New Scaratings

Is it just me, or have they upped the percentage of river questions to about 80%?

I'm pretty sure it's not just you.
The new games are bristling with geography.
It's getting to the point where I may have to actually look at an atlas at some point.
Oh, the humanity...

WE ARE THE PASSPORT. YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.

I was all excited about a game I was having a day or two ago, only to get hit with 2 - 3 river questions. Much as with Canada questions, those are pretty much guaranteed 250s for me. And sometimes guaranteed zeros. We didn't have enough rivers growing up in the Shire.

I'm going to start a fairly lengthy pop culture content study tomorrow based on the same criteria that averaged 54% before this change. It's a bit tougher with one working hand but doable. I certainly expect less PC as the above feedback implies. My average post 2/28 is 13.2 compared to 12.5 before so there's some validation anecdotally there too, but we'll see what a good 400 -500Q sample shows. Should be there in a couple weeks or a bit more.

_________________
Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

I have not played many new Countdown games but, IMHO there few to no POP questions. Of course it is a matter of opinion on what a PC question is. All I know is that my CD scores have gone up.

_________________
"Truth Like Football. Gets kicked around much, before reaching goal." - Charlie Chan

" Don't look back, The bastards might be gaining on you." - Satchel Paige

Frank

Granted, my sample size isnt very large yet, possibly right around 10 games, but my scores are definitely higher. I have had one 13K+, a couple of 12K+, and several 11K's since the change. My average is typically about 10300. I havent had a sub-10K since the change. I think there is definitely a decrease in pop culture content, but I dont find the degree of difficulty of the other questions to be any harder.

My average has remained roughly the same, less PC or not.
The "eyeball test" tells me that games have 2 or 3 PC questions
per game consistently. Have yet to see a game with 5 or more and
still have not seen a game with zero.
I'm not familiar with your metrics, Rhino.
I was curious about how you differentiate PC material.
If I remember your posts on the topic from the old BT site, you don't consider lit as PC. Or am I thinking of another poster from that site perchance?
I count every form of media that relates a story as PC when I register question content in my mental notes.
I also count questions about the story tellers.
A perfect system it is not. But it does help remove personal bias from the equation. And, as an added bonus, it saves me from having to think too much about this crap.
Looking forward to your results. I suspect we might have another MEGUMI post on this subject before too long as well.
You crazy kids and your stats...

I've said it before and I'll say it again: If I know the answer, it's culturally significant enough to be valid for the game. If I don't know the answer, it's pop culture crap. It's not that difficult, people!

Yeah, and you are the one that told BT that premium games should be earlier. Thanks for that..

_________________
Buzztime is a company full of dumbshits.

Whoa, whoa, whoa... When asked by BT reps about what players at my bar said about games, I passed along the comment that some are too late for them. That's a far cry from telling them I wanted them earlier and it sure the hell wasn't, "Please split your feed!" I've been one of the more vocal opponents of the split, before and after. And that from a bar that only team plays Wednesday night premiums and has a scrapper's chance at best then!

I wish they would create a sarcasm smiley..

_________________
Buzztime is a company full of dumbshits.

My criteria will be consistent.

Movies
TV
Music after the recording industry became popular (1920s)
Celebrity gossip
Media advertising

Books can certainly be schlocky and can be exceptionally popular, but I exclude them because the medium of information exchange is not entirely passive, and they predate mass market media.

To me pop culture is mass-market media directed at a passive audience.

_________________
Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

So Rocky Horror is an exception that is not "pop culture". Right?

People scream and cheer and act like baboons at all kinds of things of which they are a passive audience. Passivity in this sense is not measured by silent inaction but by taking no role in realizing the final "product" of transferred impressions. Audiences of the movie cannot change the images of the characters or settings in the movie just like any other movie, and unlike readers. So nope - not an exception.

_________________
Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

media advertising... I'm never passive. I always change the channel.
Thanks for the breakdown.

The Countdowns today were highly odd. I admit to not paying a lot of attention during a few of them, but it was interesting to see multiple astrology questions, and two questions about placenta!

Additionally, the number of entertainment questions appeared to be ramped up, though I'm sure most people under 40 wouldn't care (they were all old entertainment) from last time I played.

It's funny you should mention that session. It actually introduced me to an experience I do not think I have ever had before; an entire Countdown game without a single pop-culture question. so far my pop-culture count does not have a significant enough sample size, but so far it appears to be averaging about 2.9 questions per game, which is indeed much reduced from the 50% or so rate of before.

_________________
Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

Out of curiosity, where do you place Astrology in your categorization of material?

Well it's not pop culture by the definition above, although it's certainly brain-dead shite. Somewhat like websites and Americana it is knowledge that is neither pop culture nor academically useful. Admittedly I got both of those, one by guessing the annual "obverse" of March had something to do with it and one by sheer luck.

_________________
Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

Any thoughts on how to categorize all of the Monopoly questions?
Noticed from the boards tonight that the new CDs seem to be agreeing with you quite nicely.
Maybe running a solo tourney is in order so you can strike while the iron is hot.

Always interesting to see how one culture's seriousness becomes another culture's plaything becomes another culture's tabloid becomes another culture's science becomes another culture's entertainment becomes another culture's brain-dead shiat.

Well sure centuries ago astrology would have been considered a science, but so would alchemy. I'm not sure that's cultural as much as technological. When human understanding has moved on enough to dismiss some aspect of its previous "learning" as a baseless dead end,whatever remnant clings to it centuries later is indeed either brain-dead or so disconnected from the sharing of information (some remote societies still see astrology as viable) that they sadly may as well be. Anyone relevant to bar-based electronic trivia surely has heard the news about astrology's demotion by now. If they haven't accepted it it's their problem.

Now we could get all relativist about this and say "gosh this ephemeral nature of knowledge throughout history and society should mean we see all of it as equally valid" but that would mean abandoning what we surely do know about what is useful and true and proven so in practice for ages. Future generations will doubtless laugh about our misconceptions of quantum mechanics and dark matter, but I'd bet the farm they won't be seeing astrology as a genuine contribution to human knowledge either, but as BDS.

_________________
Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

Definitely not equally valid, IMO, but does an interesting perspective regarding what the learned elite feels about knowledge within its own time, and whether it has any merit in a long term sense. Check out Cardano's Cosmos. Good book, though a bit obscure.

Sounds interesting. I confess never heard of it. Will take a look for it.

I really don't think dismissing astrology though is the province of a learned elite any more than is dismissing the validity of the Taurobolium to be honest. There certainly are elite academic "fashions" of course even without much real evidence - in both hard and soft sciences too. M theory is highly speculative but nigh universally accepted in some aspect among theoretical physicists. And which self-respecting psychiatrist didn't go often quite a long way along with the "repressed memory" charlatanry a couple decades ago?

But astrology isn't like linear speciation facing dismissal from a zeitgeist of punctuated equilibrium fanboiz. It's more akin to flat eartherism after decades of satellite pics and centuries of global navigation. There is no way for it to "work". The "charts" are woefully parochial and ignore basic astronomy (born an Aries, I should technically be a Pisces now), and even its own practitioners when they have a smattering of intellectual honesty admit it's just a system for creating focused thoughts. Anybody taking it in any way seriously as a discipline is a Von Daniken without the royalties.

_________________
Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.