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Through this link, you can access the brackets of the tournament. We are B-Team-4, which stands for Best Team 4ever.
First Round
We could take a break in the first round. By then, we still didn’t know our team name and thought we were B-Team-3. Therefore, we watched the match between our potential opponents, PHS and Bridgewater. Since I heard PHS was strong, I wished they could lose. Bridgewater High had good comeback chances, but their difference kept increasing in the last few questions. Eventually, PHS won. However, we found out that PHS was slow.
Second Round
The first round is always an easy win. The other team, Academy GE, was the only one in this tournament that got 0 points. Justin answered 18 out of the 23 questions. In total, we got 258 to 0. FYI, Academy GE got 8 points in their next round and then went home.
Third Round
Winning in the last round, we get one round for a break. In this round, we walked around the PPPL, and chatted with friends who were also taking breaks. At this time, we still dream of having this kind of rest in the future, and don’t know what’s coming next…
Fourth Round
Just as everyone knows, winning too easily at the beginning may not be so beneficial for the competitors. In the second round, our opponents are a team called Highland. Just as we thought we could win by a lot like the previous one, we lost the first three questions due to one interrupt and wrong answer, one blurt (answer before being called), and one slow buzz-in. At this time, our confidence crashed, and we lost a lot in the first half. We rested for a bit and got a substitution for participants in order to regain our confidence, but we still didn’t get enough points to turn it into a win. In the last question, while Peter answered it correctly, the other team’s coach asked if it was a stall, and the mod said yes. We lost by 90 to 152. However, we did relatively well in the second half and got more points than Highland. If we made no blurts or stalls, we could actually win.
Luckily, the game is in double elimination, so we only go to the losers’ bracket instead of returning home.
Fifth Round
In the losers’ bracket, we can never take a breath. In the same room, we went against Emous who also lost to Highland, but by 40 to 130. This made me confident. It turned out to be true that the other team couldn’t contribute to any memorable details, we even forgot its full name. What we remember the most for that round is the strong will to get lunch. The final score was 166 to 58, just as we expected to be a clear win. We also found out that maybe we would be luckier as Team A.
Sixth Round
The second round in the losers’ bracket is the first round after lunch and the first time we get to a new buzzing room. This team, Ranney, is also a loser in the fourth round. However, we didn’t get any problem with the new buzzer or hosts and won a lot by 192 to 50.
Seventh Round
It’s a rematch against Highland. We feel vengeful and tense and surprised that they also got into the one-loss bracket. They were confident that they had won us once, but were struck hard by our true strength! In both halves, we got more points than them. The final score was 144 to 96. Maybe if we did as well in the second round, we wouldn’t compete for each round without a break and would be in the winners’ semi-final instead. But, who knows?
Eighth Round
Here is the time when everything becomes interesting. It was the first time we ever played in room B233, a room that does not allow any spectators. Our opponent is Livingston, a team we know to be pretty strong, and crashed their last opponent violently. It was a pretty close game for a long time at first, but at last, we still won by 132 to 98. If Livingston’s answer to the last math question weren’t considered a blurt, the score difference would be 2 points.
We wanted to act as if we lost this round and surprise Justin’s mom. So as we walked out, Josh sighed and said, “Ah, Livingston, they’re just too strong,” while I couldn’t keep myself from laughing and had to cover my mouth with my hand. However, she already saw our score on the website and congratulated us before we said anything.
Also, in this room, we found the new buzzers interesting, and Justin came up with a seamless strategy— unplug the other team’s buzzers after the buzzer check! But we didn’t have a chance to implement it since we won.
Ninth Round
We looked at the board on the first floor and predicted whether we would compete against Princeton High or East Brunswick. We thought Princeton High wasn’t that strong and won all by luck, so we would compete against PHS. However, PHS won by 170 to 58, so our opponent was East Brunswick. And it’s the first time we go to the auditorium! We were team A. In the first half, we were on a lead, and I subbed happily. Dr. Chen told me to relax and the other team had little chance to win.
However, in the second half, we missed a few questions and they made a comeback. At this time, we held our breath. Each toss-up was a chance to get 14 points and catch up. However, we weren’t lucky enough and missed the bonuses of every toss-up. We gained 4 points, and then another 4 points and our score difference decreased slowly. When our points were equal again, I couldn’t control my smile. Then, we were much relieved and secured our win by another 22 points. The final score was 84 to 62.
Tenth round
At B233, there are always fantastic stories, which definitely include our shocking reversal at the last problems in this round. At this point, every opponent is very strong, including Stevens who beats all the teams in the other half of the losers’ bracket. This game, the “final” of the losers, would determine which team gets into the top three, which guarantees a trophy for them. They buzzed pretty fast, and we lost by about 30 in the first half. We tried to keep confident, but things didn’t go well. We get some of the questions but lose more problems than we expected. After problem 19 of 23, we are losing 64 to 100. The last four questions, surprisingly, are fitting to our team, and we get 20 through 22 as we keep trying and they may become less focused on the game. When the opponent buzzed the last question as an interrupt and got the wrong answer, Justin buzzed in and got the right one instead, we saw our points become higher, and we shouted “Yes!!!”. Even since it gives us a win, we still need to do the bonus, and it gives us a 12-point difference at 112 to 100.
Eleventh Round
We are against Princeton High School. Before the match, an Indian guy asked me “Who’s B-Team-4?” and I said, “Oh, we are B-Team-4”. This name made our team low key and no one expected us to be here.
We were back in the auditorium. This time, B-Team-4 is team B. In the first half, we were falling behind, and I found out the subjects we lost the most points on were surprisingly math and chemistry, by being not fast enough or too fast. However, PHS thought carbonic acid was HCO3 and didn’t even know what oxalic acid was, so they would never deserve a win. (Peter Wang, 2023)
In the second half, we made a return, thanks to Cedric and Justin! Our score difference was always 2 or 6. However, in the last second of the penultimate bonus question which we had the chance to secure our win, Justin read out Cedric’s answer, but the mod said it was time. We sighed, and what’s even worse is that there was one more toss-up question, and PHS got it correct! When the mod read out the bonus, my hands were totally wet, and I prayed for the other team to get it wrong. 5 seconds. “They don’t know it. They can’t get it correct. Otherwise, they’d answered it already,” I told myself. Then, the mod said, “Incorrect.” I stood up, applauded, and high-fived my teammates. The final score was 78 to 76, we only differ by half a toss-up problem.
Twelveth Round
The time of judgment has finally come. The sudden death final definitely made us nervous: the opponent gets more than 120 every round! Of course, sudden death is only for us. The opponent, HighTech, has never lost, so they need to lose twice to use in order to lose the game, while we can’t afford to lose even once. They beat PHS, our last opponent, by more than twice of points, so we guess that they would be a tough enemy. However, when we got into the game, they were not as scary as we suspected. Starting with the first few problems, we did much of the bonus and led by twice of points: 44 to 22. When we do the bonus questions, there is also a fun story: Josh and Justin do rock paper strong when they are not sure about the answer, and they got it correct the first time they do it! Everyone is amazed by this miracle. After the half, we were much more confident to win this tough opponent and then the whole tournament. The second half went smoothly, and the final score was 90 to 64.
Thirteenth Round
After the last round, we became much more confident by winning this: just follow the pace of the last game. As a final, it gives us less memory than all three rounds before those two. Here I still want to say sorry to our opponents: they won all the games until getting to the first in the winner’s bracket, the champion if it was single elimination, and got beaten by a random team jumping from nowhere even without a name. Just kidding, as PRISMS, we were always pretty good in the previous years, and winning is not so surprising. As a team that always gets more than 120 points, they got much less this time, where we won by 84 to 40.
There is a fun fact associated with this round: the host may accidentally read the answer when one team gets the answer wrong, and the other hasn’t answered. In this case, we would have a replaced toss-up only for one team. This is sometimes beneficial, since the host may read the answer to a problem that none of the two team members know, but it is completely random.
Winning one round may be easy, but after losing one round, we must attend all rounds instead of having breaks between them, while continuously winning 9 rounds is pretty hard, especially when the opponents are at the same level as us. Despite these facts, we still made it to the end and got the trophy. Just as we talked about before the contest, “We lose for 1 round at first, and give them some losers’ bracket surprise”.
Reporter: Felicity(Rounds 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 11) + Cedric(Rounds 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13)
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