List of open team names

Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process. - E.B. White

Open teams do not have the requirement of mentioning an institution, leaving the door open for creative references to pop culture, academic content, and in-jokes. This page collects team names with explanations of their meaning and omits straightforward ones with no obvious reference.

For a similar list, see forum threads named for things.

2025 ICT DI UK Open Mirror

The British mirror of 2025 ICT DI.

Team name	Reference(s)
Quiztal Field Stabilisation Energy	crystal field stabilization energy describes how much ligands are lowered in energy due to the geometry of a coordination complex quizzing
Quizthmus of Tehuantepec	the Isthmus of Tehuantepec separating the Gulf of Mexico from the Pacific quizzing
The Physical Impossibility of Negs in the Mind of Someone Powering	Damien Hirst's sculpture of a tiger shark suspended in formaldehyde, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living
The Pub Quizzers Have Won...	The standard abbreviation of Chumbawumba's thirteenth album The Boy Bands Have Won, which until 2021 had the longest title of any album pub quizzing

2024 Chicago Open

Main page: 2024 Chicago Open

Team name	Reference(s)
LMM's LLM MLM	A juxtaposition of three similar initialisms: LMM - Lin Manuel Miranda LLM - Large Language Model MLM - multi-level marketing
sticking out your guyot for the ridge push; you're so seafloor spread, you're so fracture zone	A variation on the common TikTok parody of "Ectasy" by Suicidal Idol with the lyrics "sticking out your gyatt for the Rizzler; you're so skibidi, you're so Fanum tax" that replaces the references to brainrot with terms from oceanic geology: a guyot is a seamount with a flat top due to wave erosion ridge push is the force exerted by a plate sliding down a raised mid-ocean ridge seafloor spread is the creation of new oceanic crust at mid-ocean ridges fracture zones are strike-slip faults formed by from relative motion at mid-ocean ridges
Punished "Venom" BHSU	A variation on the BHSU team name referencing Punished "Venom" Snake, the protagonist of Metal Gear Solid V and one of many characters called Snake in the series.
A Nervy Liberal Nanny Hence	An anagram of the first names of the team's players.
The Dyatlov Passement incident	the Dyatlov Pass incident (an infamous unsolved case in the Ural mountains) team member Raul Passement.
I’ll take a quiet 10 / A handshake of CO (Chicago Open)	A quiz bowl-ification of a line from "No Surprises", a single from Radiohead's album OK Computer. Hinges on the double meaning of "CO" as carbon monoxide (the original line) and Chicago Open.
it's the great pumpkinification objection, charlie brown	A three-part reference: the classic 1966 Halloween special It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown "The Great Pumpkin objection" to Reformed epistemology, raised by Alvin Plantinga to dispute that belief of God is "properly basic" and based on the TV special the Apocolocyntosis Claudii or Pumpkinification of Claudius by Seneca the Younger satirizing the apotheosis of Emperor Claudius
The Empire Bikes Back	the second film of the original Star Wars trilogy The Empire Strikes Back (1980) biking, a colloquial term for cheating
We Need New Names	Literally the same as the 2013 novel by NoViolet Bulawayo, but also a meta-commentary on the act of choosing open team names
Lisan al-Quib	the Lisan al-Gaib is the messianic figure of the Dune universe and became a meme after the release of Dune: Part Two "quib", a bastardization of "quiz bowl"
AMOGH QUIZ HACK? 英雄联盟 400 PPG 24 TUH	A parody of a League of Legends copypasta "DOINB RYZE HACK？英雄联盟 400 CS 24 MIN", which references an infamous game played by FPX midlaner DoinB (the Chinese text translates to "League of Legends"). DoinB's name has been replaced with Amogh Kulkarni's and the other stats have been replaced with quiz bowl equivalents.
Are You There, Chat? It's Me, Margaret	The 1970 Judy Blume novel "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret" but with God replaced with "Chat", the term used for the viewers and chatters of a livestream on Twitch and other platforms.
There are buzzable clues everywhere for those with eyes to see	Variation on the Jordan Peterson tweet "There are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see".
Galvanized Square Steen and Eco-Friendly Wood Vermeer	Parody of AI-narrated TikTok videos that remodel houses using "galvanized square steel" and "eco-friendly wood veneer" that substitutes the materials with the coincidentally similar names of Dutch painters Jan Steen and Jan Vermeer.
Read slowly: A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A Read quickly: A	A comedically long score clue.
Berkeley Mafia and the Chicago Boy	the Berkeley Mafia were economists trained at Berkeley who served as technocrats in Indonesia during the New Order the Chicago Boys were a similar group in Chile who studied at UChicago team members Eric Chen, Michael Coates, and Kevin Ye attended with Berkeley, while Ned Tagtmeier was the single member actively affiliated with Chicago (though Coates had completed his undergrad there)
The Jeam Team	The 1992 USA Olympic Men's Basketball team was known as "the Dream Team" due to its inclusion of active NBA players like Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley. This was modified to "Jeam" because three members of the team had names starting with "J", with the fourth playing under a pseudonym to match the pattern.
genAI this, genAI that, have you found your 真爱 yet	A riff on the popularity of generative AI models and the homophonic "zhēn ài", the Chinese for "true love".
SAYYID QUTB, DRIVING THE LONGEST CAR YOU’VE EVER SEEN THROUGH TAHRIR SQUARE	a line from a tweet by @Java_jigga referencing an alternate reality: "GEORGE LUCAS, DRIVING THE LONGEST CAR YOU'VE EVER SEEN THROUGH HARLEM: What the fuck y'all know about this?" Egyptian revolutionary Sayyid Qutb, author of Milestones, in Tahrir Square, a place one could drive a car in Cairo
Mindgoblin of Little Hobbes	A spoonerism of the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." The resulting phrase successfully references a real person (Thomas Hobbes) but more crucially features the word "mindgoblin", which is a popular variant of "Deez nuts" with the punchline "Mind gobblin' these nuts"?
Les Missourables	Victor Hugo novel (and major Broadway play) Les Miserables the players all attended universities in Missouri (Truman State and WUSTL)

2023 ACRONYM

Main page: 2023 ACRONYM

Second Mirror

Team name

References

Quizbowl tournament with a close friend in the morning (7)

This is "quite possibly the first ever name consisting of a cryptic crossword clue!" The definition is, unsurprisingly, "quizbowl tournament". The first piece of fodder is "close friend", which corresponds to the synonym "CRONY"; the next is "the morning", which can be abbreviated "AM". These are then nested inside each other following instruction "in", yielding the final answer of "A(CRONY)M". This name was crafted by team member Anderson Wang.

2023 Chicago Open

Main page: 2023 Chicago Open

Team name	References
The Plague (anime)" was redirected to: "Oran High School Host Club	An imaginary Wikipedia redirect linking from: a hypothetical anime version of Albert Camus's The Plague a parody of the anime "Ouran High School Host Club" set in Oran, the setting of The Plague
The Catastrophic Implosion of Packet Sub	the 2023 incident in which the Titan submersible operated by OceanGate imploded during a visit to the Titanic the decline in the popularity of packet submission
Curse you, Periplus the Platypus!	"Curse you, Perry the Platypus!" is a catchphrase uttered by Dr. Doofenshmirtz on Phineas and Ferb whenever he is thwarted a periplus is an Ancient Greek document listing ports along a shore; one specific example (The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea) is also the forums username of team member Will Alston
The anti-STOON-dahl cabal (the tall Keyal et al.)	References "STOON-dahl", an example of an acceptable pronunciation of Stendhal given by ACF in its rules on correctness regarding the vowel rule; it has since been removed.
Romanos IV Diogenes’ Macaroni Grill	Romano's Macaroni Grill, a chain of casual dining Italian restaurants Romanos IV Diogenes, Byzantine emperor from 1068-71
Saint Peter Andre 3000	Three-way true mashup: Saint Peter, disciple of Jesus and first pope Peter Andre, British-Australian singer-songwriter Andre 3000, American rapper and half of Outkast
I would prefer not to	The catchphrase of Bartleby the Scrivener in his namesake story by Herman Melville.
Teach Us to Outgrow Our Ladness	Combination of the Kenzaburo Oe short story Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness and the concept of being a "lad".
Quasicrystal Silence	a quasicrystal is an ordered system that is similar to a crystal but without the periodicity the 1972 album Crystal Silence by Gary Burton and Chick Corea
[moderator voice] yes that is so tenpointscore! is your team feeling bonuspilled?	A reference to a tweet by @frogs4girls: "(teacher voice) yes jimmy that is so correctcore! anyone else feeling answerpilled?"
remembrance of lost time In Search of Things Past	Mashups of the two common translations of A la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust: In Search of Lost Time and Remembrance of Things Past. These two teams finished in adjacent places with their order determined by the last game of the day (which was against one another).
Don't be Afraid, the Clown's Afraid Too	Song by Charles Mingus. Disc 2 track 7 on Music Written for Monterey 1965 (1965), track 3 on Let My Children Hear Music (1972), and track 17 on the CD of Charles Mingus and Friends in Concert (1972).
I prefer really not to speak. If I speak I’m in big trouble	Quote from Jose Mourinho when asked about Chelsea's 2014 loss to Aston Villa.
wave2: trimming membership codes 9655377758gp	Several references to Old-School Runescape: "wave2:" is a special prefix which caused the text a player spoke to have a waving effect. "trimming" is a confidence trick in which players would be scammed into giving another player their armor in the mistaken belief that ornamental trim could be added to it "membership codes" were a means of obtaining in-game membership that were easier to sell via real-world trading (if valid at all) and were often sourced from stolen credit cards or other illicit means
Hang et al., Robert Browning	A riff on the generic team name "Hang et al." to refer to any team with Charles Hang on it and the quote "Hang it all, Robert Browning" from Ezra Pound's Canto II.
Evans Hall destruction awaiters	A team of Berkeley students expressing their anticipation for the recently-announced demolition of Evans Hall, the statistics, economics, and mathematics building.

2022 Chicago Open

Main page: 2022 Chicago Open

Team name	References
Up yours woke Borel-ists, we'll see who covers who	A quote from Jordan Peterson after he was suspended from Twitter: "Up yours, woke moralists! We'll see who cancels who" The mathematician Emile Borel, who co-names the Heine-Borel theorem equating compact sets (i.e. those whose open covers all have finite subcovers) with closed and bounded sets
DAMN son, where'd you find this? A Quiz-a-holics remix	A play on the sample "Damn, son! Where'd you find this?", recorded by producer Shadoehaze and prominently featured on the Trapaholics mixtapes.
You go Matt, Jack, do it again, wheel turnin' 'round and 'round	Matt Jackson's name crammed into the hook of Steely Dan's Do It Again: "Yeah, you go back, Jack, do it again / wheel turnin' 'round and 'round".
Krik? Krak! des Chevaliers	The short story collection Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat The castle of Krak des Chevaliers in modern-day Syria
Forget It, Huckle, It's Busytown	One of the final lines of Chinatown (1974): "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown". Huckle Cat is the protagonist of Busytown Mysteries, an animated children's program set in Richard Scarry's Busytown universe.
He Disrespected the Wu Gang Plant	A quote from discharged juror No. 59 in the 2017 trial of "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli, who had purchased the one-of-one Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin: "And he disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan" In Chinese folklore Wu Gang is a woodcutter who lives on the moon, endlessly cutting down an osmanthus tree (the "Wu Gang plant")
When life gives you lemons, use information asymmetry	The common expression "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade". George Akerlof's 1970 paper "The Market for 'Lemons'", which focuses on the result of information asymmetry in a market.
Oroonoko Flow (Sail Away to Suriname)	The 1988 Enya hit single Orinoco Flow (Sail Away) Aphra Behn's 1688 novel Oroonoko, which follows the eponymous prince after he is sold into slavery in Dutch Surinam
Operation Urgent Furry	Adding one letter to the codename of the US invasion of Grenada in 1983 to make it reference the furry subculture.
Kenji, Benji, and Two Thought-Provoking Beavers	Two players are named and the other two are referenced via their affiliation with MIT (whose mascot is the beaver).
Two Whoppers Junior and a Side of Hashes Brown	A reference to an Onion article suggesting that William Safire referred to "Whoppers Junior" analogously to "attorneys general" (something he has since confirmed that he has actually done).
The October Crisis on Infinite Earths	The October Crisis was the invocation of the War Measures Act by Pierre Trudeau after the FLQ kidnapped several politicians. Crisis on Infinite Earths is a DC crossover series that rebooted the entire timeline and removed much of the multiverse.
I have negged / the tossups / that were in / your categories	A play on the first verse of "This Is Just To Say" (1934) by William Carlos Williams, which says "I have eaten / the plums / that were in / the icebox".
The Book of Overthrowing Apep Guardiola	"The Book of Overthrowing Apep" is an Ancient Egyptian manuscript listing spells for assisting Ra in defeating the serpent Apep. Pep Guardiola is the manager of Manchester City and former member of Barcelona's Dream Team.
The ACF cabal is not happy with me-that's okay, I'll still keep playing that garbage.	A 2012 Donald Trump tweet: "The Coca Cola company is not happy with me--that's okay, I'll still keep drinking that garbage." The ACF Cabal
Propaganda of the Vent	The propaganda of the deed is an act of violence or other direct action associated with anarchism. Venting is an ability of the imposter in Among Us, who murders other crewmates.[dubious]
Enby 15 Whale	An expansion of Girl fifteen whale.
quirked-up illibois	The insertion of "illibois" (a fellow from Illinois) into the phrase "quirked up white boy with a little bit of swag busts it down sexual style.. is he goated with the sauce?"
Kevinyon	A mashup of member Kevin Wang with Kenyon, the affiliation of the rest of the team. A series of travel disasters ultimately prevented Kevin from attending, rendering this name nonsensical.

2021 Chicago Open

Main page: 2021 Chicago Open

Team name	Reference(s)
Hush Hush, Keep It Down Wang, Losses Carry	The chorus of 'Til Tuesday's 1985 hit single Voices Carry has been altered from "Hush hush, keep it down now / voices carry" to imagine that player Andrew "Wang" Wang is being reminded of the practice of carrying over losses when rebracketing.
Dat face when u realize he who made the lamb made thee	the memetic phrase "that face when" (tfw), often seen in quiz bowl contexts in the form of "tfw you neg" a line from William Blake's The Tyger: "Did he smile his work to see? / Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"
BHSU Adamantaimai	the open team BHSU the Adamantaimai, a recurring Final Fantasy enemy whose name puns on "adamantine" and the Japanese for sea turtle (taimai)
Atomic Gardening for the Layman	A real book by Muriel Howorth, founder of the Atomic Gardening Society, detailing how to irradiate plants in your backyard for fun and profit.
White People Think Z-Scores Too Haruspicy	A riff on the idea that white people tend to find foods too spicy referencing "z-scores" (the number of standard deviations from the mean), and "haruspicy", the act of divining the future from animal entrails.
Parachute Pantisocracy	parachute pants, a kind of nylon trousers popular in the 1980s and associated with breakdancing Pantisocracy, a utopian scheme based on government by all and general ownership of property devised by poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey
This Is Your Brain, and This Is Protobowl. This Is Your Brain on Protobowl	A parody of the "This is your brain on drugs" campaign substituting the popular but poorly-maintained website Protobowl.
Trust the National Reorganization Process	"Trust the Process" is the slogan of the Philadelphia 76ers the National Reorganization Process was the military dictatorship that seized power in Argentina from Isabel Peron and organized the Dirty War against its citizens
WUSTL++	A team of players from WUSTL with one extra player (Chinmay Kansara of Illinois) - this expansion to the team is expressed using the "++" increment operator from computer science, known for its use in the name of C++
But Doctor I am Paglia, C	the punchline of a famous joke, in which a sad man is told by his doctor to see a famous clown to cure his melancholy: "But Doctor, I am Pagliacci" Camille Paglia, feminist and author of Sexual Personae
The Virgin Pronouncing Things Correctly vs. The Chad Kubicek	A play on the "Virgin vs. Chad" meme that implies that Chad Kubicek is cool for not pronouncing things right.
Congratulations! Your Bronze Horseman Evolved into Raichu	the message when a Pikachu evolves into a Raichu, which requires using an item called a Thunderstone Bronze Horseman (1782) by Etienne Falconet is an equestrian statue of Peter the Great that rests on the Thunder Stone, the largest rock ever moved by humans
My Neck, My Back, The Delta of Dirac	the repeated refrain of My Neck, My Back (Lick It) (2001) by Khia: "My neck, my back, lick my pussy and my crack" the Dirac delta function
Who's Playing for Second?	A question in the form of "Who's on First?" that asks who is in contention for second place at the tournament.[dubious]

2019 Chicago Open

Main page: 2019 Chicago Open

Team name	Reference(s)
Zazu in the Petco	the 1959 novel Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau Zazu, the red-billed hornbill who accompanies Simba in The Lion King, and Petco, a store for pet food and supplies
Fianna Failsons	Fianna Fail, a "centre to centre-right" Irish party that split from Sinn Fein under Eamon de Valera a "failson" is an unemployed or otherwise incompetent adult son of a rich family, as popularized by Chapo Trap House
Hackers and Slackers	Two rhyming categories drawn from the films Hackers (1995) and Slackers (2002), referencing the team's occupations as engineers (hackers) and doctors (slackers).
Old, British, Both, or Neither	The name is in the old bonus format of "X, Y, both, or neither", with all of the team being either old, British, or both. Additionally both John Lawrence and Jason Golfinos are notable examples of Americans who played a year in the UK.
A Visit From the DOOM Squad	Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) the pioneering FPS Doom (1993) and its reboot of the same name (2016) is typically stylized in all-caps[dubious]
Now somewhere in the Black Mountain Hills of Dakota there lived some olds named BHSU	the open team BHSU ("Ball So Hard University"), which shares an acronym with Black Hills State University in South Dakota the opening lyrics of "Rocky Raccoon" from the Beatles White Album (1968): "Now somewhere in the black mining hills of Dakota / There lived a young boy named Rocky Raccoon"
haha tfw u neg	"tfw you neg" was a common low-effort meme on the meme page that was eventually used ironically
Weijia 'gainst the Aseem	American rock band Rage Against the Machine team members Weijia Cheng and Aseem Keyal