I volunteered to keep trivia score and created a three-team accounting dispute

At a neighborhood trivia night, the host asked for someone to keep score.

I had a pen. This was apparently enough qualification.

There were four teams and six rounds. Correct answers earned one point. A bonus question earned two. I wrote the team names across the top of a sheet and felt organized.

During round one, Team Blue changed its name to The Blueberries. I crossed out the old name. Team Four moved tables and became the team physically closest to the number two on my page. None of this should have mattered.

Then the host awarded a half point for an answer that was “close enough.”

My clean integer system developed a decimal.

In round three, I added The Blueberries’ bonus to Team Green. Team Green noticed because they had been tracking their own score. I corrected it, but my eraser removed part of the previous round. I rewrote the number from memory.

By the final round, three teams believed they had twenty-two points. My sheet showed twenty-two, twenty-one and something that could have been twenty-seven or a heavily revised twenty-one.

The host asked for the standings.

I said, “We have a situation.”

Each team produced its own record. The records disagreed with one another and with mine. We reconstructed the scores from the answer sheets, bonus by bonus, while the room watched the least exciting possible tiebreaker.

The Blueberries had twenty-three. Team Green had twenty-two. Team Four had twenty-one and a half. Nobody had twenty-seven.

The host thanked me for volunteering. This was generous, considering my main contribution had been proving why official scorekeepers use structured sheets.

Next time, I would write one row per round, keep original team numbers even if names change and confirm totals before the final question. I would also establish whether half points exist before designing the page.

What is the simplest reliable format for casual trivia scoring? One row per team or one row per round? And should teams be allowed to track their own scores as a cross-check without turning every correction into an audit hearing?