As announced my intention was to make Season 86 easier than some of the previous seasons and with the hardometer set to 52 I felt confident that the season would indeed be easier. And luckily it was - the correct answer percentage did not hit 52 - only 47 - but around half of the participating quizzers got 7 or more points. And we actually saw a new record this season. 79 quizzers chose to participate (maybe in the hope that the questions would indeed be easier). I am quite satisfied with the new slightly easier difficulty level and I will try to hit this level in future seasons.
But even if the season as a whole was fairly easy, there was a few questions that made quite a few quizzers stumble. The first question to cause trouble was to name the super evil, not so bright villain of the animated tv-show Phineas and Ferb - only 23 % managed to get that right. A statement in mathematics taken to be true and a question on British bingo also saw a 23% correct answer rate. And the last two questions of the season, Nike’s super shoe and the director of the latest Star Wars blockbuster only resulted in 14% correct answers. Tony, who was the only quizzer to give correct answers to the first 13 questions, failed on the very last day. This meant that Dan, Kathryn and Laruchka managed to catch up with him and a tie-break was needed.
The topic was the 25 characters in the Harry Potter books that are mentioned the most. John Larkin came up with the question for last season, in case a tie-break was needed then. It wasn’t, but I loved the question so much, that I asked John for permission to use it this time. Luckily he agreed and the question was removed from the restricted section and revealed for all to see and enjoy. And the question did prove to be popular as 11 quizzers chose to participate. But the trick was not to mention as many characters as possible, but to mention exactly those who are mentioned the most. If we only look at who was able to mention the most characters on the top 25 list the ranking of all the participating quizzers would look as follows:
Kathryn 23
Kirsten 18
Laruchka 18
Marion 18
Dan 17
Tony 16
Caroline 15
Pamela 13
Bob D. 10
Angela 9
Mads 9
But a lot of answers were given and a lot of them were not on the list. Tony however, chose to play it safe and mentioned only 16 characters, but all of them were on the list, and since no other quizzer was able to stick the landing like Tony no one else reached 16 points. That means that Tony is our new Champion. I honestly lost count of how many championships Tony have, which makes it that much more impressive. Please give him a big round of applause.
The upcoming season which will be posted very shortly, is going to be special because it will be the first season to have a theme. The theme is the holiday season and with that I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah and a splendid, joyous December.
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