Trivia Recap: 5/11

The Players: Hannah (English teacher), Ben (not a trash collector), Alex (coffee shop owner), Darren (math professor)

Opening Category: Coffee!

Hint of the Day: Snow (because we didn’t get any this year…)

It was a tiny team this week because Victoria was “in the land of dental hell,” Mary didn’t have a babysitter (we don’t count Mary’s babysitter as a member of our team because she doesn’t contribute to the answers, but Mary does require supervision when she comes to trivia each week; she gets rowdy), Brock was somewhere that was not Gettysburg, and Phil had another meeting. That fellow is always in meetings…

Before the game actually began, I remembered that I had a small gift for Ben. Want to know what it was? Of course you do! It was a pickle sticker that said “I ❤️ pickles,” which I purchased for him while visiting a pickle shop in Jim Thorpe. Upon giving it to him, Ben said, “You know, I don’t really love pickles that much.” To which I responded, “Sure, but it’s our bit. It’s what we do.” And then Alex pointed out that we do the same thing with Blink 182… which also came up a couple times last night because I was talking about how bothered I am by certain voices. Like, I once went on a date with a guy who was really handsome and nice, but his voice was terrible. I struggle with that. Sensitive ears, I guess.

Round One:

Since The Educated Friends won last week, we got to choose the opening category, and as Darren explained in last week’s blog, Alex chose the opening category of Coffee! We all knew that Brazil/Brasil was the answer because we know that 40% of coffee beans come from there, and that was the clue. Alex wanted us to spell Brazil with an S, but Ben spelled it with a Z on the little slip that we had to take up. This resulted in a comical argument between the two, which (in my opinion) Ben won when he left the table saying, “I’m not going to spell all the countries the way the countries spell the countries. Deutschland.”

Before trivia started, Darren had texted to say that we could send him a picture of the categories and he would help us choose our bonus categories. He didn’t actually give us input on bonus categories, but he did express disappointment that he’d be missing For the Comic Book Lovers. You see, Darren was running late because his son had a baseball game. He showed up in time for Three Clues / One Name, which was helpful, but it would have been more helpful if he’d been on time because he knew the bonus for the comic book category and the Coffee Shop category that we missed completely.

All in all, Round One was a bit of a struggle for us, which is unusual because we typically do very well to start the game. Still, our hopes remained high.

Round Two:

Unique Cover Songs, the audio clue of the day, was a fun one because the songs were sung in foreign languages. I recognized Cheap Trick’s “I Want You to Want Me” (even though I know Letters to Cleo’s version better), which proved helpful to the team. We all knew “Rock the Casbah” because EVERYBODY knows that song! 🤘🏼Rock ‘n’ roll! And thank goodness Alex and Darren have some teenybopper tendencies because they recognized Justin Bieber’s song… whose name I cannot think of right now. 1990s TV Sitcoms proved to be fun -- Tia and Tamara of Sister, Sister fame! -- and Ben was an asset regarding films based on fairy tales. I am continually impressed by both Darren and Ben’s ability to figure out dates. They are so rational and logical about sorting through all the files in their brains; it’s a fascinating thing to watch.

It was around this time that I randomly asked Alex if she would prefer to swim with a whale shark or a manatee. This is just how my brain works, folks. Alex chose a manatee. I’d choose a whale shark because I used to have a picture book in which a small scuba diver was swimming beside a whale shark and the whale shark was placed beside a school bus. I just think it would be really neat to swim beside something that large… and have it be a shark! Ben chose a whale shark too because he could “guarantee manatees kill more people than whale sharks.” Alex and I disputed this, saying that manatees are known as the cows of the sea, but Ben said he’d prove his point.

He couldn’t, of course. Despite his cockiness when he pulled his phone from his pocket to do internet research, he quickly discovered that there are no recorded instances of manatees hurting anyone.

I also confided to Alex that I love to imagine what it would be like to be a small scuba diver and swim in regular things that have been filled with water. Bathroom and kitchen sinks are great for these imaginings because some of them have really fun shapes! Ben then talked about how when he was a kid, he’d look out the window of a car (while on a trip or whatever) and right there where the ground met the sky, he’d envision a little guy who had to get by all the obstacles that cropped up. Kind of like that fun dinosaur game that shows up when the internet doesn’t work on a Mac. I love that game! I’m actually quite good at it. Anyway, I told Ben I was going to someday use that mental video game of his in a book because I thought it was totally adorable and clever.

Halftime:

We aced this. The top half required us to identify movies based on stills. I wasn’t very helpful with this because I am not much of a movie watcher. To commit to a movie, in my mind, is just a lot. D’you know what I mean? But, like, for some reason my brain doesn’t feel that committing to an entire series is a big deal because those episodes are chunked into 45 minutes or so. Much more reasonable.

The bottom half of the halftime sheet was matching authors to their books, and I was kind of helpful with that. Darren and I knocked that out in a matter of seconds. No more than one minute, certainly.

Round Three:

Alex and I had wanted to choose Dog On It as our bonus category, but we ended up going with Actors and Their Roles. It wouldn’t have mattered either way because we got the points for both. The categories that were tricky were A+B=C Board Game Edition and Country Music Duets. We missed both. None of us is very familiar with backgammon, which proved to be problematic, and we don’t listen to much country music either.

6-4-2:

Confession: We should have listened to Ben when he told us the answer was Wonder Bread after just one clue, but I really didn’t think that was right. Turns out, it was right. We got it for 4 points but could have had it for 6.

Round Four:

As per usual, Ben and Darren figured out the answer to MLB Divisions, and I think we got 20th Century World History right as well. (I think I was getting a beer at that point because I was pretty certain I wouldn’t know the answer.) We would have gotten Olympic Geography except for the fact that I thought Sydney was the capital of Australia and it’s not. Granted, no one was sure what the capital was… but still.

Final Category:

Reality TV was the category and the question was “Which show won the Emmy for seven straight years starting in 2003?” Darren knew the answer, which put us into second place. (In case you’re wondering, the answer was The Amazing Race.)

Next week’s opening category is The Flintstones (the show, not the vitamins), so I might need to watch some old cartoons in the near future. Yabba dabba dooooooo!