Watkins Pole

The Watkins Pole is the figurative object which represents the sensation of playing extremely difficult questions. To be hit with the Watkins Pole is to encounter a category edited to be so difficult in a given set that it is all but unanswerable even by the top active players in that category. The name derives from the 2010 Chicago Open, at which the Andy Watkins-edited science proved too much for the second-place team (containing Seth Teitler and Selene Koo) and the third-place team (containing strong science players Mike Sorice and Ray Luo), effectively eliminating the science category from the tournament and enabling a relatively science-poor team to take the championship.