Trivia Recap: 2/9 (Sleeping with the Enemy)

Hello, Hannah’s Readers! This is Darren, who you might know best as Math Professor/Educated Friend/Guy Who Knows Way Too Much TV Trivia. Hannah and Mary went to a concert tonight and Ben is in Colorado and Phil is doing Important Lake Things and I am not sure about anyone else but none of them could come to trivia tonight. I was going to bail too, but as you might recall we won last week and we chose Algebraic Geometry as our first round category and I couldn’t skip that. So I called up my friends on the Street Sharks, who are normally our rivals, and they had space for me to join them tonight. Hannah asked me to write about it for all of you, who have been on the edge of your seat. She asked me to get a team photo but I didn’t because I wasn’t sure I should call attention to the fact that I would be blogging this.

The Players: Darren (Math Professor), Kevin (Librarian), Austin (Artist), Josh (Also an artist), Matt (Writer), Lauren (Editor), and Sarah (Conservation Coordinator)

Hint of the Day: VW Beetle, which I was 100% sure would be tied to the fact that today is the anniversary of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Opening Category: Algebraic Geometry

Round One:

So when I joined the team I promised I would have an inside track on the opening question, and dear readers I am ashamed to say that I got it wrong. In fact, I have never even heard of a Cassini Oval and actually had to look up what it meant. This wouldn’t have been a big deal but they made us choose it as our bonus category since, you know, I have a PhD in Algebraic Geometry so it was a sure thing. Sigh. Things were ok after that, as we knew some stock symbols (although we did not know that KO is Coca Cola because that’s just dumb), we knew what state Mount Rushmore was in (and its largest city!) and there was a question about The Beatles but it had nothing to do with Ed Sullivan so I get partial credit on my guess.

Round Two:

We knew the sins that showed up in song and movie titles for the audio clue, and we knew about alopecia. On the other hand, we did not know enough about our golf history to know who had the nickname “Golden Bear,” let alone what college they went to, even with the hint that it was NOT Berkeley. We also knew the two Central PA towns that are named after the cities that fought in the War of the Roses, although admittedly I only know that because of the baseball games between the York Revolution and the Lancaster Barnstormers.

The halftime round had us name countries by their flags and we got them all even though we didn’t see the hint that the countries all had six letters in their names. As a strange coincidence, one of the flags was Cyprus and Austin just got shortlisted for a Fulbright to go there, so we took this as a good omen for him. The bottom half had us matching comedy albums to the comedians who recorded them. We ended up only getting 8 out of 10 because we thought there was no possible way that Ellen DeGeneres released an album called "Taste This” in the same year that she came out as a lesbian. But it turns out that she did. Oops.

After halftime we were in third place, seven points below a pair of other teams.

Third Round:

We aced this one, due to Kevin’s knowledge of World War II, Lauren’s knowledge of Hilary Duff, and a collective knowledge of terms related to opera and Egyptian mythology. The hardest question of the round was also the one we chose as our bonus and asked about the flap of cartilage that helps food go down the esophagus. We all were naming words feeling like we would know it when we heard it and finally at the last possible second Kevin realized that the answer was epiglottis and not axylotyl or flange or uvula or any of the other ideas we had.

6-4-2:

We didn’t know that Kansas was the largest state that was part of the Louisiana Purchase but we did know they were the band that released “Dust in the Wind” so we got four points. We knew we had done well but were still surprised that we had made up the seven points and were now tied for first.

Fourth Round:

One of the categories was “World Oceans,” which made several members of the team start debating how many oceans there even are, and to be honest debating this distracted them for most of the third and fourth rounds. At one point I thought they were drawing a map but I have to say it was a sad excuse for a map compared to what Ben does for The Educated Friends each week. When the question came it was about which is the shallowest ocean. We voted 4-3 to put Indian instead of Arctic and the answer was Arctic. It also turns out that there are five Oceans, including one called the Southern Ocean. Otherwise in this round, we knew that the novel based on THE FIREMAN was Fahrenheit 451 but we didn’t know the protagonists name and we knew that the band that sung “Baby Love” was The Supremes but didn’t know their original name. We did not know who Buddy Love was but we did know that the Eagle was the first lunar module.

Final Round:

We were down by one point but we decided not to play it safe and wagered all 12 even though the category was NFL Geography and History. The question was something like “Miami residents who grew up in the 1950’s were often fans of an NFL team that was closest to them geographically. What is the current name of this team?” The question implied the team had changed its name since then so we went with the Commanders, although as soon as we turned it in we thought that Houston was closer so the answer should be the Oilers/Titans/Texans and we started kicking ourselved. But guess what? The Oilers didn’t start until 1960 so we were right! Which means we won!

(Note the lack of color or graphic design)

I guess this means that I am on a four-game win streak, but next week I will rejoin my Educated Friends and the opening category that Lauren & Matt chose is “Murder, She Wrote.” But actually, before that is this Saturday when the playoffs begin! And some of the Educated Friends will be going to the first round, where we will face off against 27 other teams. One of which is the Street Sharks, and after my evening embedded with them I have discovered all of their weaknesses. Bwah ha ha.