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.

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.
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 were affiliated with Berkeley, while Ned Tagtmeier was the single member affiliated with Chicago (hence the change in plurality)
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 general AI model 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 attend WUSTL in Missouri

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