Trivia Recap: 10/20

The Players: Darren (math professor), Mary (English teacher), Phil (complicated computer things, but also waiting tables at the moment), Kristin (English teacher), Hannah (English teacher)

Opening Category: The Nightmare Before Christmas

Hint of the Day: I didn't understand this at all... I'm just going to include the picture so you can see it. Even after playing the entire game, I still don't understand what the hint was in reference to.

Round One:

So Kristin thought to look up The Nightmare Before Christmas about an hour before trivia and, thanks to her quality planning, she knew that Paul Reubens voiced the character of somebody. We got Into the Pool (it was about swimming) because we all knew that medleys are comprised of four strokes, but Darren and I were the two who were aware that Olympic-sized pools were 50 meters in length. I went to the eye doctor today and that came into play when we had to identify an organ that's examined by a tool that is spelled something like ophthamalogicalnessicalization, and then we didn't get this really hard question about the County Fare. We had to name populated counties in the United States and we didn't know them. But we did know that a flugelhorn has a wider horn than a trumpet and that was our bonus category so it worked out okay.

Round Two:

TV Theme Songs was the opening category and all of the shows came from HBO. Phil desperately wanted Curb Your Enthusiasm to be among the songs played... and it was! He was so pleased! The song just makes him happy. We also knew The Sopranos, but we were stumped on the third song until Mary suggested True Blood (even though she's never seen it). Kristin supported her completely, and even though Darren was on the fence, he went with it. And it's a good thing he did because Mary was right! Mary also knew the answer to the Shakespeare category (King Lear) immediately. We were down a Ben this evening, but we managed to earn the points in Presidential Potpourri. If our presidential genius had been able to attend, we might have gotten the two-point bonus, but he was off doing Ben things and so we were without his presidential knowledge. Darren got us the points, though, and that's ultimately what matters. Darren, Phil, and Kristin then put their heads together and figured out a bunch of SNL-inspired movies, too.

(Somewhere in the midst of all this, Paul Reubens was mentioned again... which makes for a "Billy Ocean Moment." Maybe this time around Kristin will explain what this means in the Facebook comments because she's the one who truly understands what a "Billy Ocean Moment" is. At this point in time, the entire team refers to such things as "Billy Ocean Moments," but I'm not sure any of us could explain why a moment is classified as such.)

Halftime Sheet:

We aced this! The top half had us identifying characters in TV shows; the bottom half had us determining US cities spelled from the abbreviations of elements on the periodic table. I should have taken a picture of this so you could better understand it... but it was honestly a genius scenario. And we got it even though I didn't wear my "I wear this shirt periodically" shirt!

Round Three:

Who knew Snoop Dogg and Tom Petty had so much in common? The first category was Triple 50/50: Celebrity Birthdays. We got two out of three, earning us the points. Medical Maladies was easy (skin cancer), and Page to Screen was a shining point for me because although we all knew The Help, I was the only one who knew Kathryn Stockett wrote the book. I love that book! It's soooo much better than the movie, and the movie is great! Foreign Brands had something to do with a French man dropping the H on the end of his name and Darren figured out that Bic was the answer. Wouldn't Bich be a horrible last name? I mean, if you were to add a T to the end... Well, it would just be an unfortunate last name. And then NFL stadiums was the last category. Now, I'm gonna try to do this justice. Each time we have a football-related question, Mary knows what she's talking about. It astounds me every time. She knows who's in which "conference" (this is a term I learned tonight) and educates The Educated Friends. She'll be like, "No, that team is an AFC team, not an NFC team" and it all sounds French to me. Like the stuff Bich was probably saying when he was talking about razors and flushable bathroom products.

6 - 4 - 2:

The only thing I remember from this category is I suggested "Belgium" for four points, because I had a vague memory of what the flag looked like, and Phil thought it was a great answer. I wrote down on my notes, "Hannah suggested, Phil believed." Darren said he wanted a shirt that said that. We got the answer right because Phil believed and pushed us to turn in the clue a bit early.

Round Four:

TV Sitcoms was easy (Family Ties and Growing Pains), but did you guys know that one of those white boxes used for Chinese food is named after oysters? We didn't. We got that one wrong. But Kristin pointed out that the great thing about coming to trivia is that "You learn shit."

"Like your age," I said, because right before that Kristin had commented on the fact that she was forty-eight and Darren gave her a look. And then she said something like, "Oh, come on, Darren. You're only six months older than I am." But this made Darren realize that he's not forty-eight, and he's still a ways away from being forty-eight, and so he reminded Kristin that she's actually only forty-seven. Soooooo, that happened.

Bodies of Water was an unfair category because Adam pronounced the African countries incorrectly and that threw us off. He pronounced Guinea as Guyana and we got it wrong. But, whatever. Rock Bands was a fun category because we got the clue about a California band with three members in their sixties, and they apparently released two recent albums, and we were all stumped... but then Phil suggested the Red Hot Chili Peppers even though he didn't think they were that old, and Kristin went to town about their ages (maybe this is actually where the birthday/age discussion came into play) and how they were older than we thought, and we were right. Well, Phil was right. Kristin believed. She believed hardcore, in fact, and I'm glad she did because we got the points. And then Kristin also got the American Authors category (Pearl Buck, China, The Good Earth) without even thinking about it.

Final Round:

We only wagered two points because Phil and Darren did complicated math. The category was Notable Americans and the question was something about a used furniture dealer in 1947. I forget the answer, which is horrible and anticlimactic for you as a reader, but what you ultimately need to know is that we got it wrong and ended up in second place.

We lost by five points instead of one this week, but the winning team isn't from around here so they let us choose the opening category for next week. We chose Harry Potter!

So that's that. And I still don't understand the hint of the day.