Stump the Staff Rules - WJLB

The Rules of STUMP THE STAFF
(as of March 5, 2013)
co-compiled and edited by David Romas
see also Drew’s List of Ideas
The Staff is allowed three guesses and can consult any resources at their
disposal. These are the Staff’s rules for all Stump-the-Staff’ers:
1. One question, one question only
2. We can make the rules, or change them, as we go.
3. No pre-1970 questions
4. The engagement rule: The burden of conversation is on you.
5. You must be nice to Trudi.
6. You must respond to Gary Coleman.
7. No multi-part questions
8. No robotics
9. No pushy weasels

10. You must know the answer to your question.
11. No ordering the hosts around
12. No stupid wiener questions
13. No sounding stupid
14. No co-star questions
15. No kissing ass
16. No repetitive questions
17. We can huddle.
18. No calling anyone “Baby”
19. No clueless activity
20. Callers can’t eat.
21. Callers must respond to L.T.
22. No being a dick to L.T.
23. No talking over Butt Mic
24. If you win you must be excited (the Lloyd Lutkey rule).
25. No male bashing
26. No being a pain in the ass
27. No trying to be funny
28. No Crispin Glover (actor), Craig Biggio (MLB baseball player) or action hero questions
29. No laughing over Butt Mic
30. No being a snob
31. No fleshing out questions on the air
32. No pushing your voice
33. You must understand the delay system.
34. No being too polite
35. No deflected pass questions
36. No saying “Good morning” more than once
37. There is no “t” in “football.”
38. No “piece of equipment” questions
39. No being on speaker phone

40. No hockey draft questions
41. No Pro Bowl questions
42. No longer will we answer a previously asked question.
43. No “Maggie scan” questions (from the intro to The Simpsons where Maggie gets
passed over the price scanner)
44. No acting weird
45. No first line in the movie questions
46. No saying “Right on!”
47. You must respond to the San Francisco Jacks guy.
48. You must respond to Borat.
49. No being too excited
50. No being a turd
51. No whining
52. No being trite
53. We don’t have to read the rules.
54. The Third-person Rule: You can fix a one-question/one-question only error with an immediate
third-person apology, ie, “Romas is sorry!”
55. No Frank Reich questions (Frank Reich of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills)
56. All errors in favor of the show
57. No asking the question of whether you’re on, or off, the air
58. After you win, if you ask a question, you can be blown out.
59. We can take the prize away.
60. No breathing heavy (men only)
61. No yelling “Yo!”
62. No middle name questions
63. No character name questions
64. No saying “Howdy, Howdy”
65. No yelling to people off the air that you’re on the air
66. No trying to sound sexy, unless you’re a girl (then it’s encouraged)
67. No Maggie, Lisa, Marge or Bart questions

68. No sounding gay
69. No arts and literature questions
70. No football bell questions
71. No crying babies – EVER!
72. You must accept the name we give you.
73. No “who milestones happened against” questions
74. No bad cell phones
75. No cheesy slang, ie, “I’m doing jivey”
76. Chicks not allowed to reference husband or boyfriends (Sam’s law)
77. No using the word “eclipse”
78. No interrupting plugs, especially for Coldstone Creamery
79. No “what team happened against” questions
80. No being on a cell phone headset (the James Sigley rule)
81. No team questions (the Dan Toole rule)
82. No talking over drops
83. When Staff is conferring, no butting-in
84. No Super Bowl attendance questions
85. No sounding romantic (men only)
86. No stupid nick-names (the Moosey rule)
87. No Mike Eaton questions (the Mike Cossak rule)
88. No saying “Peace” or “Peace Out”
89. No mythical questions
90. No runner-up questions
91. You must respond to Mrs. Jazzerzab.
92. No NFL Player-of-the-Week or Player-of-the-Month questions
93. No more race or nationality questions (Drew added this Oct. 1, 2004)
94. No more “hit for the cycle” baseball questions
(Drew added Oct. 1, 2004)
95. No saying “Roger Dodger” (Staff group decision to add this on Oct. 22, 2004)
96. No blocked punt questions (Drew added Nov. 23, 2004)

97. No saying “Sir,” ie, referring to hosts as “Sir” too much
(Staff group decision Nov. 23, 2004)
98. In terms of sourcing, you’ve got to have some source of your “answer” that the Staff can quickly
access in order to verify that you’re correct. (Drew added May 9, 2005)
99. You must have command of your question. If you can’t ask your question properly, don’t
bother calling in.
(Drew added Aug. 23, 2005. This is a subtle
difference from, although somewhat related to,
“No fleshing out questions on the air.”)
100. No sacrifice fly or baulk questions (Drew added Aug. 24, 2005)
101.1 You must answer “the bra question” – women only
(Drew added Aug. 24, 2005)
102. No penalty questions – unless it’s a famous play
(Drew added Aug. 24, 2005)
103. No point-after attempt (PAT) questions (Drew added Aug. 24, 2005)
104. No calling anyone “Boss” (Drew added Sep. 16, 2005)
105. No extra point, two point conversion or exhibition season questions (the Dan Wilson rule)
(Drew added Sep. 28, 2005)
106. The third-person rule (“You can fix a one-question/one-question only error with an immediate
third-person apology”) can be used only once in a call.
(This modification made Oct. 26, 2005 by Mike)
107. No “what year” questions (the Will Roberts rule)
(Drew added Oct. 26, 2005)
108. No fake accents
109. No questions where some set number of times is the answer
(Drew added Oct. 26, 2005)
110. No being a high maintenance winner (Drew added this on Feb. 2, 2006 – named the
Mike Macheski rule, after a Maui Time winner who
deliberately set out to be the worst, most Lloyd
Lutkey-esque, ‘RIF winner of all time…and
succeeded.)
111. Staff must let callers know (or at least must let Car Wash Joe know) when a potential answer
vocalized is meant to be one of the Staff’s three allowed guesses.
(Added by the late Car Wash Joe and accepted by
the Staff, Apr. 14, 2006.)
112. No “Fonzi-like behavior,” ie, no saying “Heyyyy”
(Drew added Apr. 14, 2006)
113. No triples questions
114. No “team point totals” or “margin of victory” questions
(Drew added May 3, 2006)
115. No more “last game at Tiger Stadium” questions
(Drew added May 26, 2006)

116. No answering questions with “No, Sir.” This is in addition to the earlier “Sir” rule.
(Drew added Aug. 25, 2006)
117. No Super Bowl Roman numeral questions
(Drew added Feb. 2, 2007)
118. No “first goal, first home run, first win, first basket, first whatever, in/of a series” questions
(Drew added Apr. 25, 2007)
119. No hit by pitch questions – unless the answer is Ron Hunt or Don Baylor (the Dave Tretinik
rule) (Drew added Sept. 30, 2009)
120. No questions that “you saw,” ie, no questions based on personal observation
(Drew added Sept. 30, 2009)
121. The first caller isn’t allowed to win. (Drew and Mike added Jan. 26, 2010)
122. When you ask “what player was first to score points” or “last to score points” in a game,
especially a Super Bowl, you must say what two teams were involved.
(Drew added on Jan. 26, 2010)
123. The punishment for people who chew up valuable Stump the Staff time when they have a
wrong answer is: the Staff comes to where the caller is and plays Smear the Queer for an
hour with the football duct-taped to the caller.
(Drew added on Jan. 26, 2010)
124. You have to be able to properly pronounce the answer if you stump us.
(Drew added Feb. 3, 2010)
125. The mere mention of Wikipedia gets you eliminated.
(Staff added Feb. 3, 2010)
126. No even playing back no joke support if it’s coming through the delay on the next call.
(This is basically the same as the earlier rule that
you must understand the delay system. Drew
added Feb. 3, 2010)
127. No post-season/tournament seeding questions
(Drew added Feb. 3, 2010)
128. No trick questions (Staff added Feb. 5, 2010)
129. No Super Bowl halftime questions (Wolters added Feb. 5, 2010)
130. No saying “fantastical” (Staff added Apr. 8, 2010; among the reasons is
that it’s too close to “testicle”)
131. No heckling new members of the Staff (Drew added Apr. 8, 2010 during an STS session
where callers who had lost were allowed to stay
on the line, conferenced-in as temporary members
of the Staff.)
132. No singing – ever. (Staff added Apr. 28, 2010)
133. New rules can now be made retro-active. (Drew added Apr. 28, 2010)
134. You can answer Larry King. (Drew added Apr. 28, 2010)

135. Anybody that’s too loud when Joey Morasso is sleeping is automatically a loser.
(Drew added May 7, 2010)
136. When the Stump the Staff subject/category is Mike Clark, Staff can use Clark as a resource
only three times per round. (Staff added June 30, 2010)
137. No telling the hosts to “get over it.” (Drew added July 13, 2010 – the one-year
anniversary of him returning to the show from his
extended vacation)
138. You have to respond to Mel Gibson. (Drew added July 13, 2010)
139. The only way callers are allowed to break the “one question, one question only” rule is if the
additional question is directed to Mel Gibson, and in such instances callers aren’t required to
employ the “third person rule.” (Drew added July 13, 2010)
140. Question launching is grounds for dismissal.
(Drew added Oct. 7, 2010)
141. No over-apologizing. (Drew created Nov. 16, 2010)
142. No information dumps; no forcible information the Staff didn’t ask for.
(D&M created Nov. 16, 2010)
143. No calling anyone “Champ.” (This is in addition to rules 18, 97 and 104. Drew
created Nov. 16, 2010)
144. No pre-1979 questions when the topic is March Madness.
(Marc created Mar. 29, 2011)
145. If the rules are read, you must listen to the rules.
(Clark added Apr. 6, 2011)
146. No pre-1995 when the topic is Red Wings. (Drew mentioned Apr. 20, 2011)
147. Saying any form of “rock it up,” especially “Kid Rock it up” (except for caller Scott, who is the
only person who can say it and can say it all he wants), is grounds for immediate elimination.
(Staff added June 7, 2011)
148. Anybody who says “we can debate that” (except for caller Scott) is immediately eliminated.
(Drew added June 7, 2011)
149. Callers who interject too much will be blown out.
(Drew added June 16, 2011. This rule is very
similar to #9 “No pushy weasels” and #83 “When
Staff is conferring, no butting in.”)
150. You have to say who you are if Casey Anthony asks you.
(Drew added Aug. 8, 2011)
151. You can’t give the same answer to any question more than two times in a row; for example,
if the Staff asks you three or four questions, no saying “Yup” as your answer each time.
(Staff added Aug. 10, 2011)
152. No referring to yourself in the third-person, other than employing #54, the Third-person Rule.
(Staff added Aug. 10, 2011)
153. No saying “get kickin’.” (The Jerry rule. Staff added Dec. 7, 2011.)

154. No Super Bowl coin toss questions (Staff added Feb. 3, 2012)
155. When the topic’s March Madness and the question’s MVP, you must say what team was
National Champion that year. (Drew added Mar. 16, 2012)
156. No “room number” questions when the topic is Movies We Like.
(Drew added Mar. 5, 2013)
The lost rule of Stump the Staff: No saying “HOWWWELL, Michigan”
(Sometime around late 2000/early 2001 this rule
mysteriously disappeared from The Reading of the
Rules.)
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