Whereas the state championship ran on a 3-game schedule on a single night, the US ChGK Nationals, to be recognized as a national championship by the IAMG, requires a minimum of 45 questions, and this meant 4 games, each 12 questions long.

However, the ChGK Nationals, held 3 weeks after Mardi Gras that year, are spread over 2 days. And day 1 is devoted to brain ring (which, as played at ChGK Nationals, is much like ChGK but with quiz bowl buzzers), and own game (or svoya igra), which seems to play out like Jeopardy but with Russian-language questions. Patricia absolutely dominated in the own game segment, held in the morning of the first day. As happened the previous year.

"Let's play brain ring! After all, you were the one who kept calling scholars bowl, well, brain ring when I was in high school!" Sergei pleads with his mother.

"Maybe I'm biased but it was because of my time at Mariupol State playing intellectual games, and, since Mariupol State is specialized in humanities and social science, it didn't perform very well in intellectual games. I wasn't the best brain ring or ChGK player in the world, but I still played for that school. Also, in Ukraine, university teams can choose their names independently, so Mariupol State went by Philologists in intellectual games" Vira explains.

"Here are the key differences between brain ring and scholars bowl: brain ring is played until one team gets five points, their subject distributions vary from packet to packet, you have six players as opposed to five, you have sixty seconds to buzz in, if you neg, the opposing team has only twenty seconds but you don't lose any point, a question is worth one point, and finally you can't buzz in before the question is read in full. Which is why I feel like KSHSAA is playing a form of brain ring, a faster one perhaps" Bohdan reveals to them afterward.

"Did you have relatives playing scholars bowl, Bohdan?" Patricia asks.

"All that I ever knew from scholars bowl came from Sergei's family and you. My oldest kid is an eighth-grader" Bohdan comments on where his knowledge of scholars bowl come from.

"I defended my svoya igra title from last year, here's our chance to sweep the events this year!" Patricia hollers before the game room's door opens to a room with two clusters of 6 desks. "I will have a right of first refusal to buzz in, sounds good to you?"

"Yes!" all other players shout enthusiastically.

The first opponent in the game room is Pennsylvania's champion, OneGogi. As soon as both teams are seated, the referee arrives and has the buzzers tested, of which each team has 4 buttons they can press.

"This is fight one of the brain ring tournament at the 2042 US ChGK National Championship. On the green side, we have, from Pennsylvania, OneGogi, on the red side, we have, from Kansas, the Kansas State Team. Best of luck to both teams. Attention, first question: this pyramid was responsible for the collapse of the Boston financial market in the 1920s..." the moderator reads the question.

"Ponzi pyramid" Patricia buzzes in.

"Virna, Kansas one-nothing"

Still feels like scholars bowl, Bohdan? Sergei muses while Patricia's speed carries the day in this game, which Kansas wins, 5-0. In less than 3 minutes.

Which is the first game of what is to become a gigantic round-robin with one 22-team pool. But her scheduled game room is busy with 2 teams that are much more evenly matched and also much slower in answering.

When the second game comes around, against another team whom they realize plays much better than OneGogi did...

"The score is tied, four-four. Question number nine: This French play about forbidden love in the Middle Ages gave rise to an opera, as well as several musical adaptations. Name the play" the moderator reads to both teams.

Forbidden love in the Middle Ages? I've read several like these, such as Tristan and Iseult, more information is needed to disambiguate between them, but Tristan and Iseult had soooo many versions in print it's not even funny. So it can't be Tristan and Iseult, since it didn't originate as a play. This should be a question I would normally take, but this is one of the worst questions I played all day, in svoya igra and in brain ring, Patricia starts thinking about what the answer could possibly be.

"So we know it can't be anything to do with the Knights of the Round Table, nor with Tristan and Iseult since none of that stuff originated as a play" Patricia tries to break up some avenues her teammates blindly follow.

"Actual medieval literature often started out as songs, which were then written down into poetry" Vira adds to this chorus, as the clock ticks on them. The opponent is about to buzz in:

"The Miser" the opposing captain answers after buzzing in.

"Lozh"

Why is it that I have this God-forsaken tune from some video game I played on an emulator early in middle school in my mind? Sergei's earworm gets the best of him. That game does feature medieval romantic issues, but... I give up. One of the characters sacrifices himself out of love for his country...

"I don't know, Pelleas maybe?" Sergei asks his teammates with only a few more seconds to go.

"Oh yes, time to buzz, I guess..." Patricia then presses the buzzer. "Pelleas and Melisande"

"Virna, this battle is over. The Kansas State Team wins, five to four!"

They leave the game room, facing two impatient teams, who are eager to play more brain ring, while the Kansas State Team must scramble to get to the next game room in hopes that they can keep going on this winning streak. These questions cover way more ground than scholars bowl did! But again these questions feel very KA-ish, so questions that require very little logic might end up being used in brain ring. Focus, Patricia, I can't let these parasitic thoughts get the better of me! her brain seems to play tricks on her.

After winning 6 games in a row, since their 6th game finishes early, Patricia's malaises start to weigh down on her but it's not under the form of headaches. She feels the need to take it off her mind...

"Here it seems like the more I play these things, the more parasitic thoughts surface. It seems to interfere with the proper functioning of my mind, and affect all of us" Patricia laments.

"We can't do it without you!" Vira shouts in her direction.

"We're paying the price of relying too much on me! It's not the first time I felt like you trusted me too much!" Patricia complains to her teammates.

"I confess that maybe you have been playing svoya igra like crazy, and you're more tired than we are" Bohdan sighs.

"If you think I need downtime, just let me know when you would like me to take it, but I would prefer to sit out a game against one of the weaker teams" Patricia pleads with her teammates.

"If you think you can't handle it now, you will be thrashed at Worlds!" another Quantum Computers player warns her. "Worlds are, more than any other tournament, a test of stamina!"

Upon entering their next game room, Patricia waits until the moderator announces the teams to decide whether to stay or sit out the game:

"This is fight seven of brain ring at the 2042 US National ChGK Championship. On the green side, we have, from Kansas, the Kansas State Team, on the red side, we have, from Missouri, the St. Louis Club!" The moderator announces to both teams.

"I will sit this one out!" Patricia announces to the team.

Patricia then walks out of the game room, then goes out to drink cold water and then go to the bathroom, hoping to get a much-needed break. And her brain would get to recharge a bit, too.

Meanwhile, her teammates duke it out against their cross-state rivals, but realize that, without her, their lives are much more complicated on the buzzer. Questions they knew Patricia would have been able to answer instead fall on the opponent. Like the answer to a question on metabolism.

"Krebs cycle!" A St. Louis player answers in the nick of time.

"Virna! This game is tied, four to four" the moderator announces to both teams. Question number twelve...

We can't let these guys from Missouri think that we are nothing in brain ring without Patricia! Sure, she might be a fantastic player, but it's kind of like Bishop Miège when I was in high school, too: the Stags were too dependent upon Stephanie! Sergei muses upon realizing that every second counts and they must defeat the St. Louis Club without their captain. A team they knew was weak since they never really entered international online tournaments.

"A city-building online game that caused addictions? If only Patricia didn't use that game to recharge..." Bohdan sighs.

"It's the first medical question we played today. But you know that even she has her limits!" Yakiv then voices his concerns.

This game somehow reminds me of one of those brain ring games in college, where Mariupol State faced off against NaUKMA (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy) with the latter's best player having headaches, Vira gets flashbacks from her collegiate past in Ukraine. Only with the roles reversed.

"That game's heyday happened before video game addiction was officially recognized. In that era, video game manufacturers used sex to market even city builders" an opponent's remark was quickly overheard by the sixth Kansas player, seated behind that player.

"A city builder causing addiction and marketed with sex?" the sixth player comments, with the clock ticking.

"Was that a game where access to sex was a factor in the happiness of the in-game population?" Yakiv asks the sixth player.

"Surprisingly, there was no sex in the actual game" the sixth player then buzzes in with only a fraction of a second to spare. He then prepared to shout. "Evony!"

"Virna! And the Kansas State Team wins, five to four!"

Ultimately, Patricia only missed one game. It appears that, after going through a whopping 21 games, the preliminary round ends. This year, the organizers, backed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, host a banquet for all participants to eat dinner at, almost as if it was an official diplomatic function.

This definitely doesn't feel like State, or last year's Nats; here the Russian government seems to want to make the Nats into the experience of a lifetime, especially for those teams from "emergent" states in a ChGK context. However, I can't help but feel like it's a trap. Vodka, perogies, borscht, Stroganoff beef... traditional Russian cuisine I actually eat here - to think that the only Russian food I ever consumed before amounted to kissel and vodka... Patricia muses, seated with her team, while listening to music performed by the tournament staff. Kalinka, Katyusha and the Farewell of Slavianka, as sung by the TD, a game committee member on the accordion and an appeals committee member on the balalaika.

"No vodka for me please... it's not going to be of any help in the brain ring playoffs! In fact, it goes for everyone on this team: no alcohol until the end of Nats!" Patricia shouts at her teammates, about to start drinking vodka.

"Yeah, you don't even need to work with alkogoliki to understand how alcohol can impair your mental functions. I may or I may not have told you this before, but your mind is a wonderful, yet delicate machine" Bohdan comments on Patricia's instruction.

"Thank you. As soon as the brain ring tournament ends, we head straight to our hotel rooms" Yakiv adds to this.

While limiting the amount of alcohol we drink, and steering clear of it, isn't everything in the brain ring playoffs, it will definitely help. But why is it that we are here in the first place? It's not these "side games"; winning side games are nice, but ChGK is the dominant game, Patricia ruminates while she finishes her meal in the minutes remaining prior to the start of the brain ring tournament.

As with the previous year, the brain ring playoffs feature 3 single-elimination rounds, and the quarterfinals are the easy part for them. Here it appears that eliminated contestants tended to have drunk more alcohol than those in the playoffs. The semifinals were much harder, but they still win against Saturday 13.

When the time for the final comes, on the opposite side of the bracket, their arch-nemeses, the Quantum Computers, start to instill feelings of dread into the team.

"They beat us last year, we will not let that happen again!" Vira hollers, with memories of this atrocious but tight loss to the Quantum Computers in Seattle the previous year surfacing in her mind.

"Of course not! Go Kansas!" The team shouts in unison before the game starts.

Fast-forward 8 questions later, the Kansas State Team and the Quantum Computers are tied, 4-4. Everyone is on the edge of their seats, notwithstanding that some of the spectators might have some issues staying on their seats. They all feel the pressure of having to answer faster than their neighbors...

"Ninth question..." the moderator reads a question about something sounding similar to mob rule, but in an economic warfare context.

"Tiraniya malykh resheniy (Tyranny of small decisions)" Patricia buzzes in before the moderator has finished reading the question.

"Falstart (false start)" the moderator rules while the Quantum Computers buzz in, too.

With both teams having committed false starts, it turns out that Patricia was correct after all. Yet, because of her false start, it forces everyone to endure one more question.

Which, unlike the last question, isn't about how a lot of small decisions, which are individually rational, lead to negative economic consequences, but something else altogether. Something more geographical in nature.

"Borneo" a Quantum Computers player answers after buzzing in the opening seconds.

"Lozh (Incorrect)" the moderator rules while there's only 20 seconds on the clock for Kansas to attempt an answer.

"It seems that Borneo is not precise enough, but..." Yakiv points out while everyone else is sweating.

"Do the facts point towards the Malaysian or the Indonesian side of the island?" Bohdan asks the other players.

"Mt. Kinabalu and the capital of the region it's in share a name, and we want the region's name" Vira points out to the others.

The clock is ticking, and time is getting shorter for everyone in the room. Everyone starts sweating, and Patricia starts digging deeper into her geographic knowledge. She then presses the buzzer like a syringe near the end of these 20 seconds her team is allotted...

"Sabah!" Patricia shouts after pressing the buzzer with her sweaty hand at the last possible moment.

"Verna! And the brain ring champion at the 2042 US National ChGK Championship is... the Kansas State Team!" the moderator announces the and then distributes the medals.

"Two down, one more to go. Tomorrow's the big day, we win tomorrow, and to the Worlds we go! We spent an entire year preparing for this, we beat the Quantum Computers at various tournaments, we can do so here as well! Remember Seattle!" Patricia harangues her teammates.

"And Kansas will then sweep this festival!" Vira adds to this chorus of comments, implying that Nats are actually a festival.

Playing brain ring only feels similar to KSHSAA scholars bowl to the extent you restrict yourself to the actual in-game feel. So good luck for tomorrow, and may we crash these Quantum Computers here, where it counts the most! Patricia reflects on this entire experience of brain ring.