As announced a couple of seasons ago my goal is to make the seasons slightly easier than they have been for the previous many seasons. The hardometer was set to 50 this time around and although we didn’t quite reach that number, we did hit 48 which is where I want the new normal to be. Furthermore, this was the first season since Hans made the questions for season 65 where all questions were answered by at least 20% of the participating quizzers - almost 25, actually, as question 13 and 14 both ticked in at 24%. If anyone does not like the “New Coke”, please let me know, and I will take it into consideration, but it is my feeling that most of you enjoy the slightly easier difficulty level.
As you all know, this was a Holiday themed season (the first themed Quizzypedia season ever) which left me with the problem of coming up with Christmas (or Holiday) sports and science questions. As some have pointed out, the so called sports question was really a thinly veiled history question and the science question really had just as much to do with knowing the structure of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, but that was as far as I could stretch my creativity this time around. The theme also made it a little more difficult to make the questions as geographically varied as I usually aim for and some have noticed (but not complained) that the season was Eurocentric. I agree with that and will try to spread out the questions a little more in upcoming seasons.
As mentioned, the season was on the easy side (relatively speaking, of course), so it will come as no surprise that a few quizzers had a perfect season. This time around Allie, Kathryn and Mette had to battle it out in a tie-break - a very strong finale I must say, as these three combattants have a staggering 15 trophies between them.
The topic this time was the 20 most streamed Christmas songs and artists on Spotify. Like last season’s Harry Potter topic, this topic was quite a minefield, and you had to be very careful not to take a wrong step by naming a wrong song or artist (or artists), because that could easily result in a negative score. And it could have been very difficult indeed, because the list I had found, when I (a bit too) quickly made the question, was not official and honestly filled with some very peculiar entries (like ‘Driving Home For Christmas’ by The Mington Winters or ‘Happy Xmas (War is Over)’ by Shimabukuro and Yo-Yo Ma!). Mads, who entered the tie-break and asked for my source quickly pointed out, that this couldn’t be right (yes, I realize that I should have reached that conclusion too), offered to make the list for me, and he used at least two hours compiling the list and checking all kinds of Christmas songs for streams on Spotify. For that reason, a great big thank you should go out to Mads for his huge contribution, and for avoiding great embarrassed for me - I am still embarrassed, but not nearly as much as I otherwise would have been.
Five people participated, and as it turned out, the two quizzers who were not officially in the tie-break managed to score the most points. Mads (see above :) ) scored a very respectable 8 points, but no one could beat Kirsten A. who reached 13 points. Now that might not seem like a lot with twenty songs and at least twenty artists, but as mentioned before the topic was a minefield. Therefore, Kathy who took the strategy of naming many songs (and artists) ended of with a score of -14. Mette mentioned fewer songs got 5 points, but Allie just edged out Mette by mentioning only 10 songs thus scoring 7 points. This means that Allie is our new champion. Congratulations Allie, well done! This is Allies 7th championship, truly amazing. Please give her a big round of applause.
Quizzypedia will be taking Christmas break for the two upcoming weeks. Season 88 will begin on 6 January at 11 o’clock CET. Your quizmaster will be Debajyoti Adhikari so please give him a warm welcome (as you always do).
I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, a splendid Kwanzaa and a generally jolly, merry time. Oh and a Happy New Year too, of course! Thank you all for playing. I hope that you will join again in 2020.