Welcome to:
SLUG's NTN Corner
Last updated: January 11th, 2004

Who am I on the NTN Network?

Hi, my name's Jody. I've been playing NTN since Spring of 1993. I play at the Peel Pub in the heart of Montreal, Quebec.

Why do I call myself SLUG?

I started playing as SLUG after visiting Seattle in Summer '95. (Yeah.. okay.. but why SLUG?) I was getting to that.

It seems that Seattle, along with having the nickname of The Emerald City, is also unofficially known as Slug City by it's natives. Seattle gets a lot of rainfall during the year. After every rainfall, numerous slugs find their way to the surface.. sidewalks, gardens, etc. During my visit there, I got the opportunity to attend a musical called Waiter, there's a Slug in my Latte! "The Distinctly Seattle Musical" filled with Seattle humour. The term stuck with me & I've used SLUG since my return home to Montreal. My little way to remind me of the great time I had while in Seattle. Thanks Leila!

The Peel Pub Crowd!

Depending on who's there at the time, I play with AMBER, ARIEL, BOBINO, BRUCRU, BRUTAL, CGR, Frank (he changes handles every time), JIMMY (Walking Movie Trivia Database), KRILL, LASHER, LEGEND, MAD, MALICE, QBERT (not Rob Lake of Edmonton), SHAFT, SNAKE, SPOCK, TAM, TAMMY, TJ, TRIVIO, YOMET or whomever else I know.

In the past, I've had the pleasure of playing NTN with ALZABO (now in New Zealand), DAN of Gatineau QC, DAVETV & QUARK of Toronto, DRAGON, FENWAY of Boston, GEMINI, GIMP, GRIFF, HABS & HOOSR from Toronto, JAWS, KZIN, Nick, OMEGA, POGO of Portland OR, RAGS, SABRE, VIRGIN, YO & some others whose handles I've forgotten.

LEGEND's ex-boyfriend put it best when he used to word "motley" to describe us. He once came down to meet these friends of her's. He found a group of people from different ethnicities, backgrounds & age groups who spent every few minutes extremely focused on a TV screen & then come alive for a minute or so to converse. It's a good thing there's so much time between games or he might never have been able to talk to us.

DAVETV

Curious about the ubiquitous legend who's always in the Top 10 rankings?

The Enemy!

Among our group, we've dubbed a few others as "The Enemy!". These are players against whom the gang find great pleasure in beating. They include BLADE, FRITZ (very good player), KARPOV, SLAG, SPIKE, STONER, TYGER, WHITEY, & MAGI.

For most of them, we know or know of each other & it's a friendly rivalry that's taken in good humour.

The Most Annoying NTN Player Ever!

Poll Results *updated* July 24th, 1998 We have one player in Montreal whom we consider to be The Most Annoying NTN Player Ever! He gives NTN players a bad name. Consider yourself lucky he doesn't play at your location.

"Introduce him to Alex in Edmonton, but please do not send him here,
we will send Alex there.
" - Anonymous

You know you play too much NTN when..

  • The bartender has a playmaker all ready when you walk in & you haven't asked for one yet. This hasn't happened since Lisa left as bartender. No more free beer for coming in 8th. Winning hasn't been the same since.
  • you yell at people who block the tv screen for 2/10 of a second as they walk by.
  • you can do amazing acrobatic moves leaning back & forth in your chair trying to see around a person standing in the aisle.
  • you get a playmaker & say "Someone's on MY frequency!" even tho' they were playing long BEFORE you showed up. (Ask yourself: Are they on MY frequency or am I on THEIR's?)
  • someone in the bar jumps onto your frequency & changes your answer a few times in the evening.
  • you jump onto someone else's frequency cause they're beating you.
  • over half the names on the Monthly High Scores are yours.
  • you go get new playmakers 2-3 times in one game just so you can finish & get your Players Plus points.
  • someone finds your Players Plus code & claims credit for YOUR high scores.
  • you walk in, sit down, without getting a playmaker. Others keep saying, "Go get a machine".
  • a perfect score of 15,000 on the high score board by someone you don't know annoys you.
  • you're in the top 5 in number of Players Plus points at your location.
  • you yell "REPEAT GAME!" when someone gets a really high score & you did terrible.
  • you jump on a bad player's frequency & mess up their score cause they might beat you for the first time ever.
  • Other players come in after you, look up at the board, & groan, "Oh [expletive here], [your name here] is here again!!" (courtesy of LILJOL of California)
  • You've heard the term "NTNgeek" used in a sentence before.
  • The screen has a bad reception for the whole evening but you don't mind cause you can still play the game.
  • You feel you have to withhold answers from other players cause if they don't know it, then you feel they deserve to get it wrong.
  • You find someone on a higher frequency & you go change his name to a lower frequency so you can use that frequency to get a perfect score & win a repeat game.
  • You join & overtake all but 3 players in number of Players Plus Points within two & a half months by playing every single day.
  • Begging other people you know to keep hitting answers on your board after you leave... to (of course) gain even MORE plus points! (courtesy of Lindy Hawkins)
  • You're grinning right now because you can relate to most, if not all, of this list.

"If I had a dollar for every time I yelled at some guy for blocking the screen I wouldn't worry about the free beer contests!" - ASTRO

SLUG's Observation of the Game

  • Something I've noticed about some questions occasionally. If there are 2 answers that start with similar letters in the first word. (For example. Rob, Robert) or have similar words in the answer, one of them is more often than not the correct answer. The other one is there to throw you off. Later, one of the clues will eliminate "Rob" leaving the answer starting with Robert as the right answer. I've seen many panic press the wrong answer & end up with -250 instead of 1000.
  • When you see 'Impressionism', 'Expressionism' or similar.. PICK IT! More often than not.. it's the right answer. JIMMY says the same thing about 'Orchid'.
  • Sometimes, when someone knows the answer for sure & prefers to keep it to themselves, they sit back, take their hands off the playmaker & take a sip of their drink while everyone else is trying to figure out the clues.

"Laughed out loud while reading the "You know you play too much NTN when.."
and "Things heard during the game". How true all those are!
" - NVOGUE

Things Heard During the Game

  • "Hey.. someone's on my frequency!"
  • "I HAD that but I changed it!"
  • "When you don't know.. press 3."
  • "HERE WE GO!"
  • "I pressed the number but it won't appear.. *beep* *beep* *beep*"
    followed soon after by..
  • "Stop pressing the number, Anne! It's affecting my machine!"
  • "Fresh meat!"
  • "I got a perfect score & didn't rank.", uttered by me. LASHER also had a perfect score but had a higher frequency.
  • "The Answer's 5! No..4-1-3! Answer's 2? I didn't have my glasses."
  • "I didn't see the question."
  • "Your machine doesn't work? You might be in a dead zone."
  • "Someone just scanned my machine!"
  • "That idiot's on frequency 20."
  • "Go get a machine..!"
  • "There's no more machines, at least that's what they're claiming."
  • "All the machines are charging."
  • "Last question? Ack, I gotta put my name back in so I can get my players plus points.." (courtesy of BRUCRU.)
  • "Get OUT of the way, you moron!" **while leaning halfway out of the chair**
  • "Aw geez.. [insert name] was there!" *looking at high scoreboard*
  • "2! *insert 5 seconds* or it could be 4." (Thanks, AJ)
  • "My answer didn't register!"
  • "You KNOW this right? C'mon.. you know this!" when the other person obviously doesn't.
  • "The button doesn't work!"
  • "[Expletive]! They got the answer right!"
  • "DUH! Everyone knows that one! It's four." (courtesy of QBERT)
    [as opposed to this next one]
  • "If YOU DON'T KNOW THIS.. C'mon, EVERYONE knows this! *beep* Nope, that's not the answer.. *beep* Nope, that's not it either! What's the matter with you? It's FOUR. What the hell did your teachers teach you in school? I should go give your teachers a good slap!" Spoken on more than one occasion by one of our players who shall remain nameless, on those days when his ego takes over & he lords over everyone in the group with an NTN machine. (I've witnessed many who have ignored him, including myself, when he's acted like this.. tho' he doesn't notice.) Sometimes, it's followed a few questions later by his uttering of, "You KNEW that & you didn't tell me?" Gee.. ya think?
"If you're going to play, leave the ego at home!" - SLUG

Don't you hate it when..

  • Peel Pub used to give glasses of beer for winning regular games & pitchers for winning Showdown. Summer '96, they stopped when they were *ahem* "told by the police" that it was "gambling" & thus illegal. I've noticed many players stopped coming to PP since they found out there were no more prizes. A few seem to have quit NTN altogether. It's a lot quieter now. I wonder if it would've been okay if they called them "promotions" instead of "prizes". Years later, we still get the occasional players asking about the "beer prizes" & they're surprised when they find out there are no more.

    BRUTAL also remembers the days of beer prizes.

  • I'm pretty sure what I picked is correct. Someone yells another answer. For a split second, I doubt myself & end up with a score of 200 instead of 1000.
  • You fall in love with 1000pts & won't change your answer even though your brain is screaming a 2nd answer.
  • I got a playmaker once with buttons that just refused to work half the time. Four straight games, half my answers didn't register. Needless to say, I can't win Trivial Pursuit with a playmaker like that especially during the 2nd round with six match-up answers.
  • Waiters/waitresses sometimes come ask you to pay the bill just as a new question pops up. Abul (one of our waiters) is good at that. He stands right in front of the screen blocking everyone. He knows it, too. *argh* New wait-staff do that also. Others that know us usually collect during breaks.
  • Ever been accused of hopping onto someone's frequency when you haven't? Four weeks in a row some time ago, I'd been accused of changing someone's handle over & over. The person that actually did it kept a straight face. I knew who did it but wasn't about to point fingers & neither was anyone else. Anyhow, I was really sick & tired of having the accusations thrown my way. From now on, I ignore it. Apparently, I'm "known for doing stuff like that". The only names I change are my own. Just because you hop onto other's frequencies doesn't mean everyone else does also. (Want examples?) Don't believe me? Complain to someone else cause I don't want to hear it.
  • As of February 1997, there are only an average of 7 working playmakers. Many of them are only half charged. One manager said he called NTN about the problem but nothing's been done. Some players have gotten fed up & played at La Cage aux Sports instead. The co-owner is getting fed up also. I have a feeling that NTN at Peel Pub might be coming to an end later this year. [May 1997 - Guess they got some new ones. There were 18 players at one time.]
  • Ever play with players who don't even bother looking at the screen half the time but instead play by looking at your fingers to see what answer you chose? "What's the answer? What's the answer?" I'm trying to play the game!
  • Sometimes a player suddenly decides to play the "I guessed!" game. This is where everyone is sharing answers. All of the sudden, a player rapidly presses on an answer, takes his/her fingers off the playmaker altogether, clams up & gets 1000pts while everyone else got around 250pts or -250pts. "I guessed!" my ass.
  • It's nice that you got the answer for a 1000. However, you don't need to explain why it was the right answer and why you chose it. Gloating is not necessary either.
"Real Players never brag about their scores." - Edward Stroligo

Photos

Here's a photo sent to me courtesy of POGO of Portland, Oregon. It was taken back in June 1998 during one of his many visits to the Peel Pub in the week that he was in town. At top is POGO, sitting is LASHER and that's me in the white.

In another photo provided by Phil, Lasher and myself are joined by TJ, our only 7 million Players Plus (at the time.. think he's around 16-17 million now) resident.

"You have an excellent page. I printed it & passed
it around the bar. Everyone loved it.
" - Kam

Where to play NTN if you visit Montreal, Quebec?

    • Peel Pub - Downtown Montreal

[Other NTN Related Pages]

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