Winning Tom Whitmore's Books

To paraphrase mangle Cordwainer Smith:

"I was a fannishfan, and he was Tom Whitmore, a Master of Fandom, but I pitted my wits against him and I won."

Some of you may remember the show Win Ben Stein's Money. Well, Tom Galloway did an SF-trivia version called "Win Tom Galloway's Money". He was supposed to do it at ConJosé, but for various reasons it wound up not happening; he has done it at a couple of other cons.

I had the idea that since Tom Whitmore was Fan GoH at Denvention, and he's also terrific at SF trivia, it should be done there, with Tom Whitmore in the title role. This actually happened, with Tom Galloway standing in for Jimmy Kimmel. My reward for the suggestion was that I got to play in the first game (of two that were run). Instead of money, the prizes were books from Tom's collection.

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Trivia for Chocolate

The other big trivia contest at Denvention was "Trivia for Chocolate". This was run by Mark Olson, Steven Silver, and a third person whose name has fallen out of my head...it was something like Jim Hall. Anyway, this one was rapid-fire one-liner trivia questions, with correct answers rewarded with Andes Mints. (There were also a bunch of Tim Tams donated by the Australia in 2010 bid.) Whoever had the most uneaten pieces of chocolate at the end was considered the winner.

The moral of this one was: Timeliness FTW! I showed up at the time scheduled, and the other strong competitors didn't. I had about 10 minutes with no serious competition to build up a lead before Tom Galloway and Leo Doroschenko arrived. (Tom Whitmore had a conflict, alas.) I didn't count how many I had at that point, but it was something over a dozen. A guy by the name of Marty Massoglia came in at about the halfway mark, and he hurt me quite a bit by being faster than me in my areas of strength. Tom was having a bit of an off-day, but Leo nearly won: at the end my margin was only 8 pieces, quite a bit less than my lead when he arrived. If he'd gotten there earlier, I think he'd have taken it. What's more, they used some questions that Leo had written, which he obviously couldn't answer, so that let me build up my margin a little too. (Although I don't think I got as many as 8 pieces from his questions.)

So Leo gets the moral victory, but I was the one who got my name at the top of the list in the newszine.