Game Lab 1
In three teams of two and approximately two brain cells bouncing between me and my partner we played “Wits and Wagers Party,” the trivia game for those who are bad at trivia. The contestants of this game are Team Red, Green and Pink.
How to Play:
To start off “Wit and Wagers Party,” each team gets a white board paddle and two tokens with their assigned color. One of the players is also the singer Elvis who always guesses 1. He is technically an NPC. One token is labeled $200 and the other is $100. One game consists of 7 rounds. In each round there is a guessing phase where the teams guess a number that will answer the question. In the next phase the guesses are revealed and teams can place their bets on which guesses would be the closest to the answer with their colored tokens. A guess wins if it is the closest to the answer but still less than its value. Winning bets get poker chips which are $100 each in value. Pink is in charge of reading the questions out loud. Someone on Green distributes the poker chips after each round.
Round 1: Starting Off
Question: How many days per year does it rain in Seattle on average? Everyone makes comments about our respective lack of knowledge about Seattle. My partner and I communicate through writing on our whiteboard to avoid revealing our guess too early. Guesses: 80 (Red), 100 (Pink), 80 (Green). Bets: Red bets $200 on 100 and $100 on 80. Green bets $300 on 80. Pink bets $200 on 80 and $100 on 100. Results: The correct answer is 150 days. The closest guess is 100 so those who placed bets on 100 receive poker chips. Red gets $200 and Pink gets $100. Green doesn't win anything.
Round 2: Reimbursement
Question: How many karats does a Tiffany yellow diamond weigh? Yet another topic I know nothing about. I ask my partner if their mom has anything diamond jewelry hoping that they would know a little more than I do. They confess that all their mother’s diamonds are probably fake. We take a wild guess: 50 karats. Pink guesses 30 and Green guesses 13. Bets: Red bets $200 on 30 and $100 on 13. Pink bets $200 on 30 and $100 on 13. Green bets $200 on 13 and $100 on 30. Results: The correct answer is a whopping 19k so no one gets a poker chip. Pink remembers that the team who had the closest guess also gets 1 win token. Red gets $100 for the closest guess. Pink is also reimbursed $100 for their winning guess from the first round.
Round 3: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Question: In miles, how deep is the deepest hole drilled into Earth? Following our small wins I forgot about the part of the question about the drilled hole and was instead thinking about the deepest part of the Earth, the Marianna trench. We try to recall back to what we learned in the geology class we took together. We eyeball the amount of 0’s we should put down. Our final guess: 170,000 mi. Pink guesses 24 and Green guesses 3000. It seems 170k is the outlier. Bets: Red bets $200 on 3k and $100 on 170k. Pink bets $200 on 24 and $100 on 3k. Green bets $200 on 3k and $100 on 24. Results: The actual answer is 7.7 miles. Since all guesses are greater than the answer no one wins except Elvis who always guesses 1.
Round 4: How Did They All Die?
Question: How many lifeboats were aboard the Titanic? Guesses: 16 (Red), 12 (Pink), 500040 (Green). Green initially misheard the question and thought it was life jackets. We comment on the irony of the Titanic having 500 lifeboats. Everyone decides to let Green change their guess to 40. At this point Pink gets too excited and reveals the answer before we could make our bets. We decide on a do-over of Round 4.
Round 4: The Sequel
Question: How many US state abbreviations do not contain a vowel? Cue various versions of each team listing out each state using the song “Fifty Nifty United States.” Guesses: 13 (Red), 18 (Green), 30 (Pink). Bets: Red bets $200 on 18 and $100 on 13. Green bets $200 on 18 and $100 on 13. Pink bets $200 on 30 and $100 on 18. Results: The correct answer is 20 states. Green gets $300, Red gets $200 and Pink gets $100.
Round 5: Race to Space
Question: How many hours after a space shuttle launched before NASA began the countdown? Guesses: 4 (Red), 6 (Green), 48 (Pink). Pink’s guess makes everyone laugh. Why would NASA wait that long to start counting? Bets: Red bets $200 on 4 and $100 on 6. Green bets $300 on 6. Pink bets $200 on 48 and $100 on 4. Results: The answer is 43. Ironic that the outlier was actually the closest but the winning guess is actually 6 since 48 is greater than 43. Green wins $400 for their high risk wager. Red gets $100 and Pink wins nothing.
Round 6: Hitting the Word Count
Question: How many words does the average American speak per day? Guesses: 8400 (Red), 10k (Green), 100k (Pink) Bets: Red bets $200 on 10k and $100 on 8.4k. Green bets $300 on 10k. Pink bets $200 on 100k and $100 on 10k. Results: The answer is 15942 words. Green wins $400 yet again. Red wins $200 and Pink wins $100.
Round 7: Final Round
In the final round we are allowed to also use the tokens that we won in previous rounds to place more bets. Question: In dollars what is the highest selling price for a painting done by an elephant? Guesses: 150k (Red), 15k (Pink), 2m (Green). Apparently we all have wildly different opinions on how much an elephant’s painting should be priced. Bets: Red bets $400 on 150k and $100 on 2m, using up 2 poker chips. Pink bets $200 on each guess, using up 3 poker chips. Green bets $400 on 150k and $100 on 2m, using up 2 poker chips. Results: Correct answer is 39k. Pink wins $300 but loses $400 in the process. Red and Green both win nothing and lose $200.
Final Results
Team Green wins the game with $900 in winnings. Their two high risk bets definitely paid off. Red takes second place with $600 and Pink ends with $400 having lost much of her tokens in the previous round. We completed the game in approximately 35 minutes. Since we did not have any prior knowledge on trivia, it made the game more fun because we were able to make as many wild guesses as we wanted.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/123239/wits-and-wagers-party
