older, already has two or more degrees, or giggles whenever the words 'moped' and 'South Carolina'* are used in the same sentence. This is particularly true for people that take one class expressly so they can be eligible for quizbowl.

Our own Iguanadontid, Jeff Boulier, is legitimate because he's working on three degrees at once. A certain nameless nearby school, however, fields one player whose QB career began when that school's own freshpersons were a mere three years of age.

Duck-Duck-Duck:
See "Duck-Duck-Goose" below.

Duck-Duck-Goose:
Any tossup consisting of  several words entirely unhelpful to answering the question (either horrifically obscure clues or simply excess verbiage) followed by a giveaway clue so obvious that anyone with a pulse could get the answer. "Duck-Duck-Duck" questions, similarly, are questions that contain no useful clues to the answer at all; the answer is usually but not always something no one in the room recognizes. The way to make fun of these tossups is to say "quack-quack-quack-[giveaway clue]" or "quack-quack-quack."

Elephant and the Grape, joke about the:
Joke first picked up by Edmund Schluessel from Elie Rosenblum and told incessantly to anyone who'd listen, because it really is hilarious:

    Q: What do you get when you cross an elephant with a grape?
    A: ||elephant|| ||grape|| sin (q)

    Q: What do you get when you cross a mountain climber with a grape?
    A: Nothing. The mountain climber is a scalar.

Unfortunately, this joke -- while amazingly funny, I swear -- is only gettable by people with a basic understanding of vector math. In order that nobody be deprived, please do not read the above joke without understanding the following:

Two three-dimensional vectors, a and b, may be multiplied to create a product called a "cross product," denoted a x b. The cross product has a direction of (a x b)/||a x b|| and a magnitude equal to ||a|| ||b|| sin q, where q represents the angle between a and b.Only two vectors may be crossed -- not a vector and a scalar.

Estrogen:
A chemical associated with females and therefore not commonly found on most quiz teams. Also, Dan "Cheeseboy" Larsen's  sexist pet name for Alison Alvarez.

And those few females who do attend are often driven away by men commenting on the overall lack of females by using the phrase "sausage party." There was a time, far back in the mists of 1995-6 or so, during which GW could field a team consisting of nothing but women. This time, of course, predates the Great Exodus (see below).

Update: as of Fall 2000, GW can once again boast a gender ratio that bears a vague resemblance to reality. Why this is, we have no idea.

FAQTP:
For a quick ten points. Rarely used anymore.

Still used in some trash tournaments, often as a lead-in to a demeaning physical-challenge question. Still used in CBI as a lead-in to the simply demeaning.

Fascist:
The official GW Trivia Club epithet not only for supporters of the corporate state but for any employee of any entity whose job description primarily consists of treating customers like criminals; examples include the guy at Best Buy who searches all the bags and the security guard at the front desk at the Academic Center.

QB encompasses many political philosophies. However, when the occasional actual fascist does make an appearance, for the most part they're laughed until they shut up.

'Find Your Ass':
Any insultingly easy tossup or bonus, one said to be as easy as finding your ass. From Maryland's lexicon, but coined by former GW player Guy Jordan.

Frontloaded:
A tournament schedule is said to be 'frontloaded' from your point of view if most of your tougher matches take place earlier in the tournament. This is usually considered bad, but drawing your toughest opponent first is your best chance at an upset victory. Teams picked to finish low in the standings often prefer to have their surest losses out of the way, or their shots at upsets early.

FSNP or FTSNOP:
For the stated number of points.

FTP:
For ten points. Also stands for 'file transfer protocol.'

For some reason, Swarthmore is convinced that the appropriate abbreviation for "For Ten Points Each" is "FTPA."

Gamow, George:
Russian-born physicist who taught at GW from the 1930's to the 1960's, known for mathematical predictions of the Big Bang and stellar composition, and for suggesting that the four bases of DNA might encode instructions for making proteins; namesake of the George Gamow Memorial Tournament.

Geek:
In quizbowl parlance, someone who knows about comic books, science fiction, fantasy games (e.g. Magic: The Gathering), and computer games. An affectionate term, teams wanting to play in trash tournaments are always looking for geeks.

The problem is, there needs to be as many geeks writing questions as there are answering them. Otherwise so-called "trash" becomes nothing more than a soulless pile of hockey sticks and jock straps. Good geek players tend to get questions that nobody else in the whole room would get, and also seem to usually be good at science and/or math.

Hardcore geek Edmund Schluessel notes that geekery is nothing to be ashamed of; indeed, it is a condition of which to feel proud.

Gooch, the:
Never-seen, often-mentioned school bully from "Diff'rent Strokes." Also, perhaps the least-expected answer at any ACF event ever in all history (ACF Regionals, 2000).

Great Exodus:
In the first half of the Nineties, GW's was a burgeoning but elderly team, including such legends as James Dinan and Dave Vacca, co-founders of TRASH, and Rick Grimes, in addition to Steve Sheiko, Guy Jordan, Amy Kroll...the list goes on and on and traces its CBI-trophy-laden path back to club founder Gary Greenbaum. However, in the time leading up to Edmund Schluessel's arrival in Fall 1997, Jordan, Dinan, and Vacca all graduated and got lives; Rick Grimes joined the CIA and, we think, was responsible for basically the whole -stan thing in central Asia; and Steve ran off to become a priest. I have basically no clue what happened to anyone else, but I've only ever met about four of these people. GW was still, three years later, recovering from this mass evacuation; we attended 1998 NAQT NCT as a two-person team. Gradual recruitment, however, has alleviated the problem somewhat and we now have more people attending practices than we do buzzers.

Hardcore:
A prefix, usually followed by or even itself implying ACF. Refers to any question whose subject matter or answer are particularly obscure, or tournament filled with endless, mind-numbing questions.

Harvest Bowl:
Randolph-Macon's attempt to run a tournament; a failure so legendary that it causes laughter even to invoke its very name. Now used to describe any tournament where one of more things go disastrously wrong, and the example of nearly everything to avoid when running one.

Hello Kitty:
Japanese cartoon character, the inspiration for an extensive line of collectibles, such as waffle irons, clothing, and this; has no mouth; likes making friends most of all.

Heuristic, Mimetic, Titular:
In early 1999, Andrew Yaphe of Chicago, one of the Circuit's strongest players and best-known personalities, was interviewed for a brief article on QB in the New York Times. In the quoted portions of his interview, he used the words "heuristic" (capable of learning) and "mimetic" (capable of remembering), two words which the average person uses in conversation about once every seventeen to eighteen years. In Summer 1999, Yaphe wrote the majority of a tournament himself, and the word "titular" appeared so frequently as to raise Freudian suspicions in some players. At that point, the trilogy was completed.

Now, whenever a question has the word "titular" in it, people giggle. At the Chicago Open 2000 masters' tournament, Yaphe attempted to repeat himself with the word "seminal," but it didn't stick.

Horta:
Any player who is the sole survivor of a once-thriving organization, whose responsibility is the rebuilding of that organization. Tim Young was a Horta in late 1997. From the Star Trek episode "Devil in the Dark."

Hose Question:
Any question clearly pointing to a wrong answer, often designed that way on purpose. They suck.

Imhotep:
Egyptian priest and architect, known historically for the complex of King Neterikhet at Saqqara. Don't say it in the presence of Andrew Wiseman or any of the other members of the GW contingent to NAQT ICT 2000 in Boston unless you want to hold up the round for a solid minute.

Island of Dr. Moreau, The:
Originally, an H.G. Wells story made into a bad, bad Marlon Brando film. Also an interrupt buzz made by Tim Young for the purposes of draining the clock in a timed game. (vs. JHU, 1998 CBI RCT) The question was asking for the name of an island, so Tim named one.

It's Academic:
High school quiz show program in the DC area. GW has had some alums of it, but, oddly enough, our area opponents (particularly Maryland, Virginia, and Johns Hopkins) always seem to have several more.

Jar-Jar Bracket:
Lower bracket in divided play, containing all the teams ineligible for the championship; or the lowest if there are several of these brackets. So named after Gamow's Star Wars-themed division, in which contenders for the finals were in the "Chewbacca" bracket, while the bottom six teams fought it out in the "Jar-Jar" division. While the Chewbacca bracket ran pretty well in and of itself, the Jar-Jar bracket lived up to its name, becoming a mishmash of misunderstood directions and forfeit games. Jar-Jar brackets are apt to contain the worst moderators, worst buzzers, least meaningful results, or any combination of the above simply because, well, they don't really matter.

JCV:
Shorthand for Juan Carlos Viscerra Memorial Invitational, GW's annual invitational circuit tournament, formerly known as 'The Presidential.'

Named for GW College Bowl player JC Viscerra, who died tragically in 1993.

Judge, The:
One of GW's buzzer systems. It's tough to get into a House of Representatives office building, and even tougher to get onto an airplane, because the thing really does look like a bomb.

Junior Bird:
Generic term for any tournament in which entry is restricted to younger or less experienced players, so named for one formerly held by the Emory team.

Kidder's Law:
There is no shame, there are only points. Named for former Cornell player and trash-maven Dwight Kidder.

Knot, The:
Short for the "Gordian Knot," One of Maryland's buzzer systems that has to be seen to be believed. Capable of accomodating up to 16 players, but a pain in timed play.

The Gordian Knot has no display lights and is designed for four-team play. Its existence and continued popularity at schools such as UMCP, Cornell and Berkeley serve as further evidence that the ACF system originated in a parallel universe or on a foreign planet.

Knowledge Whore:
Someone literally addicted to academic competition, so much so that they sacrifice their studies, their careers, or their social life for it. Coined by John Edwards, formerly of Chicago, to describe a number of people, himself included. GW has had several pass through its program over the years.

Lame:
Perhaps the most useful term in all QB invented in the last two years. Several definitions:
1. A rule used at several trash tournaments whereby a team can choose to pass on a bonus and get another one once per game by shouting "Lame" during the lead-in. Beltway Bandits tournaments use this rule. Credit Fred Bush of Swarthmore with its invention.
2. A magic word used in practice to skip questions or the reading the remainder of a packet, and jokingly at untimed tournaments when the bonus is something we're pretty sure we're not going to know.
3. A declaration issued by anyone, and immediately agreed on, that calls for a moratorium on the use of certain words and phrases during a trip or practice, most recently used when Dan Larsen said "yellow goodness" one too many times.
4. 1999 CBI Nationals.

List:
Two overlapping meanings. In one sense, it can refer to questions which encourage rote list memorization of data such as birthdates, cities, such as mad libs (see below). In another, similar sense, it refers to questions, particularly tossups, which begin with lists of clues; whoever figures out the common element first usually gets the tossup. Of this class of question, examples include the question on New Jersey Turnpike rest stops from Philadelphia Experiment 6 and any question on "We Didn't Start the Fire."

Mad Lib:
Any tossup of the form "Born in (year), he was the son/daughter of a (occupation), and did (ultra-obscure work/deed) in (year), and then (obscure work/deed) in (year). He's better known for (another deed/work). FTP identify this (occupation), best known for (well-known work/deed.)" A favorite of list memorizers and once indicative of most ACF, people now thankfully feel self-conscious about writing questions too close to this form, particularly if a Nobel Prize is involved. Also known as "resume questions."

Maryland:
Shorthand for University of Maryland-College Park. The perennial Goliath to our David. Beating Maryland A is always cause for celebration. (Not to be confused with the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, or UMBC.)

Or UM-AB. Or UM-ES. Or UM-UC, whatever exactly that is.

Maryland House:
Rest stop in the middle of I-95 just north of the Baltimore metro area. Somehow, we always seem to end up here on our way to or back from Philadelphia or points northeast.

Gasoline here is way more expensive than it has any right to be.

Mason-Dixon Line:
The line between North and South, free and slave, people who call all soda 'Coke' and those who don't, etc. Historically, this was the Pennsylvania/Maryland border. Nowadays, the location of the real Mason-Dixon line is a matter of debate, but it's definitely moved south of the Potomac, since GW is not in any way, shape, or form southern.

Realizing the disposition of DC and Arlington makes the analogy of Washington to West Berlin all the more disturbing.

Massachusetts:
Known for funny (to everyone else) accents, liberal politics, cold winters, it's the home state of an amazingly high percentage of GW Trivia Club members past and present, far out of proportion to the GW student body. Why this is, we don't know.

My theory is that New England, and in a more dilute way the Northeastern states, are the true centers of all culture, learning, truth, and justice in the United States. Just remember: WE won the Civil War. Us. We did. Not you, US. As of the 2000 season, it can no longer be said that even the largest segment of GW's players come from New England. The current frontrunners are Pennsylvania and, oddly enough, Tennessee.

Memory Bowl:
Said after any answer has come up twice at a tournament, or more generally to describe any tournament plagued by repeat questions/information.

Twice or more; Wahoo War 2000 and Moon Pie 2000 both leap to memory. Only valiant efforts by Tim Young kept PE6 from falling into this category as four different sources all contributed questions on the Pareto Optimality.

Meow:
Meow really deserves its own page.

Meow's QB career is longer than that of almost any of GW's team members.

NAQT:
National Academic Quiz Tournaments. Attempts a happy medium between ACF and CBI.

Neg:
Shorthand for "interrupt" or "neg five."

'No Soup For You':
From "Seinfeld" via Guy Jordan, it's said after a team gets an oh-fer on a bonus that just about no one would have gotten any points on.

Nonclue:
Any string of words in a tossup that someone obviously thinks is a clue to the answer but is either meaningless or does nothing to identify the answer. The most common nonclue refers to an artist "known for his use of perspective, light, and/or color." Another common nonclue involves pointing out that some work of literature was "a commentary on the author's society."  Duck-duck-goose and duck-duck-duck tossups tend to contain one or more nonclues.

Not to be confused with the Romulan ambassador from Star Trek VI.

Oh-fer:
As either a noun or a verb, it refers to the act of scoring zero on a bonus. Others refer to it as 'bagel,' or simply 'zero.'

Om:
1965 free jazz piece by John Coltrane, notable for its masterful interplay between Coltrane and fellow tenor saxophone giant "Pharaoh" Sanders. Although an intensely spiritual piece, to the musically uninitiated, it, like most free jazz, can be somewhat intimidating, resembling a chaotic mélange of piano, saxophone, bass, drums, and flute. Its introduction contains seemingly-incomprehensible lyrics, most notably "I am the clarified butter."

Ouch:
Courtesy interjection given to another team's bonus if we wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole, particularly if we're winning by a landslide.

Philadelphia Experiment:
Summertime "master's," or advanced-player open, tournament, usually held in August at UPenn. Philadelphia Experiment 6, in August 2000, was hosted at GW due to a massive compilation of flukes of fate.

Playing Defense:
Refers to getting a bonus one's own team scores far fewer points on than the other team would have had the bonus been theirs. (Often invoked when GW gets a tossup followed by a bonus about obscure Reinassance art history against a Maryland team, or when a group of ACF specialists oh-fers a trash bonus against GW.)

Power Tossup:
In NAQT, a correct buzz that is worth 15; in PACE, a correct buzz worth 20 points. Sometimes, they're just called "powers."

Pontifex Maximus:
Latin for "ultimate bridge-builder"; title bestowed on the president of GWACC. This title was created upon the graduation of Tim Young, and reflects the delegation of power at that time; ascendant Edmund Schluessel, though most experienced of the remaining active members, had little experience with administration or bureaucracy, so the dictatorial powers of the presidency were split between Schluessel, who managed GWACC's relations with other organizations, and Jon Needle, who managed room reservations, mailing lists, and other internal matters. The title itself is paired with a second title, "tribune of the people"; those two titles, taken together, represent the official positions of Augustus Caesar during his reign, high priest of Rome and "advisor" to the senate.

Quizbowl:
Generally, a term used to describe all academic competition - more inclusive than "the circuit." Specifically, it refers to the home website or home listserv of the academic competition community.

Although to the naked eye there may seem to be a conflict of interest in the quizbowl@silicon-age.net mailing list moderator's being NAQT honcho R. Robert Hentzel, to date no such conflict has become apparent.

Rock Creek Park:
Not a good shortcut to anywhere, especially after dark.

Rock Creek Park, Battle of:
A title given to any GW-Georgetown match, anywhere, anytime. The term "turf war" is also used.

Sitting:
Act of knowing the answer to a tossup, then, for some reason, not buzzing in. Commonly cited reasons include "I thought it couldn't possibly be that easy," "I was waiting for them to eliminate ___," and "I thought it was a bonus."

Slap Bowl:
Inconvenience resulting from a shortage of buzzer systems. The recent expansion of the QB circuit in the mid-Atlantic has not been coupled with a matching increase in capital investment; therefore, many area tournaments find themselves short of buzzers. Absolute Hell in timed play. By the way, if you're looking to buy a new buzzer system, don't get a Groupics. They break after exposure to just one devoted high school team.

Socialism:
Political philosophy based on redistribution of power and wealth away from, and in extreme cases the extermination of, rich intellectuals. Also, a political philosophy frequently followed by QB players who are, often, rich or intellectual or both. Life is full of contradictions.

Quiz bowl does, in fact, encompass members from all ranges of the political spectrum, from hardcore Objectivist atheists to hardcore Marxist atheists. There are also religious, moderate folk, but what fun is that?

Spoonfeed:
Our term for any overly easy bonus, courtesy of Dave Zuckerman. Whenever the other team is "spoonfed," we tend to simulate the act of eating soup with a spoon. Slightly more polite than "find your ass."

Sportsmanship:
To kiss ass, according to certain people in certain organizations. We'd mention what organization, but they'd likely threaten to sue.

Stump The Chump:
Any question packet that seems designed to make everyone in the room feel stupid; it usually has the effect of pissing off players and moderators.

Sumerian Love Poetry:
Used generally to refer to obscure ACF questions, whether or not they have anything to do with Sumerians or love poetry. The opposite of 'find your ass,' it's not so much used to describe actual questions as to warn ACF virigins of the subject matter going in.

Thirty-Thirty-Thirty:
Any bonus of the form 30-20-10 where the supposedly easier clues aren't easier, either because the writer ordered them wrong, used only obscure works of a known creator, even for the 10 point clue, used three clues of equal difficulty, or picked a creator so obscure (Muzio Clementi, whoever he was, comes to mind) that it's essentially a "no soup for you" bonus. (See "no soup for you.")

For what it's worth, Clementi invented the piano sonata. Not to be confused with Roberto Clemente.

Titles**:
A sort of amusing way to pass the time on a car ride ; sometimes used to stop heated political arguments. Start with the title of anything (novel, poem, movie, pop song, symphony) and from there link related titles. The relation can be almost anything, from a similar sounding title ('Heart of the Matter' to 'Heart of the Sunrise' to 'Tequila Sunrise') to a common artist/composer/performer ('A Hard Day's Night' to 'The Girl Is Mine' to 'Beat It' to 'Jump'), to a common actor/director ('Angels In The Outfield' to 'Lethal Weapon' to 'Braveheart'), to author/creator ('Great Expectations' to 'Hard Times' or 'Primavera' to "The Birth of Venus") to thematic links ('The Time Machine' to 'Back To The Future') Naturally, when GW players are involved, more often than not the category of choice is movies.

Tossup!:
When said loudly, it's either a call to settle down and get back to business during practice or a plea to change the subject of conversation, especially if it has become embarassingly personal, inappropriate for a family setting***, or is rapidly turning into a heated political argument, whether at practice or not.

Trash:
Questions about popular culture (movies, TV, pop music, pulp fiction), sports and/or games, lowbrow current events (the Lorena Bobbit trial, for instance, as opposed to the currency crisis in Asia), and generally all-around weird stuff; sometimes includes so-called 'general knowledge' questions. Originally a perjorative term, it's now largely an affectionate one.

Trash Tournament:
A tournament where the subject matter of all questions is (or at least is supposed to be) 'trash.'

TRASH:
Testing Recall About Strange Happenings. An organization, modeled on NAQT, that runs trash tournaments. TRASH counts as founding members two former GW players, James Dinan and Dave Vacca.

War Of Northern Agression:
The name some silly, bitter folks from the South use to describe the Civil War.

See "Massachusetts" above

Warm Body:
A player whose contribution to his/her team consists primarily of just showing up. Also referred to as 'stuffed shirts' or 'buzzer rocks.'

They emit blackbody radiation in accordance with the Stefan-Boltzmann Law.

Yellow Goodness:
Vanderbilt's term for CBI questions, since half of them are on yellow paper. We started using the term as well, and it has stuck.

Don't say it too often, or you will be dealt the smack-down.