Trivia Recap: 11/17

The Players: Hannah (English teacher), Mary (English teacher), Kristin (English teacher), Alex (coffee shop owner), Brock (marketing/animation/computer things), Darren (math professor), Ben (social studies teacher)

Hint of the Day: Knife being sharpened

Opening Category: Herman's Hermits

Round One:

We pretty much killed it. Kristin and I listened to Herman's Hermits all day and so we had this one even before the audio portion of the clue was provided. Ben knew his Suez Canal stuff, but he mixed up Ever Given with Evergreen. Admittedly, he was only off by two letters. If Darren had sloppy handwriting, we probably would've gotten the bonus points, but unfortunately Darren has very nice handwriting. We figured out that Ryan Gosling might have been a Backstreet Boy, which earned us five points, but we missed Jim Beam... mistaking it for Jack Daniels. They're distant cousins, right? It was only one point. And then Clifford the Big Red Dog was a Famous Canine we knew --- Mary even knew the name of his owner! Emily Elizabeth! That earned us two bonus points.

Round Two:

Ben and Darren figured out Stevie Ray Vaughan, which was awesome, and that earned us nine points PLUS two bonus points on the audio clue. Our math genius Darren also knows his triangles (so did I, though, if I'm being honest) and we therefore got seven points PLUS five bonus points for the category of Math Class. MLB Teams is just a dumb category (I have grown to detest all things sports-related at trivia) but we got the answer (Guardians) and the bonus (Progressive) and that worked out well. Broadway Musicals was tricky, but Darren and Kristin figured it out. There may have been some help from some others, but in my mind, the credit goes to Darren and Kristin. The answer was Billy Elliot. And the next category, Repeat After Me, was about oaths, the first being "Hippocratic" and the second being "Florence Nightingale." I said "Florence Nightingale" right off the bat and three people (Ben, Darren, and Kristin) sort of chuckled at me. But then Mary substantiated my answer and thankfully we went with that because it was right!

Halftime:

On the top, we had to identify famous architecture (like, houses and mansions and shit) and on the bottom we had to come up with top teams in the NHL. (Again with the sports! Ugh...) There was a word bank on the top, but the bottom was just using your own brain. Ben and Darren did pretty well overall; I think we missed two on the bottom and two on the top. I felt bad for Adam the DJ because this was a hard halftime sheet to grade. I mean, it wasn't just looking at matching. It was actually grading something. Kind of like what I do in class, only mine is worse because I'm grading essays and that takes longer because of poor grammar and a lack of capitalization and just the fact that sometimes the sentences don't make any sense at all.

Round Three:

Ben got the question about College Football (another sports question!!! boooo!!!!), but not the bonus. That's okay. Darren and I got Mark Twain right away thanks to the clue about his weird story "Pudd'nhead Wilson." Happy Birthday, Scorsese was fine. I mean, we got those answers right, and then we knew that the answer to You'll Find Me in the Kitchen was "knife sharpening" because of the clue of the day... and also because we just would have known it. Asian Geography was difficult, but Ben drew this nice map that will someday go in the coffee table book of trivia maps that I intend to publish.

6 -4- 2:

The answer was Piranha, which is a word I always struggle to spell. We got it for four points.

Round Four:

Music of the 2000s should have been a win for us. Ben right away said the answer was "Usher" and that the hit song was "Yeah." (This turned into a funny thing that won't be funny in this blog, but know that we laughed as a team.) Unfortunately, Mary and some others believed the answer to be "Eminem" and "Slim Shady" and so that's what we went with. And we were wrong. Seven points down the drain. We did fine with Vote Yes on These "Props," and equally fine on Let's Check the Temperature, but Modern Video Games sucked. None of us play video games; we are too busy living productive lives, you know?

Final Category:

"Pope"pourri was the category, which sounded like a whole lot of no-fun. And guess what? It was no fun. We got it wrong. Ben thought the answer was "Julien" and Darren thought the answer was "Gregorian" and the answer was "Gregorian," but Darren didn't tell us he thought "Gregorian" was the answer until after he turned in our answer slip with the word "Julien" on it. So we lost twelve points. Whatever. It is what it is. I didn't even pay attention to next week's opening category; I'll have to read the Pour House Trivia blog at some point in order to find out.

My big takeaway from tonight is this: No one but Phil understands the magical nature of a mouth-on-ear friend. Kristin thinks the concept is just repulsive because she doesn't like to think about things touching her ear canal, and Ben thinks a better name would be "Whisper Friend." But... I'm sorry. "Whisper Friend?" That's not funny at all! Mouth-on-ear friend is not only humorous, but also unique, and that is what my concert husband Phil is to me: humorous and unique.

The other takeaway from tonight is that The Educated Friends are awesome. I think the whole team is going to be at my book signing! How wonderful is that? Three of them (Brock, Kristin, and Phil) are going to be bartenders, my marketing manager Mary is going to help with sales and selfies, Alex is behind the entire operation since she owns the establishment, and Darren and Ben are coming for moral support. Isn't that wonderful? My friends are such cool humans and I love them and even when we don't place (like tonight) it doesn't even matter because The Educated Friends are the BEST teammates a girl could ask for.