SporcleCon
Oct. 6th, 2025 04:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxkloreOne of my NPL friends had mentioned SporcleCon on his Facebook page just about when I was making my travel plans for the IAJGS Conference. For those who aren’t familiar with Sporcle, it’s a web site with lots of fun trivia quizzes. SporcleCon was being held in Chicago the weekend just after the IAJGS conference. Since flights via ORD were the best option for travel between WAS and FWA, it seemed like a no brainer to just stop in Chicago for the weekend on my way home. I registered for SporcleCon, booked my hotel registration at the Hyatt attached to the McCormick Place Convention Center, and arranged my flights accordingly.
That meant leaving FWA crazy early on Friday morning, but there’s no shortage of things to do in Chicago. So I confidently shared an Uber to the airport with another conference attendee. Alas, the best laid plans of mice and Miriam once again went agley. About a half hour before the flight was scheduled to leave, I got a notification from United about a flight delay, due to a mechanical problem with the plane. The delay started at about 3 hours and increased. Several people left to rent cars and drive to Indianapolis or Detroit. Since I was staying in Chicago for the weekend and, therefore, didn’t have to worry about making a connection, I figured I could wait things out. To cut to the chase, the eventual delay was nearly 10 hours (for a 40 minute flight!) and they had to get a rescue plane to fly in from northern Michigan. (I did get compensation, by the way.)
On arrival, I took the El to the Cermak-McCormick Place station. It actually made sense to stop in McCormick Place and do the SporcleCon check-in on my way to the hotel. Then I went to the hotel, checked in, grabbed some supper, and pretty much collapsed since I’d been up since oh-dark-thirty.
Since I still can’t be in two or more places at the same time, the number of different trivia games going on at a time is both the best thing and the worst thing about SporcleCon. I had to make wild guesses about what event I would enjoy most. The way I handle situations like that is to just tell myself that it doesn’t matter. I figured that general knowledge events were a better bet than more specialized single subject events. The first event I went to on Saturday was Orange Cat Trivia, which was fun, though the room was very crowded and, hence, noisier than I’d have preferred. I particularly liked the Before and After category.
After lunch, I went to a talk by podcaster Gary Arndt about extreme travel. I could tell he was a Travelers’ Century Club member because his blurb referred to his having been to over 200 “countries and territories.” Only TCC people put in that “and territories” phrase. I wasn’t super impressed by the talk, actually. He may have me beat on sheer numbers, but I’ve been to places that he hasn’t, e.g. Paraguay and Kiribati.
A few events used the trivnow platform, which I thought worked well. The first of those I played was Triviality. It was a bit more pop culture heavy than is optimal for me, but I did still finish in the top quarter.
The biggest event of the con is the Battle of the Brains on Saturday night. I had chosen to have them assign me to a team and, for the most part, the team I was on worked reasonably well. I wasn’t completely useless, though how on earth is it possible that Austin, Texas is bigger than Atlanta, Georgia? I guess you can’t rely on traffic as a measure of how big cities are! I did at least know an answer relating to African geography. Anyway, we did respectably, finishing 15th (out of 100+ teams) overall. By the way, they also have special guests introducing some categories. I found the South Side Drill Team impressive, but Second City reminded me how much I hate improv comedy.
On Sunday, I did a few games at Sporcle’s World Fair. I won a bunch of raffle tickets, but no prizes in the drawing. I did win a banner from the Geography section. Then I played Crowdsourced Curiosities, which I was very bad at. I did much better at Liquid Kourage Trivia, mostly because I ended up with a team that had a good mix of different areas of knowledge. I did find it hard to believe that I was the only member of our team that knew what university has an annual puzzle hunt every January. (I’ve done the MIT Mystery Hunt. And that didn’t even exist until long after my time at MIT.)
Overall, I had a fun weekend. I probably won’t do next year’s SporcleCon since it is going to be: a) in November (generally a good month for international travel) and b) in Schaumburg, which is even less convenient to anything interesting in Chicago than McCormick Place. Anyway, after SporcleCon ended, I walked to the el station and headed to ORD, where I spent the night at the Airport Hilton, which is very convenient if you have an early morning flight.
Alas, the curse of ORD weather struck. I once (several years ago) had a flight from ORD that got delayed by a tornado, followed by a mechanical problem, followed by a crew timing out. In this case, there were thunderstorms, which caused all flights to the east to be shut down. We got lucky and they were able to reroute us around the worst of the weather, so we were going to be only about an hour and a half late. Except there was a fire (or, at least, a fire alarm) at DCA, which led to the control tower there being evacuated. We didn’t have enough fuel to keep circling until that was resolved, so they had us land at IAD. Normally, that would have been fine, since I live halfway between the two airports and I could have just taken the metro home from there. But I had checked a bag and they announced that: a) they weren’t taking any bags off the plane and b) they wouldn’t deliver bags to people. So I waited a bit over an hour while we refueled and we took the 15 mile / 11 minute flight to DCA. Where it turned out that my bag was waiting for me, because they had put it on the 5:21 a.m. flight.
And now I’m caught up through August!
That meant leaving FWA crazy early on Friday morning, but there’s no shortage of things to do in Chicago. So I confidently shared an Uber to the airport with another conference attendee. Alas, the best laid plans of mice and Miriam once again went agley. About a half hour before the flight was scheduled to leave, I got a notification from United about a flight delay, due to a mechanical problem with the plane. The delay started at about 3 hours and increased. Several people left to rent cars and drive to Indianapolis or Detroit. Since I was staying in Chicago for the weekend and, therefore, didn’t have to worry about making a connection, I figured I could wait things out. To cut to the chase, the eventual delay was nearly 10 hours (for a 40 minute flight!) and they had to get a rescue plane to fly in from northern Michigan. (I did get compensation, by the way.)
On arrival, I took the El to the Cermak-McCormick Place station. It actually made sense to stop in McCormick Place and do the SporcleCon check-in on my way to the hotel. Then I went to the hotel, checked in, grabbed some supper, and pretty much collapsed since I’d been up since oh-dark-thirty.
Since I still can’t be in two or more places at the same time, the number of different trivia games going on at a time is both the best thing and the worst thing about SporcleCon. I had to make wild guesses about what event I would enjoy most. The way I handle situations like that is to just tell myself that it doesn’t matter. I figured that general knowledge events were a better bet than more specialized single subject events. The first event I went to on Saturday was Orange Cat Trivia, which was fun, though the room was very crowded and, hence, noisier than I’d have preferred. I particularly liked the Before and After category.
After lunch, I went to a talk by podcaster Gary Arndt about extreme travel. I could tell he was a Travelers’ Century Club member because his blurb referred to his having been to over 200 “countries and territories.” Only TCC people put in that “and territories” phrase. I wasn’t super impressed by the talk, actually. He may have me beat on sheer numbers, but I’ve been to places that he hasn’t, e.g. Paraguay and Kiribati.
A few events used the trivnow platform, which I thought worked well. The first of those I played was Triviality. It was a bit more pop culture heavy than is optimal for me, but I did still finish in the top quarter.
The biggest event of the con is the Battle of the Brains on Saturday night. I had chosen to have them assign me to a team and, for the most part, the team I was on worked reasonably well. I wasn’t completely useless, though how on earth is it possible that Austin, Texas is bigger than Atlanta, Georgia? I guess you can’t rely on traffic as a measure of how big cities are! I did at least know an answer relating to African geography. Anyway, we did respectably, finishing 15th (out of 100+ teams) overall. By the way, they also have special guests introducing some categories. I found the South Side Drill Team impressive, but Second City reminded me how much I hate improv comedy.
On Sunday, I did a few games at Sporcle’s World Fair. I won a bunch of raffle tickets, but no prizes in the drawing. I did win a banner from the Geography section. Then I played Crowdsourced Curiosities, which I was very bad at. I did much better at Liquid Kourage Trivia, mostly because I ended up with a team that had a good mix of different areas of knowledge. I did find it hard to believe that I was the only member of our team that knew what university has an annual puzzle hunt every January. (I’ve done the MIT Mystery Hunt. And that didn’t even exist until long after my time at MIT.)
Overall, I had a fun weekend. I probably won’t do next year’s SporcleCon since it is going to be: a) in November (generally a good month for international travel) and b) in Schaumburg, which is even less convenient to anything interesting in Chicago than McCormick Place. Anyway, after SporcleCon ended, I walked to the el station and headed to ORD, where I spent the night at the Airport Hilton, which is very convenient if you have an early morning flight.
Alas, the curse of ORD weather struck. I once (several years ago) had a flight from ORD that got delayed by a tornado, followed by a mechanical problem, followed by a crew timing out. In this case, there were thunderstorms, which caused all flights to the east to be shut down. We got lucky and they were able to reroute us around the worst of the weather, so we were going to be only about an hour and a half late. Except there was a fire (or, at least, a fire alarm) at DCA, which led to the control tower there being evacuated. We didn’t have enough fuel to keep circling until that was resolved, so they had us land at IAD. Normally, that would have been fine, since I live halfway between the two airports and I could have just taken the metro home from there. But I had checked a bag and they announced that: a) they weren’t taking any bags off the plane and b) they wouldn’t deliver bags to people. So I waited a bit over an hour while we refueled and we took the 15 mile / 11 minute flight to DCA. Where it turned out that my bag was waiting for me, because they had put it on the 5:21 a.m. flight.
And now I’m caught up through August!
no subject
Date: 2025-10-06 10:52 pm (UTC)