Game On! Winterfest – with its Game Show – returns
February 1, 2024 | By Jesse McDougall | Correspondent Waterbury Winterfest 2024 has begun, continuing a tradition for more than a decade during the coldest days of the year to pull the Waterbury community together with a variety of activities for all ages.
Events kicked off Wednesday night with Bluegrass Night at Pro Pig Brewery and the Vermont Beer Quiz at Blackback Pub. Tonight is a Winterfest signature event, Wassailing, where groups of hardy singers and musicians visit local pubs to entertain patrons from 6 to 8 p.m. with a finale performance at the American Legion from 8-9.
Wassailing acts perform at the American Legion for the finale, 8-9 p.m. Thursday. File photo by Lisa Scagliotti
“In the summer we're inclined to be outside walking or enjoying one of Waterbury’s restaurants,” said Winterfest volunteer Cheryl Casey, “and I think Winterfest makes up for the fact that winter makes us more likely to hunker down and stay home.”
The weekend lineup is packed with outdoor and indoor daytime activities at multiple locations including snow soccer, snow volleyball, snow bocce, sledding and a snowshoe/x-c ski trek. There’s more beer and wine tasting and a fat-tire biking demo. And indoor fun includes party games, bingo, larger-than-life Vermont Candy Land, Dungeons & Dragons, even some arts and crafts before Winterfest wraps up on Sunday, Feb. 4.
Back by popular demand
One event organizers are especially anticipating this year is the return of Winterfest’s battle of wits that’s been on hiatus since 2020. On Friday night at 6:30 p.m., the American Legion will host the return of the Winterfest Game Show.
Long a Winterfest staple, the competition engages 12 teams of 4-6 members each. The three-year break has given the trivia-fiend event organizers ample time to study and prepare, setting up this year’s game to be possibly the most intense yet.
By the end of the night, a trivia champion three years in the making will be crowned. The successful team will prevail in the contest that combines elements from board games, party trivia, state history and more.
Winterfest Game Show brings folks together, of course, and promises to send one group away with big-time bragging rights until next February rolls around.
Trivia behind the trivia event
Game Show began in 2016 as the brainchild of Chad Ummel, then Recreation Director for the town of Waterbury. It was added to the Winterfest catalog of events which each year “bring community members and visitors together for hilarity, comradery, food and drink, entertainment, and a little bit of good old-fashioned competition,” as the Winterfest website explains.
Cheryl Casey, Winterfest’s digital manager and trivia scorekeeper, spoke to the Waterbury Roundabout about the wacky and wonderful Game Show experience.
Organizers including Casey, Ummel and Natalie Sherman meticulously build multimedia trivia experiences for Winterfest that have been bringing back familiar faces for years. The trivia questions often have several parts, require rock-solid teamwork, and will send players rummaging through their “survival pack” which could be anything from Play-Doh to pocket-sized maps.
“It’s a tradition for every team to get a survival pack filled with things which are either extraneous or very necessary to address certain questions,” said Casey. One year, contestants were asked to build a compass out of odds and ends, and later the room erupted into laughter at the phallic appearance of the model Washington Monuments they were asked to sculpt using clay.
Think you can measure up at the Game Show? Decide whether the following sayings come from Shakespeare, Star Wars, or the Bible. Give it your best shot, then check your answers below.
“Drop in the bucket”
“Wild goose chase”
“Give up the ghost”
“Attachment leads to jealousy”
“Pure as the driven snow”
“Fight the good fight”
“Blind leading the blind”
So where do these questions come from? Casey says the TV show “Jeopardy!” taught her that trivia can come from anywhere. “One year Chad and I hiked Camel’s Hump and found the World War II plane wreckage that's up there,” she recalled, “so Chad filmed a clip of the plane wing and it became part of a Game Show question.”
Game Show organizers are huge fans of trivia legend and Alex Trebek. “One of my fondest memories as a kid was watching ‘Jeopardy!’ with my grandmother,” Casey shared.
Each Game Show ends with one final question on which contestants place a wager. Think you know American geography? You might wager all your night’s points and be faced with a decisive question like this one (answers below):
How often does Old Faithful erupt?
A. Every 15-30 minutes
B. Every 65-90 minutes
C. Every 14-16 hours
D. Every 2 - 2.5 days
For Game Show organizers, it’s not enough to Google a geothermal geyser or film part of your hike. Preparation is a serious time commitment which sends Ummel scouring the web “every night for about two or three months leading up to Winterfest,” he admitted. Organizers also keep a running log of all the potential questions they’ve come across, and during the game itself, scorekeepers must efficiently evaluate response sheets to keep play fast and fair.
Prior to the 2020 Game Show, the event in its early days was first hosted at the Reservoir restaurant. It took a little time to catch on and for both organizers and contestants to work through the kinks, but they ironed out the rules and it soon earned a loyal following among teams and spectators.
The Game Show event team kicked off the return this year on Jan. 13 with a livestream of Winterfest organizers at Blackback Pub drawing team names to decide the order for this year’s 12 Game Show teams.
While teams are not always made up of the same members, Game Show welcomes back returning regulars who outdo each other from the start with creating outrageous team names. A team made up of Vermont State Park Rangers signed on as Ranger Danger, and in years past the Red Hot Trivia Peppers set the room on fire with their dizzying trivia knowledge. This year’s contenders include team Flooded with Knowledge, the Scruffy Looking Nerfherders, and the unabashed Full Frontal Nerdity. Ummel will create a logo for each team to flaunt come game time.
Once the Game Show ends, two days of Winterfest activities remain. All events are free to watch. Some have registration fees noted on the schedule.
All proceeds from Winterfest events are given back to organizations in the community such as Clyde Whittemore Little League, Waterbury Youth Soccer and The Children’s Room, all of which have all been awarded grants since 2018.
Find the full schedule with details for each event online at waterburywinterfest.com.
One more – and then the answers
Here’s a BONUS multi-question about New York City’s ticker-tape parades.
1. What was celebrated at the first parade in 1886?
2. Who had a parade in 1936 for winning 4 Olympic gold medals?
3. What is the parade route named?
ANSWERS
“Drop in the bucket” [Bible]
“Wild goose chase” [Shakespeare]
“Give up the ghost” [Bible]
“Attachment leads to jealousy”[Star Wars - Yoda, ep. 3]
“Pure as the driven snow” [Shakespeare]
“Fight the good fight” [Bible]
“Blind leading the blind” [Bible]
How often does Old Faithful erupt?
B. Every 65-90 minutes
NYC's Ticker Tape Parades
1. What was celebrated at the first parade in 1886? [Statue of Liberty]
2. Who had a parade in 1936 for winning 4 Olympic gold medals? [Jesse Owens]
3. What is the parade route named? [Canyon of Heroes]
Jesse McDougall from Waterbury Center is a freelance journalist living in Toronto, Canada.