Our original plan for this event was for each team to write thirty 3-part clues for the other team, with team captains (at the time David and Marc Struck) checking the clues and approving them as fair. The idea was to determine a set of categories and then have each captain assign each member of his team a distinct subset from this. Each member would then provide 10 clues that pertained to those categories and submit them to his captain for approval.
For example, as captain, Marc designated categories to each team member to make it easier for them to focus in on intelligent and acceptable clues. Marc’s designated categories were bodies of water, schools, and sports. Eugene had animals, cars/license plates, and gas stations. Matt was asked to make clues about people, restaurants, and street signs. A few examples of Marc's work are listed below.
BODIES OF WATER
Clue: Find a sign that denotes a particular body of water as a pond.
Clue: Film any animal that is not a bird swimming in that pond (any team member is allowed to jump in).
Clue: (Marc hadn't yet come up with a third part to this clue.)
SCHOOLS
Clue: Unscramble this location of Birch Elementary and tape it: "unpadgorly".
Solution: Film a "playground" at Birch Elementary.
Clue: Unscramble this location of Birch Elementary and tape it: "rinoes treenc".
Solution: Film a "senior center" at Birch Elementary.
Clue: Unscramble this location of Birch Elementary and tape it: "larlaple sarb".
Solution: Film a set of "parallel bars" at Birch Elementary.
SPORTS
Clue: Film a sport being played without any kind of ball.
Clue: Film a point being scored during this sport.
Clue: Film any illegal move during this sport.
Clue: Film a person playing basketball by himself.
Clue: Film him hitting a three point shot.
Clue: Film him dunking the basketball.
While an adequate plan, we soon decided that it would be unfair for each team to determine each other's clues, as it would be impossible to ensure that each team's set of clues were equal in difficulty to the other's. Another problem was that some members weren't making much of an effort (cough Russ cough). It was at this point that Eric Struck, brother of MBBB members David and Marc, stepped in and offered his services. Not only would he write the clues so that each team would have the same ones, but he would also be an impartial judge, and determine the scores of each team after watching their tapes after the event.
After this, we then needed to generate some parameters so that Eric would know how many clues to write, and based on which subjects. The first, and most important parameter decided upon were the boundaries of the event, so that Eric would know which areas he could use as fodder for his queries. A quick decision rendered Merrick, the MBBB group's hometown, and the three towns east of Merrick, those being Bellmore, Wantagh, and Seaford, as the game's playing field. It was then decided that there would be 10 categories; Eric would write three clues for each of these categories, and each clue would have three parts. That would put the total number of clues at 90, and both teams were pretty sure that we would not be able to finish all 90 clues in the predetermined time limit of 2 hours.
David, Marc, and Matt then compiled a list of 10 categories that Eric would be writing clues for, and the rest is history. For reference, the 10 categories were Animals, Bodies of Water, Businesses, Cars/Trucks, Gas Stations, People, Restaurants, Schools/Parks, Signs, and Sports.