Is there a better moment in a work week than a discussion about the latest office pool? Okay, when Maggie from Tech got blasted at the Christmas Party and... that did make for a good work week. Outside of random acts of drunken madness, nothing pulls a company together like a good office pool. Everyone can play, they usually don't cost much and there are prizes. What's not to like? Not everyone understands Office Pool terminology so, in the name of science here is our Office Pool Terminology:

- The Spread: This is a number generated by bookmakers in Las Vegas that denotes which team is the favorite to win that week's games. ATS signifies Against The Spread.

- Pick-em Pool: These are played either with the NFL or College or both. The weekly schedule of games is laid out and you pick either the game winners or the teams you feel will cover the spread. The player that picks the most teams correctly wins.

- Survivor Pools: Each week you pick one team to win a game. Only one team, straight up. The people that pick correctly move on to Week 2. The others are shunned for the rest of the year. The next week you pick only one winner. But it can't be the same team as Week 1. You can only pick a team once during the pool. The last player to survive wins.

- Confidence Pools: It's a Pick-em pool with a twist. The twist is you place a number next to each game (most people use 1-16 or 1-14 depending on the number of games that week) and then you collect the "confidence" points for all the games you win. The person with the most points wins.

- Squares: Usually saved for the Super Bowl, Squares are a grid of 100 empty squares. The players fill in the empty squares with their names or initials then the outside of the grid is filled with the numbers 0-9 randomly placed next to the beginning of each column or row. Outside of that are the two teams names. One team runs horizontally, the other vertically. The numbers represent the score (either single-digit or second digit) for that team at the designated time (end of first quarter, half, third quarter and the game). For example if the score at the end of the game was 34-31 Patriots over Colts then the person that owned the square that intersected the number 4 on the Patriots side and the number 1 on the Colts side would win the prize.

- Brackets: Bracket pools are used mainly for March Madness, the NCAA Men's and Women's Basketball tournaments. They are filled in with the tournament schedule and the player has to pick the winner of each game. There are a couple scoring types: Some value each round in reverse with the first round winners counting as one point apiece and the last round winner getting sixty-four points, others count it the round as the value, ie, round 1= 1 point, round 2=2 points and so on until round 6.

- The Jerk: Person that wins each week taking money you'd spend on Maggie at Chilis Fridays after work.

As we said, this is some of the most fun at work a body will have, at least sober fun.