Trivia Recap: 11/30
The Players: Hannah (English teacher), Mary (English teacher), Darren (math professor), Victoria (veterinarian), and Danielle (bartender extraordinaire)
(There were some issues regarding my ability to take a photograph)
Opening Category: That 70s Show
Hint of the Day: Mustang
Here's a delightful treat for readers this week: nearly the entire team is writing the blog! I, Hannah, will be kicking off the experience and then Mary will recap Round Two and Halftime for you. From there, Darren will brief you on the goings-on of Round Three and (potentially) saving the best for last... Victoria will provide a riveting conclusion. She has hinted at the fact that she "might use really a lot of detail." (I will say that she took approximately four napkins' worth of notes!)
Round One (Hannah):
I was actually in the bathroom when the first question was read. I had a really good shrimp po' boy for dinner (it's a weekly special, so if you'd like to try it, you'll need to do so immediately; do not pass go, do not collect $200... go directly to Fourscore now) but it was kind of messy and I got the delicious cajun remoulade sauce on my fingers. Hence, me being in the bathroom at the time of the first question. I couldn't hear anything Adam said, but this didn't matter because Mary binged That 70s Show when she was in college and Darren has seen some episodes as well and they therefore figured out that the answer was Laurie. I have no idea who Laurie is, but I will say that when they mentioned his/her name, my thoughts went immediately to Laurie from Little Women because I've always found him to be very endearing and adorable. The next category was Geography Commonalities and I was wishing Ben was there because he might have been willing to draw a map on a napkin. Lately he's been cantankerous about map drawing and only "draws them in [his] head" 🙄, which is frustrating for many reasons. One, because it's impossible for others to view the map in his head, and two, because I collect his napkin maps and have big plans to do something with them... but his lack of cooperation has had a great impact on the outcome of this project. *sigh* Despite not having Ben and his mental maps, we did come up with the last four letters shared by something like seven Asian countries. The answer is -stan and we got that, but we didn't know the biggest country that ended with -stan. Mary suggested Afghanistan and I agreed with her because I recently finished A Thousand Splendid Suns. I strongly disliked it; it took more than two years for me to read it and it was just... a lot of abuse of women. I loved The Kite Runner, but I did NOT love A Thousand Splendid Suns. A bunch of things happen in that book, though, and it made Afghanistan sound incredibly large because of all the events that occurred, so it seemed likely that the country might be the biggest -stan country. It's not though. Another country is the biggest and I don't remember what that country is. Kazakhstan, I think? Chemical Potpourri was next and I didn't wear my periodic table shirt but it didn't matter because which child of the 90s doesn't know that hydrogen peroxide can be used to bleach hair in the sun? Darren knows a lot about TV Robots so that category was quite easy: The Jetsons have Rosie, Star Trek has Data, and there's some other robot in a show called Mystery Science Theater 3000 that I knew nothing about... Go, Darren! You really are a mathmegician! We chose In the Crayon Box as our bonus category and that ended up being an okay decision, but we did miss the extra two-point bonus. There are four four-letter colors in a standard (bigger-sized) box of crayons and one of them is plum. We needed to name the other three colors (gold, blue, and grey), but instead of gold we wrote pink and that's what lost us the two points. At the end of Round One, we had 32 points. Not too shabby, eh?
Round Two (Mary):
Today, I have the honor and privilege of writing about the second round of trivia on November 30, 2023. I feel as though I was awarded this task to impart some very important life lessons to Hannah’s readers and you will have to keep reading to learn what these valuable insights are.
The round began with the audio question of the evening asking us to name artists that performed songs that dealt with gratitude and being thankful. Originally, we thought we would have to name songs with the word “thanks” in the title and we were well-prepared, however, we were wrong. Thankfully, Danielle and Darren were able to name John Denver and Bette Midler as the artists of the first two songs. Unfortunately, even though I am a Kelly Clarkson fan, we were unable to name her as the third performer. The second question Darren knew without it being read since it was the hint of the day. He knew the college team nickname was the Mustangs. Ben’s absence was greatly felt for the next question which was about political parties. We were able to name the Whigs as the correct party, however, we could not name the fourth Whig president for our bonus. Which left us wondering whether or not Ben would have known the answer. Darren texted in the team group chat after trivia where it was confirmed that Ben could name the remaining Whig president that we needed. If only he would have come to trivia to help us. The next question was about American Companies and Darren once again knew it right away. The final question was about Alfred Hitchcock films. Hannah and I have both seen several Hitchcock films and felt confident going into the question, but we disagreed on the actor that starred in North by Northwest. I thought that it was Carey Grant, but Hannah thought it was Jimmy Stewart. I did not advocate and defend my suggestion, so we went with Hannah’s answer. However, Jimmy Stewart was wrong and Carey Grant was right. Since I cost us those points by not standing up for my original answer, I was nominated to write this portion of the blog.
Halftime:
For the top of the sheet, we had to name films and television shows whose titles included the word “love.” Unfortunately, we missed Love and Other Drugs and another film in which Elizabeth Olsen stars and whose title I still can’t recall. The bottom was left up to me to complete with some assistance from Victoria. We were to determine which artists have topped the Billboard Hot 100 this year. Of course, Taylor Swift was mentioned first and I definitely got that right. However, we incorrectly identified Nicki Minaj as a chart topper this year and once again, I failed to advocate and defend my belief that the Weeknd did indeed top the Billboard Hot 100.
So after reflecting on this portion of the evening, I want to leave you with these three pieces of wisdom:
You should be grateful (especially for good friends who know more about sports and music than you do and for the fact that Ben will be attending trivia again to help us with our presidential knowledge).
You should always believe in yourself (especially if you feel like you know the right answer to a question that could gain your trivia team three points in a very close trivia game).
Don’t keep making the same mistakes because you may find yourself writing about a specific round of a trivia blog because this is the one-thousandth time you knew the correct answer and allowed yourself to be talked out of it and lost your team points. (I know that this is not statistically correct. Don’t get annoyed, Darren. I’m writing an example of hyperbole.)
Round Three (Darren):
Darren here to talk you through round 3. Coming out of halftime we were in sixth place I think. We had done well, but I guess a number of other teams were doing even better. In this round, we had been tempted to choose “3 clues, one number” as our bonus category because as a mathematician I do know a lot about numbers. But I also know that there are an infinite number of numbers so I discouraged people and also I really don’t like to use the “3 clues” categories as a bonus for reasons that are really boring and which I have to re-explain to my teammates each week. And it’s a good thing we didn’t as we didn’t know either the chemical number of Boron or Joe Dimaggio’s number. Luckily, we were able to figure out that there are five states that border Virginia, so we got the question right even if we did not get the bonus points.
There was a question about the wise herb in the mint family that Native American smudging rituals use to cleanse places that we got right for several reasons, and another question about electricity resistance although Adam did not let us answer that the unit was simply Ω and made us put ‘Ohm’. While Victoria and I debated that answer, there was some kind of drama where Hannah saw a spot in Mary’s eye and Mary started to get concerned and went to the bathroom (which you may or may not know was a recurring theme of the evening, depending on what other people write) to check it out. This would have been fine, except that the category we chose as the bonus was Country Music Artists & Their Songs and we only chose it to rely on Mary so the rest of us started to get panicked as Adam read the question and she was putting her own medical interests and sight more important than the team. We sent Hannah to go fetch her, at which point Mary calmly walked out, sat down, and said “Martina McBride”. Which was in fact the correct answer.
The last question asked which two countries the antemeridian line goes through and my teammates got a little slap happy and started discussing whether or not Antarctica was a country. I did not let us put that answer as I had never heard of a penguin Prime Minister, but the ones we put were no more correct, making this the only question of the round that we missed.
6-4-2:
The 6-4-2 round asked about a Star Wars character and the 6 point clue said that Kelloggs had released a cereal named after this character in 1984. My gut really told me that there was a cereal called C3P-O’s but then I started to second guess myself that this was from the Admiral Ackbar’s Snack Bar video (which is ironic if you watch the video). But no, it was in fact a real cereal (watch this commercial!) and my hesitation meant we didn’t turn in the answer until 4 points like all the other teams since we all knew who Anthony Daniels was. So despite our good showing, we did not make up any ground. Will we on the last leg of the race? I will hand you over to Victoria to fill you in.
Round Four (Victoria):
Hello all you cool cats out there. This is your friendly neighborhood Skoogmasta flex presenting Round 4 for your reading pleasure. So, this round started out in the bathroom. I could hear Adam reading the question just as I was flushing. ‘That’s okay’ I thought. He’ll read it a second time. I washed my hands as fast as I could, then started the dryer just as Adam started repeating the question. EGADS! I rushed out in time to hear something about a painter and a Greek God. Thank bananas, our team was on it.
They came up with Smudgy Half Shell Venus. No idea what that means. Then the debate was between Davinci and Michealangelo for the painter. We went with Michealangelo, but the painter was called something like ‘Bocciball’. 90% sure that’s correct. Anyhue, on to the next question- A sporty first word-last word. Adam was about to give an example when the entire bar started to list his typical schpeal. He was a step ahead of us and used an example about what Santa says attached to the name of a Chinese president. It was Ho Ho Ho Xi Jinping. This made Adam chuckle.
The sports question was about a Raiders quarterback in 1982 and a 1991 NBA Rookie of the year. Darren came up with Ray Allen Iverson. Sadly, the first name of the QB was incorrect. This was obviously Ben’s fault as he was AGAIN missing from trivia. Darren agreed and stated we could blame Ben for that one.
The third question was about Ancient History. None of us were quite confident in this. The question was about a battle in Athen’s Greece in 490 B.C. where a man ran over 25 miles to warn a city of the incoming army. Hannah shouted, “Wow, that’s almost a marathon”. Darren said ‘No shit’ with his eyes, and wrote down Marathon. We weren’t sure who was the opposing force to the Greeks in this battle but guessed incorrectly the Ottomans (answer was Persians). Then came dog breeds for the fourth question.
We chose this as our bonus since we are all magical at dog breeds except Darren. The question was about a breed used in the Alps to rescue people stuck in the snow. Darren said, “EVEN I KNOW THAT.” Yepperooni, it was a St. Bernard.
The final question was an over/under TV question. We had to list which TV series was over or under 3 seasons. If we got all three right, we’d get the bonus. The shows were Weeds, Firefly, and NipTuck. Mary and Darren knew that Weeds was over 3 seasons, Firefly was less than 3 seasons, and I knew NipTuck was over 3 seasons. We nailed it. Mary said that “well, between the four of us…” Hannah corrected this to “AMONG the four of us.”
There was a pause before the final question which allowed Hannah time to perfect her art of drawing squiggles. Darren commented that she might want to stick to the art that she was good at, but Mary and I both agreed we would purchase a squiggle from Hannah if one appeared at her upcoming art show this Thursday at the Garryowen in town.
Meanwhile, Darren confessed that he had been stealing Hulu from one of his friends until one day the password mysteriously changed. When he asked his friend’s wife about it, she said Hulu must have changed the rules. Eventually Darren was able to pressure his friend into a full confession. He had intentionally changed the password because they kept kicking each other off the subscription when the other was watching. I will never lie to Darren.
We decided to wager it all on the final question since we were in fourth place and we assumed Streetsharks were going to ‘Streetshark’ the last questions (aka, bet it all and lose). The question was about the only non-Disney owned or associated film that appeared in a list of top ten animated films. Mary and I considered Roger Rabbit, but Darren came up with Shrek early in the game. With some light debate, we finalized Shrek as our answer. Surprisingly, Streetsharks didn’t Streetshark, but we did also get it correct and ended up in second place.
At the end, Hannah tried to take a picture of us, but it was as if she had never used a phone or camera in her entire life. After many failed attempts, she decided the best idea was to try to shoot the most difficult setting on her camera-phone, the Panorama. The Panoramic picture came out with her looking akin to a racoon with deepset dark swirly eyes, Mary with a blurry smile, Darren looking normal, and me also looking normal.
(I [Hannah] tried a panoramic photo; it didn't work)
(Our text exchange after the evening's events)
The End
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