Trivia Recap: 10/13

The Players: Darren (math professor), Mary (English teacher), Victoria (veterinarian), Hannah (English teacher), Ben (social studies teacher)

Opening Category: K-Pop

Hint of the Day: A bunch of carrots

Ben ordered food (his typical buffalo chickie nuggies with blue cheese and a half-size portion of fries) and the number he received was #1. He thought this might be fortuitous... and it started out that way... but then we ultimately came in second.

For the second week in a row, we lost by one point.

Oh, well. We had fun!

Round One:

Weirdly enough, it was yours truly who knew the answer to the opening category. Have I ever listened to K-Pop before in my life? Nope. But you know what I have done? Attended trivia... at which a question was asked about BTS and the answer was "Ice Cream" and I remembered that sugary single tonight. So we started off strong enough! Thanks to Mary watching as much, if not more, Hawaii Five-Oh than I have (it used to be her mom's favorite show), we were able to translate "mahalo" to "thank you." And then Darren and I knew "danke" means "thank you" in German, so we got the two-point bonus. Brand Logos was easy enough in that we needed to know the mascot for Vlasic (a stork), which Mary got immediately. Ben had never heard that pregnant women are rumored to crave pickles, which surprised all of us because he's a genius and will someday be on Jeopardy (just wait!), but despite this, he did a hilarious interpretation of the Vlasic stork saying "Vlasic." Darren knew the answer to 3 Clues, 1 Celebrity (Madden), but he wasn't confident enough to put it in early and get the two-point bonus... which is fine. Foreign Culture required us to know about mahjongg. What I know about mahjongg is that my former coworker and friend (she's still my friend, just not my coworker), Christine, used to play mahjongg and it's a fun word to say. I did not realize how many tiles were used. My teammates did, though, and we got the points. Round one was a good round.

Round Two:

The audio clue was a little different this week in that all three songs had one word in common. To earn the points, we needed the word; to get the bonus, we needed the song titles. The word was "bottle" and the songs were "Time in a Bottle" (thank you, Ben), "Genie in a Bottle" (thank you Hannah, Mary, and Victoria), and Bottle It Up (thank you, Mary). I predicted the answer to Units of Measurement (carat) even before we got the clue... and I was right! Cult Films was figured out by Victoria and Ben (Boondock Saints, but we missed the bonus which was the subtitle to the sequel), US Cities was figured out by Darren (Charlotte, NC), and we did alright with Comediennes thanks to Darren and Mary, if I remember correctly. "Amy Schumer" was the answer and Only Murders in the Building was the bonus, which Mary got right away because she's currently watching that show and loving it. She says it's hilarious.

Halftime Sheet:

I took a picture of it this week because I want you to take a look at the bottom half. Victoria, Mary, and I went to town with the produce and the only two we were stumped on were "bananas" and "carrots." However, I used LOGIC to determine that types of bananas must be "Señorita" and Goldfinger. Here's my logic: "Señorita" is a warm-sounding name and bananas are grown in warm climates. Plus, bananas are yellow and finger-shaped. Darren argued that this was not logic.

More often than not, Darren is right... but he was wrong this time around.

We got 19/20 on the halftime sheet.

Round Three:

Ben and I tag-teamed it for 1980s Duets (he got Don Henley, I got Stevie Nicks... whom I recently saw in concert, I'll remind you, at Sound on Sound... even though I only stayed for about 1.5 of her songs) and we all knew the answer to A Crafty Question about "terracotta." Mary thought this was going to be about Kraft macaroni and cheese, but it wasn't. Then we had to do some invisible typing to figure out which letters are on the middle row of the keyboard (S A D F G H J K L, if you were wondering) so we could then figure out which US state could be spelled using only those letters. The answer? Alaska.

Side note: Ever since learning to type in ninth grade, I frequently type what I hear. I just type on my fingertips, if that makes sense, and I find myself doing it while watching TV. If Olivia Benson tells her team to "investigate the perp" or "follow up with the medical examiner," my fingers are invisibly typing "investigate the perp" and "follow up with the medical examiner" as the words come out of her mouth. I can type over 100 words per minute with about 99% accuracy and I take those typing tests online just for fun sometimes. I love typing! And I'm good at it! I probably could've been a stenographer, you know it?

Back to Round Three...

Ben right away got "Dos Equis" for TV Commercials and Darren used his massive brain and came up with two of the three one-name Oscar-Award Winning films with nine letters in the title since 2015: Nomadland and Moonlight. I forget what the third one was... Spotlight, maybe? It was something like that. I didn't write it down. Anyway, it was super impressive that he figured that out and we got the point because of it.

6 - 4 - 2:

This was worded kind of funny and as a result, we didn't get it for six points. Darren knew it for six points, but the way the question was worded made it sound like the abbreviation for Nepal is NPT and that just didn't make sense. So... we waited. And then we got it for four points because the answer was indeed Nepal.

Round Four:

You Have a "Way" with Trivia required us to come up with three answers that ended with "way": Nick Carroway from The Great Gatsby, "Runaway" by Bon Jovi (we didn't get this one), and Gateway. We earned the points, but not the bonus. The Human Body was next and Victoria was overjoyed! She loves the human body even though animal bodies are her specialty. The question asked for the common name for oviducts and Victoria wrote down "Uterine Horn." (Victoria writes down everything instead of saying it, FYI; she's very secretive.) Mary gave her a ridiculous look and said, "Uterine horn?" And I said, "I think we need a more common name than that." Then Mary said, "Like fallopian tubes." This, of course, was the answer. The only answer we missed all night was in Stanley Cup Champions, but I will say that I knew the Stanley Cup is a hockey-related thing, so that was a win on my part. Ben also had the answer in his list of possibilities (Red Wings), but that's not what the team went with and so we missed that point. Darren knew Entourage for the 21st Century TV category and Ben got us two of the three presidents who died on July 4th before Abraham Lincoln took office. The answers were John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe. We got the first two, but not the third, which means we did not get the two-point bonus.

Ben knows all of his presidents and his vice presidents and their favorite ice cream flavors, so in an attempt to get his brain juices flowing for the category of Presidential Potpourri, I asked him to draw a picture of Abraham Lincoln. Surprisingly, he obliged. Mary was shocked. She said, "I didn't think he'd actually do it!"

Admittedly, I didn't think he'd do it either... but then I reminded her of the rainbow sack.

I'm going to need to write an entire blog that tells the full story of Ben's rainbow sack, but for the purpose of this blog, please know that Ben has a rainbow sack that fits snugly on his water bottle (it even has a strap and a pocket!) and he took it out west with him this summer in order to show it some really beautiful scenery. I might venture so far as to say the rainbow sack is one of Ben's favorite possessions, if not one of his best friends, but he may dispute this... Just know that he's lying if he disputes it, okay?

Final Round:

All the credit goes to Darren for this one. The mathematician not only deciphered the complicated wording of the question, but also got the answer right! Thirty-eight (XXXVIII) is the last alphabetical Roman numeral less than one hundred. We were tied for first and had to participate in a tiebreaker! The question was about the number of Entourage episodes that aired blah blah blah... I don't remember the wording. Darren guessed "sixty" and the other team guessed "sixty-five" and the answer was, I think, ninety-six... so we came in second for the second week in a row.

Next week's opening category is The Nightmare Before Christmas, which is a movie I don't actually care for, but I also don't listen to K-Pop and I knew the answer anyway. Therefore, we'll just see what happens next week, won't we?