Trivia Recap: 10/19

The Educated Friends operated as a 4-person team on Thursday night, and it showed in our results. While it was not one of our more impressive showings, we still had a fun night of trivia. Thursday featured myself (Landon), Hannah, Mary, and Marc and Victoria tag-teaming it. Darren, if you’re reading this, Hannah and Mary want you to know that your presence was sorely missed.

Marc left before we snapped the team picture, so I (Hannah) asked him to send a selfie.

This picture is great, is it not? I (Hannah) have zoomed in on the best part.

In the first quarter, we started out the night with a question about The Jetsons. It’s always a great start to test our knowledge of 50+ year old animated shows. Alas, we did not know the schools in which the Jetson children attended. However, we quickly recovered from there with a question about who was the all-time NFL leader in wins by a quarterback. Marc and I knew that #1 had to be Tom Brady, but we would get a bonus if we got #2 and #3. Only one of our bonuses was correct, as we guessed Peyton Manning and Dan Marino rather than the correct Manning and Jets legend Brett Favre. From there, question 3 asked several nicknames such as “the klink,” which we quickly answered as slang for jail or prison. Next came a 3-part US Geography, where we were asked 1) What is the only state south of the Tropic of Cancer (Hawaii), 2) Which state borders the most Great Lakes (Michigan), and 3) Which state borders the Canadian province of Alberta (Montana). We missed that last one. And finally, our clue of the night in 50 Cent came to pass with question 5: Which rapper’s real name is Curtis Jackson, and for the bonus, what is his best-selling album? From the memories of bumping “In Da Club” and “Many Men” on my way to ride the bench in basketball, I knew the album was “Get Rich or Die Tryin’.”

Round 2 kicked off with a 3-part audio question where we needed to identify the famous person speaking in each clip. The first voice was Stephen Hawking communicating through his computer voice device. Number 2 was picked up by Mary, as it was the late Queen Elizabeth II speaking, and #3 was former President Lyndon B. Johnson announcing that he would not accept the Democratic Party nomination for President in 1968. Question #2 addressed one of my least favorite advertising campaigns ever, asking which company used the slogan “Can you hear me now?” which we quickly answered as Verizon Wireless. Question 3’s category was “From Page to Screen,” which was again all Mary. She knew that the book Killers of the Flower Moon was made into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and set in the 1920s. (I may teach English, but I’m still not much help with these types of questions!) Next came the category “Pardon My Latin,” where we came up with the correct answer of “Advent” when asked what calendar Christians follow leading up to Christmas. Closing out Round 2 was “Name that Comedienne,” where we were conflicted between Joan Rivers and Carol Burnett as the first woman to host a late night talk show. We decided on Joan Rivers, which was correct!

Halftime was the usual “Name the Celebrity” in the top half, where we had to name the celebrity who died in 2023. We got all but 2 answers in this half, and the bottom half was MLB Teams with more than 5 World Series titles, with the clue of their division and most recent title. This is right in my wheelhouse of useless sports knowledge. Marc and I got all 10 answers correct, bringing us to an 18-point halftime score.

We entered into the second half of trivia with a “Chemical Hodge Podge” question. I guess a little bit of my church confirmation process stuck with me from years ago because I somehow remembered that Sulfur was mentioned in the Bible. 1/1 in round 3! Question 2 was yet another that I should be well-versed in as an English teacher, but, alas, Mary and Hannah saved the day with the correct answer of “article,” from the topic “Parts of Speech.” Next up was “Three Clues, One Famous Person,” where we were given the clue that the person got his law degree from Duke University, and appeared on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In just 2 years prior to becoming POTUS. We were off by a few presidents, as we guessed Ronald Reagan when the answer was Richard Nixon, the 30th President of Earth. (Futurama reference!) Our final question of round 3 was an athlete who competed at the 1912 Olympics, and was called the greatest athlete of his time. For bonus, we needed which city the 1912 Olympics were in. We came to the correct conclusion of Jim Thorpe as the athlete, but incorrectly guessed Athens instead of Stockholm.

Entering the 4th quarter, we knew we had a lot of ground to make up. Round 4 started with asking which singer sang “Flowers,” which we knew was Miley Cyrus, but we could not get the bonus as to the title of her newest album. Question #2 asked which 1990s sitcom that Joseph Gordon-Levitt got his start on - the correct answer escapes me as I was either not born or still going to the bathroom on myself when the show came out, but nonetheless we did not get this correct. Question #3 asked which two Canadian provinces that the St. Lawrence River runs through. I knew that the river was towards the northeast, so I got a lucky correct guess on Quebec and Ontario. Next came US History, where we could not come up with the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. I threw out a Hail Mary guess of James Madison, when the real answer was John Jay. Our final question of round 4 was “Will you be my GF,” where every answer had the initials of G.F. Good Friday was our first answer to the holiday celebrated 2 days prior to Easter. Next came the first woman to be the Vice President on a Presidential ticket, where I stumbled into the correct answer of “Geraldine Ferraro.” Lastly, we couldn’t think of the box office bomb Gone Fishin’ featuring Danny Glover and Joe Pesci, so we went 2 for 3 here.

Wrapping up the night was “Fun With Flags,” where we had to figure out which Caribbean nation was the only one featuring a Bible on the flag. While we were of course thinking of countries/islands with “Saint” or “San” in the name, we missed the correct answer of the Dominican Republic.

Another fun week of trivia in the books despite the results!