DCist just lost to DC Metblogs at Wonderland trivia by a single point.

It was a nice idea — the Metblogs folks approached Ryan and Martin about it a few weeks ago. Loser gives $50 to charity, just like actual celebrities do. Wayan of Metblogs is the trivia night MC, but they're honorable folks and we knew he wouldn't share the questions beforehand.

And yeah, they beat us fair and square. We led most of the night, but Hemal, Martin and Scott had to take off early, leaving me and Ryan. The later rounds were unkind. And we had already learned a painful lesson about not trusting Ryan's instincts — he's unassuming, but that guy is trivia night gold. We lost at least two points second guessing him about the number of USSR republics and what was the oldest noncontinuous parliament in the world. Trust your editors, people!

But here comes the venting: those were the worst trivia night questions I've ever encountered. First and foremost, the entire last round was devoted to blogs, and a large portion to DCist versus Metblogs. Way to make us feel like dicks for wasting everyone else's night, guy. Second, the questions were date-heavy. That's fine and good for the DC history round — it was painful but understandable. But asking what date DCist first wrote about Borf?! That's just terrible. Considering that it was asked shortly after "How many cities is Metblogs in?", it came off as a transparent attempt to job us. Fortunately, we knew the latter but not the former, making it a wash.

But here's the thing: if the people who are in the best position of anyone on the planet to know the answer to a question can't answer it... Well, maybe it isn't such a great question. Asking "Has DCist or Metblogs used the word 'penis' more?" is a great way to prove how clever the question-writer is (clever enough to use the word penis, apparently), but not actually fun for anyone else. At all.

The beauty of trivia nights — aside from having an excuse to sit still and drink heavily — is the sensation that SHIT I should know this. It's on the tip of my tongue, I saw a terrible movie on TBS that mentioned it once, crap, what's the name of that actress? Man, before that last beer I would have gotten this in a second. Shit. I really wish I was allowed to text message my buddy. He would totally know this.

To be fair, there were a few questions that fit this bill. The celebrity suicide round? Inspired. But when most rounds of ten questions end with teams getting less than four points, something is wrong. You're turning it into a crapshoot. And making an impossible question true or false doesn't make the situation any better — it just makes me wonder why I'm wasting my time trying to guess an answer.

But in the end, Metblogs legitimately claimed their triumph. I certainly won't begrudge them that — I truly believe the questions were just as terrible for them as they were for us. And I don't mind losing; I kind of expected to. I just wish I didn't somehow feel implicated in ruining the evening of everyone else in that bar via involuntary internarcissism.

Next time: an impartial arena. And, hopefully, a less masturbatory one.

UPDATE: Now that I've had time to let the bitter tastes of beer and defeat fade from my mouth, maybe I should temper my remarks. Although harder than I considered optimal for fun, the first six rounds were well-themed and not, say, the type of thing that could be used to justify their author's indefinite detention and torture in Cuba (it's to protect us all!). That seventh round, though...

I'm not completely sure why this is great, but it is.

Back to Python! Our previous installments involved installing Python and variables, control structures and functions. I know that the control structure entry might have been intimidating to the non-programmers who are reading this. All I can suggest is that you ask questions — and not worry about it too much. Programming languages are meant to be readable by humans; with enough exposure to them, they do eventually begin to make an intuitive sort of sense. In the short term, I'd suggest that you just try to figure out what this (intentionally inefficient) code does:

(remember: % is the modulus sign — x % y gives you the remainder from dividing x by y)

If you feel comfortable reading that code, I'd say we can proceed. If not, ask me some questions via comments or email.