Beat the Geek

We played a cruise game with the cruise staff called Beat the Geek. A guy from Shorex didn’t show up, so the panel of experts was made up of 3 people from Second City, a cruise staff hostess from “Philly—and by Philly I mean the Phillipines!!!” and our technical director. We had never played this before. The guy who hosted the games (he who said Philly) recruited people from the audience so it was Crew vs. Guests. He said it would be impossible to beat the Geeks because we had been undefeated for the past 124 cruises. This made one woman in the audience lose her mind (rather large, close to 70, with a white bob and a pink plaid shirt). “Well of course! Of course they were winners! BECAUSE YOU ASK THE SAME QUESTIONS EVERY TIME!” He calmly explained that he did not, she kept arguing, fact-free. He said (I think) “hey, I don’t come to your house and make your menu” which she found very insulting and made her friend laugh very hard and say “hahaha I wish you would!!!”

We played versus a large, tan drunk looking guy from Indiana, an obese, spilling over the side of the chair guy with crazy teeth and sunglasses (host: “are you competing in world series poker?” man: “ “) a tiny 11 year old boy, an apologetic looking 50-ish white woman with cornrows and MC Hammer pants in hemp, and a 75 or 80-ish old man who frowned and got very upset for most of the game. He was convinced the game was stacked and when we got the question “what is the square root of 9” in the “Numbers” category, he said “Oh COME ON” and grumbled and yelled at the host and brought it up during the rest of the game “like the square ROOT OF NINE.” He didn’t laugh or cheer much unless we got one wrong, and generally the crowd didn’t applaud us if we got one right. They got the question “what was the name of the first Harry Potter book” and the kid didn’t know the answer. Everybody insisted he did until he raised his hands in the air exasperated and said “my mom won’t let me watch them!” and the apologetic corn row lady quietly said “Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone” and the crowd applauded and she looked like she was going to barf. The host said “yes, Philosopher’s Stone in America, Sorcerer’s Stone in England” which we let ride for a second and then a Second City person said “THAT’S WRONG” so that person didn’t explode.

Usually they played two 10 point rounds. The Guests were getting so many wrong that the host ended the game early, engineering a Guest win. The guest panel lost its mind, particularly the guy from Indiana.

Afterwards, the pink plaid shirt lady came up to us, all delighted smiles and said “good try but you really didn’t stand a chance against Bob” who was her husband and the angry old guy. “He has his masters from (somewhere) and his PhD from (somewhere) and now he owns a bookstore and reads all the time. I mean he is one smart guy!!!”