Season 89 was, comparatively speaking, easy - with a correct answer ratio (of the participating quizzers) at 49%. This was especially true of the first 12 questions where no question dipped below 30%. The last two questions of the season proved to be extremely difficult (too difficult?) though. Only 4 quizzers knew the name of the alternative scoring system in tennis and only 8 quizzers knew the director of Marriage Story.
At the end, 3 quizzers were tied at a score of 13 points and as so often before, they had to battle it out in a tie-break. Sudip Dasgupta should have a special mention here as he actually also finished on 13 points, but he sent in his final answer after 7.00 (CET) today, which meant that I didn’t send him the tie-break question. I feel bad about this, because I should have given him a heads up, so I will offer him my official apologies here.
The question, that was sent privately to the three contestants, Duncan, Dan and Sisira, was naming the 48 countries of Asia according to the UN. Many top quizzers make an effort to know all countries in the world, but this was not only a question of geography but also a question of politics. Should Taiwan be included on this list? Should Palestine? The answer to that question is, Palestine is on the list, but Taiwan is not. But what about Russia or Egypt? Most of Russia is in fact located in Asia and a small part of Egypt is as well. In fact, none of these countries figure as Asian countries on UN lists. I have not found any source stating this, but I assume that no country can belong to two continents and Russia is placed in the European group and Egypt is placed in Africa.
So how did the three quizzers fare? Dan was first out of the gate and received a very respectable 38 points (two minus points for Russia and Papua New Guinea which is entirely in Oceania - sorry Dan ;) ), Duncan managed to get 41 points (with 3 minus point for Russia, Egypt and Taiwan) and Sisira did just a tad better with 43 points (2 minus points for Russia and Taiwan). This means that the only Asian contestant in the finale beat out the Englishman and the soon to be Swede, although by a very narrow margin. This is Sisira’s sixth championship. Many congratulations on yet another excellently played season!
