Trivia Recap: 4/4

The Players: Hannah, Mary, Victoria, Darren, Ben, Brock, Jenn

Hint of the Day: Mashed Potatoes.  Someone on another team was even wearing a ‘Mashed Potatoes’ baseball cap, which I assume is not a coincidence.

Guys, I’m worried about Hannah.  I’m writing this the day after we played trivia, and last night when I told her that I was feeling both tired and uninspired to write the blog (my day may have involved some day drinking.  Shhhh) she told me “You don’t have to do it.  There is absolutely no expectation.”  Does that sound like the Hannah we know and love?  I know her birthday is imminent and that she has a lot of other things going on, but this was out of character. 

One of the things that I think is distracting Hannah is the topic of book banning.  When I first arrived at FourScore, Mary and Hannah and Victoria were deep in conversation on this topic.  Hannah was on a roll and I think she may use this soapbox to say more in the future.  For the record: I am pretty sure that she is against book bans, although I wasn’t paying close attention as I was studying up for the opening category.  And the aforementioned day drinking.  You may recall that last week Smartacus won, and they chose “19th Century Vice Presidents” as the opening category, so I was quickly reviewing a few Wikipedia pages until Hannah told me that Ben was coming even though he had previously said he wasn’t, and since he is a world-renowned expert on vice presidents I felt comfortable.

Well, it turns out that Smartacus chose that category precisely because they knew they weren’t going to be at trivia this week.  And the question had to do with someone who was only vice president for like a month and even Ben didn’t know the answer.  Luckily, we did know the names of both of the schools that are in both the men and women final fours this year (or is it “Finals Four” the way it is “Attorneys General”?  Hannah, can you weigh in on this one?) (Hannah here! I have absolutely no idea, but I like how goings-on and passersby are made into plurals by adding an S to the middle of the word).  We also knew that mashed potatoes are in shepherds pie (and not just because it was the hint of the day) and that Annie Potts was the voice of Little Bo Peep in Toy Story.  Victoria was “9000%” sure that she knew a bible quote up until the moment we turned it in at which point she apologized strongly and profusely for getting it wrong.  But she in fact got it right, so that whole question was quite a roller coaster ride.

The final question of the round asked for the 17th century poem about Adam and Eve being cast out of the Garden of Eden and the descent of Lucifer.  Ben was absolutely sure it was Dante’s Inferno, but Mary was worried because she didn’t know who the author of that work was, which might not have been her proudest moment.  Of course, Ben was wrong as the answer was Paradise Lost, so there was plenty of shame to go around.

The next round started off strong. As always, we went with the audio question for our bonus and this week we had to identify three musical artists singing about pina coladas.  I immediately knew Warren Zevon and we all recognized Snoop Dogg’s voice even if we didn’t know the song.  There was a lot of debate about the third singer but Mary thought it was Garth Brooks and as the saying goes “Always defer to Mary on questions of country music and alliteration” so we went with her and she was right.

The rest of the round we were on fire and Ben deserves a lot of the credit for that.  He redeemed his lack of knowledge about Vice-Presidential deaths by knowing that William Henry Harrison was the first president who died in office. He knew that India and Myanmar are the two countries that border Bangladesh.  And he knew that the Last Word/First Word answer was “Chapelle’s Show Me The Money” and not, in fact, “Billy Crystal Ball.”  Victoria and I made sure we had a perfect round by knowing the two elements on the periodic table whose chemical symbols were the letter S followed by a vowel, which is good since Hannah forgot to wear her periodic table shirt. 

We were on fire going into the halftime sheet.  The top half asked us to identify football teams from their helmets with the logos removed.  We did pretty well on this, but we might have done better if we had looked more at the color version on Adam’s computer rather than just the black and white printout. 

The second half asked us for words that can be made from the letters of WRESTLEMANIA, like the process of soaking meat in a seasoned liquid (‘Marinate’) and the team that plays in Emirates Stadium (‘Arsenal’) and Sarah Koenig’s podcast (‘Serial’) and we got almost all of them but did not know the name of the TV show about Bass Reeves.  So our great game continued and we were in first place after halftime.  Although the part Hannah was most excited about was:

As you can see in that photo, the next round opened with African shorelines.  Despite Ben’s excellent map seen below we struggled to name the three countries on the southeast shoreline of Africa between Sudan and South Africa.

Ben’s excellent map of Africa and/or an ice cream cone

The next question was not much better, as your Educated Friends do not know our military ranks.  However, we do know things that have the initials “P.K.” such as penalty kicks, Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan, and The Toadies’ song Possum Kingdom.  Ben and I also probably knew a little too much about the movie Yentl (hey ladies, we’re single!), although neither of us could remember the Academy Award nominated song “Papa Can You Hear Me.” There was also a question about word origins that asked for the name of the mathematical object that derives its name from a Greek word meaning sand tray.  While I wasn’t totally sure, I suggested ‘Abacus’ in part because I couldn’t think of anything else that made sense.  New Player Jenn strongly disagreed with this answer (perhaps not knowing that I’m a mathematician) but didn’t have one of her own.  In fact, when we put it down she said that she would buy the whole team a round of beers if ‘Abacus’ was the answer.  And it was the answer, but I don’t think any of us took her up on that offer.  Have I mentioned that I have a giant abacus in my office or a small one on my keychain?

My rainbow abacus

For the 6-4-2 question, we did not remember that the word ‘Barefoot’ is the start of a Neal Simon play that Robert Redford starred in, and one unnamed team member was convinced that the answer was ‘Graduate’ but then we explained to them that plays are not movies and Neal Simon is different from Paul Simon.  Luckly, we did know that Ina Garten is the Barefoot Contessa so we got the clue for four points.  And we were still in the lead.

The fourth round started with ‘Medical Conditions’.  We had chosen this as our bonus category because Victoria is in fact a medical professional.  I had been reluctant because she mostly knows medical conditions that are in animals.  And the question was for the scientific terms for ‘nearsighted’ and ‘farsighted’, and Victoria immediately exclaimed “Dogs can’t be nearsighted!”  Luckily we still came up with ‘myopic’ but not the other one.  I knew about the TV show Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and we all knew about the Liberty Bell.  We somehow got the question about boxing history correct, and Mary not only knew the lead singer of the band One Republic but also knew that the 2023 film that featured their song was Top Gun: Maverick despite the fact that the film was actually released in 2022.  At this point we were still in first, but you wouldn’t know that if you were following Hannah’s score tally because despite her earlier celebrations, at this point her math was wrong.  Maybe I should give her my abacus?

The final question of the night asked for the real first name of rap artist Nelly, which is also the name of an Ivy League university.  While there was a contingent of our team that thought his first name was ‘University of Pennsylvania’, we did in fact go with the obvious answer Cornell, and that was correct.  Meaning we won the night!  We thought about going with ‘18th century Secretaries of State’ for next week’s opening category to get our revenge on Smartacus, but instead we chose “Fahrenheit 451 (the novel)”.  Despite the fact that she will be a year older and wiser, Hannah won’t be at trivia next week because she will be going to a big book burning carnival, or something like that.  Hopefully she will be back to normal and harassing me to write the blog again.  Otherwise, please send help.

An outtake from the team photoshoot.