You're not going to tell us what the game is, right?
Safest that way.
Or, possibly you linked to it right in the post. Never mind.
He linked to the game, LB.
I'm the best at actually reading the post.
Look, I've been having a bad day.
There's an ARG element to it. The first stage of the game involves finding the link to the game itself.
Have I mentioned how my month has been going?
The second stage is being pwned. The third stage, like in all ARGs, is discovering your life is an elaborately constructed lie.
I read the description, no one tell ogged those aren't other people, they're computer sims designed to be beaten by certain skill levels.
It's all right, just vicissitudes.
I have, at two different points in my career, been the best in the world at programming in a scripting language which wasn't used by more than one or two other people*.
* different scripting languages. The second of which was referred to as "dot Ned" because apparently somebody named Ned had been the primary developer.
I suppose I could be the best in the world at multitasking while doing the kind of transcription I do, but there could be other people who are better at it and probably lots of other people who would be better at it but wouldn't bother trying to verbally transcribe a conversation while also reading a book or whatever.
I'm fairly certain I'm the world's leading expert on the current charitable activities of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
verbally transcribe a conversation while also reading a book
That is impressive.
Twice in my life I've been either best or in the top 3 at research topics-- once a really specialized physics thing, the paper only got cited about a dozen times by other groups, and once at a computational biology thing-- combination of understanding an approach to solve a problem, partly inherited, and a body of code that implemented the approach, which produced datasets useful to many.
Ranking is IMO a deeply flawed idea for most human endeavor. Very few human activities lend themselves to a scalar measure of quality. The impulse to rank I think has 2 sources:
1) from spectator sports, which, beneath contempt obviously.
2) from bureaucracy's need for context-free data, suitable for even demoralized and possibly inept clerks or their confused software replacements. Not exactly beneath contempt, but something to view as unfortunately useful rather than as a mode of assessment that's suitable for much outside of filing.
Hmm, a high school friend of mine was a physics grad student and now does computational biology. I wonder if you know each other.
15: It's impressive because you've never tried to do it and there's a bit of a learning curve to the transcription part. Some people, coworkers included, never get good at it. I just lucked into something I find easy and can do well. Work still sucks, of course, because it's work.
17. I don't know if there's survey data, but I'd say dba/systems architect, mathematical finance, and computational biology are all destinations for very many physics grads. Finance before 2000 or so was more popular, biology now I think.
There's some crossover-- I see a number of fairly prominent people in physics departments working on biological systems. Some of this work is pretty nice-- John Marko and collaborators have a very nice physical model for chromosomes that seems to be applicable to open questions in research biology.
Nothing, I think. Not even close.
I'm pretty good in a jack-of-all-trades way at a large number of things, and I'm probably one of a single figure number of the top experts in my work field* in the UK, but that's not much of a claim.
When I was an academic, I wouldn't even have claimed to the best in my immediate peer group, never mind anything more global than that.
* in the cultural heritage space, that is.
The key isn't to be the best at anything in the real world, which you (for most definitions of "you") can't do unless you find some table tennis app that no one else plays. The key is to create fantasy worlds where you are the best at everything.
Not saying I'm the best Quoridor player in the world but I've never played against anyone better.
Congratulations, ogged! Do your children respect you now?
I'm certain that I'm the very best at doing something, but I haven't discovered that thing yet.
I can comment on unfogged better than almost anyone. Out of any randomly selected group of people on earth I'm probably better at it than 99.99 percent of them.
You really only have to be a barely competent novice at something to be better than 99.99% of randomly-selected people at it.
I was possibly the best in the world at giving lost people directions in a labyrinthine brutalist nightmare building whose corridors I often haunted while failing to write my dissertation.
25: You're right!
On the other hand I let a capuchin monkey post as "peep" here one day, and no one could tell the difference.
I'm really good at taking other people's jokes that are supposed to rely on subtlety and irony and then making them explicit.
27: Think how many lives you saved! So much more important than some stinking dissertation!
I'm just a bryophyte, and no-one's said anything.
I was actually reflecting, when writing 27, on some things I'm barely competent at, not attempting to explicitate MHPH's joke. (MHPH is more than barely competent at commenting on unfogged, after all.)
I'm pretty good at tying slipped half-hitches in grocery store plastic bags for ease of later opening, but am I the best? Probably not. Top ten, maybe.
I'm very good at writing upside-down, because I do it during office hours so that the page stays oriented for the student across the desk. But no way am I the best at it.
I'm the best Heebie I can be.
I know things that hardly anybody else knows because we have a writing backlog.
Assuming historical averages, I'm not the best Hick I can be.
I may be the best me I can be under the present circumstances, but that's basically a tautology and even now I'm too good to be impressed by that.
Not a tautology! I'm far from being the best me I can be under current circumstances.
Unless failings of character and motivation count as circumstances, which might reasonably argued.
asgjlksf uiowoui\mf jkksfoui kfmvjklg iuwtrn fpio43890k kgf.fjli jldfm jidfk
O(0.0)O
But never will be, because I was too busy rescuing people from bad architecture.
TAKE YOUR STINKING PAWS OFF MY MORBID SELF-REFLECTION!
I bet I could have been an above-average Heebie.
Hilarious instance of "be the best X you can be" realized in S2 of televised Fargo.
I am one of the top players of Race for the Galaxy on board game arena. :)
I'm the best in the world at the informatics system we were given money to develop and publicly release but that no one else bothers to use. The system is called <NOUN> and I was known by the project team as The <NOUN>.
It would make more sense if I told you what the word was but that's too revealing. It is not "shit".
I'm the best there is at what I do, and what I do best is criticize other people's life choices.
I'm really good at knowing lots of nouns.
Back when I was young and had infinite free time, I was arguably the best in a mildly obscure video game for a couple seasons (maybe thousands or tens of thousands of active players, with a few hundred competitive players).
Since then, nothing. I've worked on teams that have created, arguably, the best system in the world for X, for a couple different values of X. But on every team I've worked on, it's been pretty clear that there are folks that are more productive than me and that I could be replaced, so it's nothing about me in particular.
45: did you ever play on keldon? I've tried BGA and the interface seems like a mess compared to keldon.
(MHPH is more than barely competent at...
Theres nothing like ((recently) having been a graduate student to make something like this, actually feel like a genuine, significant complement.
Oh shoot. One of the unclosed html tags didn't carry over after the blockquote. I would have checked to make sure it was doing that by hitting 'preview', but I felt like that would be incompatible with the spirit of the joke.
What are you the best in the world at?
Nuthin. In fact, In my own perspectives, I have never even approached average or mediocre at anything I have attempted. That includes the most mundane of daily activities, walking across the room. I remember toasting my poptarts incompetently every single time this week. Always too soft or burnt, never right. I don't even breathe right.
I even always fail and am humiliated in my most megalomanaical wish-fulfillment fantasies. I crash the fighter jet and railroad engine, get impeached as president, my cure for cancer has terminal side effects. I get rejected in my wet dreams.
The computational neuroscientists Ogi Ogas "A Billion Wicked Thoughts" used online histories, porn searches and fan/slash fiction to determine what men and women want, what turned them on.
Men, straight or gay, want tits and ass.
Women demand "confidence and competence"
No wonder there's a patriarchy.
Nuthin. In fact, In my own perspectives, I have never even approached average or mediocre at anything I have attempted. That includes the most mundane of daily activities, walking across the room. I remember toasting my poptarts incompetently every single time this week. Always too soft or burnt, never right. I don't even breathe right.
I even always fail and am humiliated in my most megalomanaical wish-fulfillment fantasies. I crash the fighter jet and railroad engine, get impeached as president, my cure for cancer has terminal side effects. I get rejected in my wet dreams.
Bob, you are absolutely the best person in the world at whatever it is you do on the internet. I can't exactly express what that is (it's not "troll and piss off liberals," but it's not exactly not that, either), but you are clearly the world's best person at it. Nobody else even comes close. There are a lot of people out there trying to do what you do. I don't think any other commenter here can say the same.
Academia is great for being the best at very specific things. I'm probably the world expert at identifying specific examples of [objects I study]. Like if you've run across a weird [object I study] and you don't know what it is, I'd probably be the person you'd email. I used to be the best in the world at explaining results in [field one] to people in [field two] (and vice-versa), but I seem to have done too good a job at that and now people those groups can just talk to each other directly.
I'm pretty goddamned pleased with how good I was today at speaking before City Council today. It was a hearing about the rezoning of our park*, and you have a fairly strict 3 minute limit (you basically get one sentence after the timer goes off, no more). I didn't want to prepare anything in advance because I wanted to be able to react to/play off of previous testimony, but I did have some maps I'd prepared. My daughter's oldest friend (whose parents we met in the park before any of us had kids) was there, and I had her hold up the maps. In 3 minutes I managed to: humanize the moment by relating what I just wrote about her, explain the maps, summarize the three themes of prior speakers, wax a bit about how ungenerous the developer had been through the process ("Ungenerous" brought an audible scoff from their asshole lawyer), and bring it back to the three themes. I was proud of myself.
And then this old guy, stereotypical old school lefty who is such a regular at Council that the President greeted him warmly, went up there and talked about larger issues, specific issues, likely corruption of the process by developer money, and whether or not Council would take an honest stand, and finished half a second before the timer went off. The man was an artist. If he'd had a bat, he would have been justified in flipping it.
*we just saw that the Mayor sent out a big press release that the park will stay publicly owned, and that any reconfiguration would come only after a thorough, collaborative planning process. It seems that the developer's attempts to strong-arm their way to a maximally exploitative scheme have failed, but we're still only cautiously optimistic.
Apparently I'm also really good at thread-killing.
I used to be really good at Intellivision baseball. That is as close to true mastery as I'll ever come, I bet.
I don't think I am even close to being the best in the world at any one skill, but I think I have a diverse enough skill set that I could pick three or four and maybe have a hope of being the best at those - i.e. no one would be better than me at all of them.
"Best on the blog" might be more interesting and contentious, but would probably just lead to ridiculously fine-grained definition fights about various kinds of trolling.
I'm the best on the blog at posting my income and SAT scores.
I don't know if I'm the best in the world, but I'm pretty solid at getting any meeting to burst into laughter, especially news meetings.
"Best on the blog" might be more interesting and contentious
How about "most on the blog." I am most likely to (over-)use the construction, "I acknowledge . . .", "I admit ... ", or "granted . . .".
I'm reminded of what Messiaen supposedly used to say, that he was the best composer among ornithologists and the best ornithologist among composers. Those of us who don't play the table-tennis game might have to try for the intersection of several sets.
I don't think I'm world class, but I've probably got more Craig Worthington baseball cards than anyone you know.
56
Yup, I am AFAIK the only even rudimentary Western speaker of a particular Chinese dialect. I am the 2nd non-Chinese scholar to study it, and the first was a Japanese man in the 1930s. I still struggle to string together anything more than the most rudimentary of sentences, so it's hardly something that I really feel is worth bragging about.
61
Or you could flip it on its head, and award a Mr/Ms congeniality award to the nicest commenter.
I don't see anyone else mentioning it, but NMM to Rob Ford. He'd probably prefer you keep going, though.
When I was in grade school, I would walk to school carrying my string bass without using my hands or arms (and without it being in any way strapped to me) I have no evidence that I was best in the world at this, but I really hope I was.
73, if that's addressed to me: I would lean backwards and rest the bass on its side on my torso with, and this is key, the scroll hooked behind my neck. If it was windy, which it often was, I would tack to keep it from blowing off. There was no point to this other than the fact that it was hard to do.
50- I've played vs the keldon AI a couple of thousand games. The interface is better in some ways, though it takes fewer clicks to play a game on bga. I like people better. I was playing keldon a lot recently as I wanted to play with the aliens expansion, but I have to recompile now that I switched to Linux.
I wonder how much longer Harold Stassen jokes will still be relevant and what people will say while waiting for returns when they are no longer comprehensible.
Wait, is this the primary thread? I was posting in the other one with a very similar name.
that seems to be played by about fifty people in the world
I'll bet there are way more than fifty players, though.
(I'm best at being genuinely impressed by ogged's best.)
There is a possibility that I am best in the world at DIVE (the variant of 3s/2048). At least I have not seen any higher score than mine posted online, including some discussions by the creator and a friend on their good scores (on Google+ but annoyingly cannot find right now). Probably no one plays it anywhere as much as I do.
I don't think I've ever played a Freecell game I didn't (eventually) solve.
75: Keldon used to have a really active group of people playing against each other! Not for a long time though. Probably not since isotropic became active, which was maybe 2009 or 2010?
I find it weird that online boardgames have regressed since then. Hasn't technology gotten better? What gives?
79: Am I misremembering, or are you the author of the funniest comment on the internets that I have ever read?
may I get out the van now, sir?
(Honourable mention to bob mcmanus for inspiring the comment).
may I get out OF the van now, sir?
I think you'll need to provide a link for that for those of us who don't remember the context.
may I get out of the van now, sir?
Scroll to 141, responding to 137.
It's in this thread. I thought, reading it just now, that I was in the same boat as the people asking for an explanation, but the explanation is what I thought it was, except I thought it couldn't be that because it's only mildly funny to me.
It was extremely funny, but alas i did not write it. I just nearly cried at my desk stifling laughter.
86 is the original. The thread in 85 was someone re-using it. Maybe me; don't remember.
I don't remember either of those threads, and per CTRL-F I don't seem to have commented in them either. They may have been during one of my occasional hiatuses from Unfogged.
I guess I would have been in grad school at the time. I don't remember taking any breaks from Unfogged then, but maybe I did. Or I've just forgotten those threads.
But the threads haven't forgotten you, teo.
I think I actually did stop reading for a while after that later thread with the joke. And look where it got me!
I showed this to my 15 year old and suggested he make the effort to try to beat ogged. (He plays some game that counts your keyboard/mouse actions, and he's on an average of about 150/minute, which seems sufficient to play table tennis. The best players of that game have an average of about 400 actions/minute. I can't help but wonder whether their skills could be put to better use.) Then he told me that for a while he was about 20th in the world at Super Meat Boy, which has cheered up my short but crappy morning.
I have never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit. When I used to play Hearts, I would almost always win. (I don't remember the strategy anymore.)
re: 95.1
Ditto. I used to occasionally play everyonet. As in, occasionally I went to family type parties in my teens when a board would come out, and after a few times of realising that individuals weren't going to beat me, we used to have games with various teams, but I'd play on my own. Sometimes the other team would just be everyone except me. I always won.
But, I suspect that wouldn't be the case if I played a group that included median Unfogged people.
94: I briefly thought asilon was introducing her(?) offspring to the blog, and was touched.
re 95.1 AIMHMHB The first autumn when trivia quiz machines were introduced to English pubs, I didn't buy a drink for about four months. I drank entirely off my winnings. It was the apotheosis of my precocity. Then they started fixing it so that there was lots of unavoidable pop culture and sport, and I was stuffed.
"I get rejected in my wet dreams." is a line that makes Bob best in the world at something. We just have to name it
98. True story. Some lads from my office formed a live trivia team and were quite successful. One night one of their number was a bit late and came in with a carrier bag from Waterstones. The team tied for the win, and the tie-break question was "How many bones are there in the human head?" The latecomer picked up his bag and said, "I've got a copy of Grey's Anatomy here." Job done.
Pub quizzes are always a bit hit and miss. In my experience, particularly in 'local' pubs, they are often fixed in favour of regulars. Sometimes blatantly, but sometimes just in the sense that there might be a round or two with questions that only a regular attendee might get or expect.
I used to go with workmates to a quiz in a bar in Glasgow which was a real 'event'. They had (ironic) comperes, and girls holding up the cards as if it was a 1970s game show. Video rounds, where they'd show cheesy pop videos or episodes of the Simpsons or bad sitcoms. There were various live action booze-involving rounds. Music rounds were usually fairly 'hip'.
It attracted a youngish indie-ish crowd -- mid-90s hipsters --and would often be completely packed with yelling punters, as if it was a gig rather than a quiz. I don't think we ever won the prize money (which could be hundreds of pounds) but we did fairly often get free booze for being in the final couple of teams eliminated.
I've got a pub quiz tonight as it happens. Not been to this one before so I'm a bit apprehensive (I am completely shit at music and sport and celebrity identification/trivia rounds), but from the description it sounds like it's in my wheelhouse.
re 95.1 AIMHMHB The first autumn when trivia quiz machines were introduced to English pubs, I didn't buy a drink for about four months. I drank entirely off my winnings. It was the apotheosis of my precocity. Then they started fixing it so that there was lots of unavoidable pop culture and sport, and I was stuffed.
I particularly enjoyed the subtle way the Clue(do) machines handled winning streaks. After a series of fairly reasonable if often difficult questions, it would suddenly throw out stuff that was basically asking you to guess, like "What is the specific gravity of $foo"
I'm also completely shit at filling in my name, apparently.
Yeah, there was one quiz machine I remember which used to sometimes throw out questions where two answers were entirely plausible/correct, and you basically had to guess which it expected. I remember one which asked what vinegar was, and then gave as options both acetic acid and ethanoic acid.
96: I plan on never playing anyone on Unfogged at Trivial Pursuit. I need some illusions.
I used to think I was pretty good at trivia but I think I've only won a pub quiz once (or been on a winning team). I don't think you can call yourself good at something when 25,000 random drunks are better at it.
I wouldn't say I'm the best at NumberWang, but I'm right up there.
Some airline (I think Virgin) has a feature where you can play a trivia game against other people on the same plane. Couldn't even win that, and when you can't even beat random bored airline passengers at something you are not good at it.
Pub quizzes are always a bit hit and miss. In my experience, particularly in 'local' pubs, they are often fixed in favour of regulars. Sometimes blatantly, but sometimes just in the sense that there might be a round or two with questions that only a regular attendee might get or expect.
I remember a piece in the Guardian years ago mentioning that the author's local had introduced a whole additional round of sport questions, with the proviso that the right answer to all of them was the same one that one guy who knew nothing about sport always gave, therefore making it impossible for any non-local to win.
He seemed to think this was clever, rather than a combination of Royston Vasey and mocking the local eccentric.
I was really good at trivia until I was about 30, and all the newly invented stuff swamped my base of knowledge.
This can hit you in reverse. The last pub trivia I was involved in, during the celebrities round, about which I normally know nothing, they put up a picture of Grace Kelly. So I said, "Grace Kelly" with perfect confidence. And then the younger people on the team demurred and started this complicated discussion about who else it might be, with the result that we were timed out. I wanted to scream, "Look, I'm 60 years old, I know what fucking Grace Kelly looked like!"
The first few pub quizzes I tried in this city were kind of crap. So many rounds and so much question-repeating that the whole thing took like two hours - and the music rounds, oh, the music rounds.
A lot of the questions appeared to be taken from some "use this for free under our license" website where bonus questions were answerable only if you also provided them with your email address.
Since then I've found one at a theater that is much better.
I was really good at trivia until I was about 30
Different paths to the same destination: I just forgot everything.
I'm very good in some areas, and hopeless in others. No hope on music, geography, or celebrities.
No hope on music, geography, or celebrities.
What's the capital city of the country Cesária Évora was born in?
Is it Oenfvyvn as one might assume? Probably not.
Whoa, way wrong. I'm not even sure if I can get the capital from the country.
So who do I (racistly) have her confused with I guess is my next question. Dunno. Like what I've heard of her work.
I know what fucking Grace Kelly looked like!
Public sex tapes are apparently not the recent phenomenon that many young people assume.
117: Praia, according to wikipedia.
Evora from Cape Verdes, I think. I have some stuff in my playlist.
And that is all I know. Well, West of NW Africa.
I am not best in the world at African capitals, that's for sure. I do decently at trivia overall, generally, though with some giant gaps even beyond sports.
Different paths to the same destination: I just forgot everything.
Uggh, yes. Sometime in my early 30s my memory for random quotations and trivia got much worse.
123: I was an ace at African capital cities back in the 7th grade. I wonder how many of them are still capitals today.
Yeah it's pretty shameful how many of the ones I know cold are from a youthful dalliance with Carmen Sandiego.
I suspect I was best at Welltris, the first sequel to Tetris designed by Alexey Pajitnov, largely because no one else has ever heard of it. I was damn good, though.
Nowadays I'd have to come up with some weighted combination of activities, ajay-style. Pool/BJJ/Tetris might get me close, but I'm probably underestimating the covariance of some of those activities (and I'm really out of practice at BJJ, and also was never that good). Maybe throw in tcsh or awk scripting. Something obscure and largely pointless.
Welltris (and Wetrix) came up on a podcast I was listening to just last week.
My mom spent years playing tetris on a second hand Windows 93 machine, until she was the only player on the leader board. That machine is still in their house, solely for tetris purposes. She steadfastly refuses to play on anything else because she can't export her scores.
I'll be damned, though I thought that comment might prompt someone to falsify it. I'll have to listen to that later today. But seriously, I could play it indefinitely on the hardest setting. I hate to think how many of my most formative man-child-hours were spent on that game.
132.last: TPP is supposed to take care of that.
132 Has your mom seen the Frogger episode of Seinfeld?
No! But I remember it fondly.
I have serious self-control issues regarding fast-twitch puzzle games, so if anyone knows any good ones they should absolutely not SHARE THAT INFORMATION.
I'm pretty sure I played the Atari ST version of Welltris, but it might just have been a cover disk demo.
Why are you trying to take this from me, Ginger?
Presumably Welltris was Ginger's own secret pride and joy, so precious to him that he wasn't going to mention it even on this thread; until you, Eggplant, in your vast carelessness, shattered that fragile refuge.
There was this game that I used to play in the long hall of my childhood home with a small ball. I'm pretty sure I was the best ever at that game.
I'm pretty sure I was the best ever at that game.
No way! I was better! I'm the best!
142: I would have beaten you so badly, except my mom wouldn't let me invite you into our house!
Belatedly, the van comment linked in 86 really is one of the best ever.
137. Have you tried Zanorg's jeu chiant? The ios port is basically unsuccesful, but good in flash.
I think I'm a pretty good arguer, but (a) IMO part of being good at it means knowing when an argument is unwinnable, and (b) good overall still puts me in the bottom half around here. I'm good at trivia about a dozen different geeky franchises, but not the best or an expert at any of them.
86, 144: Good job, pseudonymous van commenter. I'm curious about something else, though. Apparently apo had an "Ol' Reliable" and linked to linked to links of it, but the original comment is lost in the mist of changing formatting. Was it "Who wants to sex Mutombo?" If not, what?
I just remembered. For Eggplant: "Your Life Is Tetris. Stop Playing It Like Chess."
That's pretty much why I like Tetris; it's like life but I'm good at it.
I think that's basically my mom's feeling too.
My parents got weirdly obsessed with a Tetris ripoff on a hex grid, Hextris, when they got their first Mac in the early 90s.
My dad was in a local Florida paper for playing Q*Bert for 10 hours - I think he got 5 million points (and then walked away leaving loads of lives on it). This would have been around 1984 I guess.
97 - my kids know about unfogged. They're not very interested, but I thought it was worth a try to piss off ogged!
I can't wait until teenage rebellion (already well in progress, though they only turned 13 last month) leads to my daughters invading this place. Good thing cock jokes are a thing of the past.
Don't worry, I'm sure the stuff they're seeing on the messaging app of the week would strip the paint off your car.
95
Like everyone here, I have never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit (Genus Edition, of course). I have also won a game of Trivial Pursuit in one turn. (I'm not sure it was the first turn but I got all the wedges in a single turn at or near the beginning.)
Not to be confused with the much easier Genius Edition.
I played a lot of Welltris. I don't remember how good I was. All those games, I figure there's some Asian kid somewhere who would destroy me. Racist?