I dislike the question to begin with. Who fits the bill as the foremost African American modern dance choreographer is a matter of opinion anyway – not of fact. Even though there may have been more to the question to make it more specific, I don’t like loaded questions.
(I used to write for the local Quiz Bowl.)
I feel your pain. I lost final jeopardy, even though I gave a correct answer… er question. Archibal Leach, Bernard Schwartz, and Lucille Lesuer ARE three people who have never been in my kitchen.
Damn you Trebek!
No you didn’t/they aren’t. They are all pseudonyms for Frank Sinatra! That’s only one person!
As a former captain of a quiz bowl team, I have to say that this stuff happens, and that you shouldn’t waste your time beating yourself or anyone else up over it.
I think the other team was perfectly justified in challenging your answer–you didn’t say it right. Period. Close doesn’t count in quiz bowl and the judge shouldn’t have given you the point.
I had a similar problem once with the pronunciation of “Alexander Solzhenitsyn.” Dems da breaks.
Zoe the OP just said the question was about the foremost african american, not “Who is…” I’m sure the question was specific.
Challenging the point might have been nit-picky but you could consider the different atmosphere the other team is coming from. You say it’s the team from a large corporation–they might have more pressure to win than barroom buddies. eg “We gave you the morning off and you lost to a bar?? How much we paying you?” 
That ain’t the issue, Q. N.. The issue is whether the other team should have had the chance to get the point after the judge’s mix-up.
Ah, Quiz Bowl.
Some famous answers on my team during high school:
Who is the Patron Saint of Italy?
Chef Boyardee
When did the blizzard of 1888 occur?
1888
What month?
July
etc. The one that sticks out was we had to list the rankings of the angels (Cherubim, Seraphim, etc) and the other team challenged because Jesus Christ was not on the list and our teacher gave it to him!
Still, I had a lot of fun.
Naw, c’mon, guys, this kind of game is for fun and intellectual fellowship. The point of a trivia game is to show you know more than the other guys, getting bragging rights, while still enjoying the pure pleasure of being engaged in an activity with other likeminded people.
vibrotronica’s team clearly had the right answer, and it was pretty sad to be challenged on it. The wanker who did so may have advanced her team to the next round, but lost in the only game that really mattered. She not only failed to show that her team knew more than his, she showed she didn’t understand the social aspects of the activity she was engaged in. Maybe she thinks she got bragging rights, but she didn’t really.
Who won?
One quick geeky-knowledge bowl story. At my high school our History teacher, Mr. Perdue, was this great old guy with a glass eye. People started calling him One Eyed Pete after awhile, and everyone that it was pretty funny.
SO…During one of our matches we had a question about pirates. None of us knew the answer and our standard guess was normally Madame Butterfly, so when I answered One Eyed Pete my entire team starts dying with laughter (Remember we are all huge nerds!). The moderator had to ask us to be quiet, then my advisor pulled me out of the match. It was worth it though.
Too long to read so here is me posting a useless responce…
First of all, she IS bitching about them having challenged her answer, and IS complaining that she wouldn’t have done the same thing in her place.
Second, giving the other team a chance to answer is a part of the rules. If she doesn’t like the rules, she should talk to someone about having them amended. But the impression I got was that she just didn’t like having them enforced against her.
Q.N., first of all, I’m male. Second of all, I repeatedly said that I acccepted that what she did was legal within the rules of the game. In retrospect (and I’ve thought about it a lot, believe me.) I think that if I had given the correctly pronounced answer the second time it would have resulted in a row that would have had the question thrown out. But I didn’t do that out of some misguided, vestigial sense of fair play and honesty. It is that same vestigal sense of fair play that would have prevented me from challenging the question had I been in her position. It was obvious to everyone in the room that my team knew the correct answer and that I had merely flubbed the pronunciation. That was the inital ruling of the judge. I would have conceeded the point in order to get on with the next question and score more points for my team and because I think nitpicky crap like that is unbecoming and unsportsmanlike. I did not challenge the other team’s butchered pronunciation of “Hermione Granger” in another question because it was obvious they knew what they were talking about. But that’s just how I am.
Like I said, I’m over it. It sucked, but hey, like you said, dem’s da breaks.
Sorry for the mistake re: your gender.
I understood all of that the first time, except that it sounds to me like you’re pissed off and not really over it. If you say otherwise, OK, but it sure doesn’t read that way.
How can it be unsportsmanlike to play by the rules of the game? I understand the nitpicky accusation, but not this one.
Otto, since you asked me, I don’t think anybody won here. But, shit, it’s just a game.