Have you grown bored with darts? Are you tired of losing all your money to attractive females who turn out to be pool sharks? Has chess become self-punishment? Well, look no further: we have invented the next-generation bar game, and for once, nerds have the edge over mundane people.

The Pessimal Supergroup Challenge is tested, approved, almost solved, and sure to bring at least fifteen minutes of joy to your alcohol-infused gathering. Best of all, because this is the 21st century, you won’t get in a fight with a bully because you asked his girlfriend to secretly judge the outcome and declare a winner. You can let AI decide it. Simply feed this blog post into your LLM and ask it to impartially judge the game for you. Then get ready for serious fun.

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Official Rules

The goal of the Pessimal Supergroup Challenge is to assemble the worst possible supergroup using only excellent musicians who would plausibly work together.

This is not about choosing bad musicians. Every member must be legitimately accomplished and individually defensible. The challenge is to select five people whose talents, musical instincts, personalities, stylistic assumptions, and preferred roles combine like Chinese food and bourbon.

A great Pessimal Supergroup should make you look at every individual name and say, “Oh, Great choice;” then look at the complete lineup and say, “Oh, lawd, what did you do?!”

Gameplay

1. Five musicians.
   Assemble something that could plausibly function as a band. The exact instrumentation is flexible, and multi-instrumentalists are allowed.
2. Living musicians only.
   Everyone must be alive at the time the lineup is proposed. This prevents easy historical monstrosities involving musicians who could never actually have shared a rehearsal room.
3. Everyone must be legitimately accomplished.
   You cannot sabotage the group by picking the karaoke chick singing right now, simply because you think they’re terrible. Every musician should reasonably belong in somebody’s supergroup.
4. Musical incompatibility is the objective.
   Different genres aren’t enough. Look for incompatible assumptions about rhythm, harmony, dynamics, improvisation, arrangement, songwriting, production, or what their instrument is supposed to do.
5. Personality conflicts count—but can’t be the whole joke.
   Five notorious assholes aren’t necessarily Pessimal if they’d make fantastic music together. The band should be dysfunctional musically as well as socially.
6. No deliberately broken instrumentation.
   Don’t manufacture failure by submitting five drummers or a band with no plausible rhythm section. Odd instrumentation is fine if the musicians could theoretically make it work.
7. Professional adaptability works against you.
   If AI analysis reveals that the supposedly incompatible musicians are, in fact, versatile enough to accommodate one another, the lineup gets penalized. This is referred to as the dreaded “Accidental-Good-Band Penalty.”
8. The ideal lineup remains tantalizing.
   A truly Pessimal band shouldn’t make us simply refuse to listen. There should remain just enough possibility that these five brilliant people might produce something extraordinary to make us desperately curious about the first rehearsal, you just probably don’t want to hear it.
9. If we start wanting tickets, you’ve probably failed.
   A bizarre lineup that sounds genuinely exciting is an interesting supergroup, not a Pessimal one.
10. Creative constraints may be imposed when necessary.
    If the lineup keeps accidentally working, specify who writes, produces, arranges, or leads. A catastrophically appropriate production decision can rescue an insufficiently Pessimal submission.

The Pessimal Index — 100 Points

Accidental-Good-Band Penalty: −5 to −25

After scoring the band, ask:

Category	Points	What we’re measuring
Musical Incompatibility	0–25	How badly their musical languages collide: rhythm, harmony, dynamics, structure, improvisation, etc.
Personality Volatility	0–20	Likelihood of arguments, competing leadership, walkouts, creative warfare, or somebody being called a cunt before lunch.
Role Dysfunction	0–15	Whether their natural roles interfere with one another: too many leaders, incompatible rhythm concepts, musicians fighting for the same sonic space, nobody wanting to accompany.
Expectation Horror	0–15	How enormous the promise of the individual names is compared with the probable result. Referred to as the Damn Yankees Coefficient.
Unavoidable Weirdness	0–15	Whether there’s no obvious safe genre into which the band can retreat and make a competent conventional record.
Morbid Curiosity	0–10	How desperately we want to hear what happens despite knowing better.

“Wait… would these people actually be great together?”

If yes, subtract points.

Typical causes include:

• A rhythm section that unexpectedly makes perfect sense.
• One musician capable of translating between everyone else’s styles.
• A natural producer/bandleader emerging.
• Supposedly incompatible players who are actually famous for versatility.
• A vocalist capable of turning everybody else’s weirdness into a coherent aesthetic.
• Realizing halfway through the critique that you’d preorder the album.

This penalty killed several excellent early submissions.

Final Classification

Score	Official Diagnosis
0–20	You Accidentally Formed a Good Band
21–40	Weird Festival Collaboration
41–60	Fascinating Mistake
61–75	Genuine Pessimal Contender
76–89	Management Should Intervene
90–100	International Law Applies

The philosophical heart of the game is: Don’t pick five musicians who can’t play together. Pick five musicians who absolutely can play together—and make everyone wish they hadn’t.

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Advanced Variants:

The Excessive Competence Veto

Everyone gets one veto to award when someone submits an apparently ridiculous combination that, upon examination, sounds annoyingly fantastic to them.

Shotgun Version

Your band must include one musician from the song currently playing on the jukebox, and one musician from the next song that plays on the jukebox.

Cooperative Version

Everyone is assigned an instrument and writes one name down, then the band is assembled when everyone reveals their choice at the same time

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Current Hall of Fame:

Current High Score (94):

Cindy Lauper, Roger Waters, Shelia E, Robert Smith, Rick Wakeman

Runner-ups:

Ian Anderson, Machine Gun Kelly, Bjork, Chris Thile, Ted Nugent

Patrick Moraz, Johnny Mars, Sachsha Konietsko, John Pattitucci, and Ian Paice

Michael McDonald, Yngwie Malmsteen, Philip Glass, Gene Simmons, Meg White … Quincy Jones producing.

Phil Collen, Phil Collins, Phil Guy, Phil Anselmo, and Phil Christian

Dolly Parton, Nancy Wilson, Shelia E, Tina Weymouth, and Alicia Keys

Tony Iommi, Ringo Starr, Susie Quatro, Steve Perry, Billy Joel

John Mellencamp, Slash, Bill Bruford, Michael Anthony, Thomas Dolby

Stevie Nicks, James Hetfield, Geddy Lee, Ringo Starr, Khatia Buniatishvili