The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Ladies and gentlemen, the long dry season is over – it’s Knowl- edge Bowl time!

Yessiree, for the next seven months, my life (or at least my Friday mornings) will be jam-packed with buzzer-slapping, brain- wracking, inside-joking, cookie-munching fun. As a result, my columns will be similarly stuffed with refer- ences to these antics.

Last year, I started writ- ing columns in the middle of the Knowledge Bowl season. The first column I wrote on the topic never reached your eyes – I sent two columns into the Times that didn’t pass muster be- fore my third effort, which concerned tips on holiday shopping, was printed. The Knowledge Bowl piece, for whatever reason, didn’t make the cut, which was a bummer for you all because it consisted almost entirely of details and important terminology concerning KB and may have aided you in decrypting all the subsequent columns I wrote on this fascinating topic.

And so, without further ado, I present my personal guide to the people, places, and things of Knowledge Bowl:

Buzzer – A long metal bar which one presses, slaps, pounds, taps, or karate chops in order to buzz in. These come in two varieties – two-bar, in which two ad- joining bars must be slapped at the same time, and onebar (popular lore holds that these do not work unless both of the buzzee’s feet are touching the ground).

Buzzee – One who presses, slaps, pounds, taps, or karate chops a buzzer. (A buzzee can also bang the buzzer with his or her head in order to buzz in, but this kills valuable brain cells and is thus discouraged by most coaches.)

Buzz-In Box – Handy little gizmo that reveals which team buzzed in first – and, therefore, who gets the first crack at answering the question.

Captain – the privileged individual on a given team whose responsibility it is to say the official answer. This person is usually a senior with a long and/or exceptional track record in Knowledge Bowl. (Our cap- tain is a relatively stalwart senior who may be the only person in Knowledge Bowl history to get a concussion from buzzing in. His chair slipped on a freshly waxed floor as he lunged forward to hit the buzzer.)

Team – A group that usually consists of four contestants (plus a couple of substitutes) and a captain. A school can send sev- eral teams to regular-season meets, so the teams are given numbers after their names (Waitsburg 1, Kami- akin 4, etc.) for clarification. Team One is usually given to the team expected to do the best, but this is usually mostly speculation. One of the greatest pleasures of being on Team 2 is coming out from under to give your “su- periors” a sound stomping.

Meet – a Knowledge Bowl competition.

Moderator – The person who reads the questions (usually a coach from a school that’s participating in the meet). This person may also be known as: reader, lector, Big Kahuna, Exalted Dispenser of Points, and You Biased Jerk.

Buzzer Dude(ette) – the person who reads the numbers on the Buzz-In Box and tells the moderator, reader, lector, Big Kahuna, Exalted Dispenser of Points, or Biased Jerk which team buzzed in first.

That’s about all you need to know in order to make sense of my monthly KB rants, the next of which comes out October 31. Until then, happy reading!