Chris Ray

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Chris Ray
JellybeanSmall.png
Noted subjects General, History, candy, Asia, Science theft
Current college Maryland (2007-)
Past colleges Arizona State (2007)
High school Richard Montgomery (2004-2006)
Stats HDWhite • NAQT

Chris Ray is a graduate of Richard Montgomery High School and a current member of the Maryland Academic Quiz Team. Chris is one of the best active generalists in the game and finished seventh in the 2010 Player Poll. He was the president of the now-defunct Dynasty Academic Competition Questions and was chief editor of the acclaimed 2009 PACE NSC.

High School

Chris's career at Richard Montgomery was marked by a truly disastrous 1-4 record as a member of Richard Montgomery's first ever D team, as well as numerous other humiliating defeats in 2004 and 2005. However, in 2006, he led the Richard Montgomery team to an HSNCT championship.

College

Chris's misguided attempt to start a team at Arizona State University resulted in a disastrous trip to attend WIT at Berkeley, in which he convinced three 30somethings to accompany him to Los Angeles, despite the fact that the tournament was in Berkeley (about 7 hours north of Los Angeles), and also on a different weekend. Also while at Arizona State he suffered a rather heartbreaking (and scholarship-denying) loss to the esteemed Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering in a game of Intramural CBI. The game was inexplicably filmed and can be seen here under Round 1.

He would soon leave Arizona State for the University of Maryland, where his results would be much less tragic. Chris was part of a strong 2008 Maryland A team that won 2008 ICT and 3rd place at 2008 ACF Nationals, and also lead Maryland A to a 4th place finish at 2010 ACF Nationals.

Playing Style

Chris possesses a notoriously aggravating playing style, particularly for his teammates (Eric Mukherjee once compared it to drunken boxing). In high school, he gained infamy for priming the buzzer beyond reasonable limits, a practice he continues to this day even on ACF Nationals questions. This inadvisable technique notably led to an accidental buzz prior to the question during the 2006 PAC Finals, which Chris successfully blamed on teammate Zach "Klitz" Klitzman's elbow movements and was able to avoid suffering a penalty.

Chris is also known for being a frivolous negger, registering four, five, and six neg games with some regularity. However, this also makes him incredibly streaky, with the result that he can beat top-level teams in one round and almost lose to bottom bracket teams in others.

The Muse

Perhaps the most surprising part of Chris Ray's career is his unlikely role as a muse figure inspiring many of quizbowl's greatest creative achievements. Most notably, Charles Meigs wrote the immortal Diary of Chris Ray [1] based on his experiences playing the 2008 ACF Nationals with him. Ted Gioia has heralded the work as the "only indisputable masterpiece in the Meigsian oeuvre" and Daichi Ueda has called for it to be "immortalized."

Chris was famously captured "barging" into the room in Lily Vonderheide's photo of the [2008 Cardinal Classic]]. When asked about the photo, Harvard Professor Elaine Scarry opined that the "man in red" was "peculiar."

Even in high school his unique playing style served as fertile ground for the artistic imagination. While reading at a Gonzaga High School tournament, poet Dana Gioia was particularly by struck by Ray's style after launching numerous protests in a blow-out including an unsuccessful attempt to belligerently convince him that Degas should have been accepted for Manet. Gioia was immediately inspired by Ray leading him to write a no longer extant limerick about "Christopher Ray, that king of the buffet."


Editing

Tournament Results

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