h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was on the Academic League Junior Varsity team for my school this year. It was a lot of fun. I wish I had tried out the two years previous. The most fun comes in practices, where you are less afraid to buzz in if you have a good guess. Sometimes we gave the most boneheaded answers. I forget some of mine, but one famous example that happened last year was when the question was something about a communist exile who was later murdered in Mexico, and my friend answered "Tchiakovsky." Classic. It was also great being the only kid who had French class on the team (except that all the pressure was on during french bonus questiuons; luckily there weren't too many). It's hard on the sidelines though, especially when you know the answers and everyone on your team is dumbfounded. One in particular was a math bonus that involved the definitions of conic sections. The math whizzes were all up, and no one had a clue. The answers came, and they all sighed in disgust. They were thinking of trig functions or something. Anyways, it was a real fun season, and I learned a lot, too
(I will never forget that Thurber wrote 'Walter Mitty')

BTW you know you're a nerd when you laugh hysterically at someone's boneheaded math mistakes.

Hey! I resent (resemble?) that last comment!

When I played (back in the day) in 8th grade, there was a kid on another team, a stereotypically short kid with stereotypically thick glasses who said, I kid you not, "I live for math." This was the phrase with which our team identified him for the next 6 years of competition: "Which team are we playing?" "I live for math." "Oh yeah."