Gaussian Eliminators \ {Dave} undefeated.

O.K. So the following report is appearing to you, the reader before you see
the comments that appeared before the report. It's all very Star Wars episode
IV. So let's just pretend that report and comments make sense together and leave
it at that, shall we?

Hello. So this is me, Fitz, filling in for Dave as the official trivia correspondant answering to the need of you Joe Public, the little people, to have constant up-to-date information as to the trials and tribulations of a (sometimes) small and (sometimes) dedicated team of University of Queensland maths-department affiliates who see fit to play an awful lot of trivia. Well last night the team was neither small nor dedicated. We weren't even calling ourselves the Gaussian Eliminators exactly - but we won, god damn it, we won.

After inital suggestions that we name ourselves The Gaussian Eliminated Dave, we instead adopted the far less nasty, far more nerdy title you see above you. So why was this team so successful? Some said it was because we culled the Dave Barry dead weight (the author would, of course, like to acknowledge that this comment is grossly unfair - partly because Dave did, of course, tend to answer a lot of questions, but mostly because he'll be reading this post. Incidentally, if anyone knows how to insert footnotes on a blog post, I'd appreciate your letting me know. In the meantime, if the reader could imagine that the text within these brackets is in the more aesthetically appealing form of a footnote, the author would appreciate it. Thank you.). Some said it was down to our two new recruits. Some said it was because Nick saw fit to drag his arse from the minor human catastrophe that is the current state of his honours thesis and join our team. Well, actually, Nick said this at any rate, and we're all sure he had a point. Mostly, though, I'd like to put it down to our answering more questions correctly than any other team. Our final score was 32 1/2. Our nearest competitor scored 30. That's right team 30 points, if that is your real name: you were PWNED.

Our notable incorrect answers were as follows (correct answers to which, if not given here for comedic effect, can be found in subsequent commentry if anyone actually cares):

1. What country's first government was headed by Henry Sewell in 1856? We put "South Africa". We was dufuses.
2. What does W.A.P. stand for in the context of mobile phones? This one is notable, since we managed to get it wrong at the last Staff Club trivia also. We got a 1/2 mark, though.
3. What percentage of the population of the Northern Territory identifies itself as indigenous? O.K. so Rupert gave everyone the clue that it was somewhere between 10% and 40%. We answered, incorrectly, 35%. This was notable because we should have listened to Geoff when he said that Rupert, bless his simple soul, would have selected those bounds such that the correct answer was precisely half way between them. He was right. The answer Rupert wanted was 25%. So, again, we was dufuses.
4. Who was the first female director to gross 100 million at the box office? Now, this one shat me right off, because I was pretty damn sure (and wrote as much) that the correct answer was whoever the fuck directed the movie Big. This was right. Since I couldn't give this woman's name, we instead opted for the only female director we could think of: Sophia Coppola.
5. What element comes last alphabetically? We wrote Zircon. This word has the benefit of requiring to be listed after Zinc in any dictionary in which the two words are listed. It does not, however, have the benefit of actually being an element. Zirconium was the answer Rupert was after. We got half a mark, which put us at 9 1/2 in a maths and physical sciences round when two other teams got 10. These kind of shennanigans make it very difficult to justify our team name.

Notable correct answers:

1. From which city did the worlds longest car race begin in some year I can't remember? Stevo got the correct answer to this question. The Rally was called "Peking to Paris", from which an astute reader can infer the correct answer. Maybe getting this right only seems impressive to me, though, since I know almost nothing about sport.
2. Who discovered Kangaroo Island? We got 1 1/2 points on this one for writing that the answer we thought he wanted was Matthew Flinders, but the answer we were nonetheless giving was "The aborigines". Readers take note: Rupert may not be giving out any more half marks for funny answers but you can still use the powerful weapon of guilt to get him to hand them over.
3. How many faces does an icosahedron have? Notable because, in the maths and physical sciences round, I got this one right not because of any special knowledge of Platonic solids derived from years of formal mathematics training - but because I knew that the 20-sided die you use in Dungeons and Dragons was called an icosahedron.