By Anish Sikhinam – Staff Reporter

Technical Difficulties, the popular podcast show at Jonathan Law starring teachers Mr. Zuraw and Mr. Roumeles, is currently hosting the annual GeoGuessr Tournament. The GeoGuessr Tournament is a competition in which faculty, staff, and students compete in pairs in a bracket to see who can get the higher score in a game of GeoGuessr. Advocate staff reporter Anish Sikhinam interviewed Zuraw about the tournament.

Anish Sikhinam: What is GeoGuessr, and how does it work?

Mr. Zuraw: GeoGuessr is a game that uses Google Street View, where you’re dropped anywhere in the world and the goal is to drive around the map and try to figure out where you are in the world. You take a guess and you get points based on how close your guess is.

AS: How many people are participating in the tournament this year?

MZ: There are 30 teams, so 60 participants, since each team consists of two participants.

AS: What are the rules of the GeoGuessr Tournament?

MZ: There really are no rules – we made our own house rules, so we put time limits on each round so that people can’t drive around forever. For the game itself there’s actually no rules. We just made up our own rules to make it fair and fun.

AS: What weeks will the tournament be held?

MZ: The tournament really has no weeks. It’s whenever people get a chance to come play that they play their round, because it’s really hard to coordinate with everybody’s schedule, and there’s so many students this year that are involved. Mr. Roumeles and I are really flexible, you just have got to make an appointment with us, and the tournament will probably be from now until the end of the year.

AS: What will be the prize for the winning team?

MZ: So the prize for the winning team in the bracket is a free breakfast courtesy of Technical Difficulties from Starbucks, and the winning team will then get to face off against the two best players, Mr. Roumeles and I. If they defeat us, they get to appear on our podcast. Two juniors – they were sophomores last year – got to do this, so check the episode out.