Trivia Recap: 6/8, Smoke Plume Edition

Players: Mary (English Teacher), Darren (Math Professor), Brock (A/V Stuff), & Ben (Teacher & Blog Author)

The team is once again handicapped. Hannah is vacationing, Alex is coffee-ing, and Phil is B.O.D.-y-ing. And the miscellaneous players were nowhere to be found. Perhaps, team Educated Friends could overcome the limitations.

The last-week winner’s choice category was French Surrealist Poetry. 🙄However the question provided enough context (a piece of Mel Gibson dialogue in Braveheart) that the team found its first points because the answer was “FREEEEEDOOOM!!”

Q2 (Bonus Q) asked the team to identify the film franchise led by Harrison Ford into its fifth iteration and to identify the subtitle for bonus points. Easy points. Q3 asked the team to identify 3 words with the letters “BUST” somewhere sequentially. “Combustion” (humans can’t do this), “Buster” (Posey of the SF Giants), and “Robusta” (a type of coffee) achieved full points and a bonus for team EF (we may have wrote Robusto, but maybe not . . . ironic that the team was missing its coffee shop owner). Q4 was the first falter. Do you know the amount of seconds on the NBA shot clock? It’s 24, but we thought it was 30. That flawed thinking limited the second part of the question contributions from math know-it-all Darren. Q5 (Medieval Times) asked about some Pope’s order to take back Jerusalem and we knew it was the Crusades, but the team was unable to successfully identify a year within the range of time in which the first Crusade mission took place (1096ish). At the end of round one, team EF was in decent, but not super shape.

Round two led off with a question (Bonus pts.) about TV theme songs. It was competitive reality TV theme songs though so some members probably disassociated from life during this moment (right team?). In miraculous fashion Darren identified “Survivor” and Mary identified “Dancing with the Stars” to earn us the points. However, we, like all but one team couldn’t identify the third one for bonus points. Q7 asked teams to identify a brand, developed in the 1960’s, that is synonymous with plastic sandwich bags (Ziploc) which the team earned points for. Q8 (my favorite of the night) asked teams to identify the two countries in South America named after a person. The answer was Bolivia (Simón Bolívar) and Colombia (Christopher Columbus). Check. Q9 (MLB player nicknames) looked for the answer to who earned the nickname “Mr. November” during the 2001 MLB Championship. I instantly wrote down Randy Johnson because I knew the D-Backs won that year. I was also sorta thinking about Mark Grace. However, Darren went to Derek Jeter right away which was correct. I don’t remember his heroics during that series, but they lost, so it seems a little ridiculous to earn that nickname when you didn’t win the series. Q10 asked participating teams to identify the two elements represented by two vowels on the periodic table. The team all knew gold (Au), but was unsure of the second. Darren suggested Ei for Einsteinium, but that was wrong. It’s Eu for Europium. I suspect if someone wore a periodic table t-shirt to the competition, it would have helped.

The half-time sheet required teams to identify the celebrities depicted in bad tattoos on the top. Team EF got them all, but shout-out to me for knowing the bottom left was Rachel Ray (pulled that one from my subconscious I guess). The bottom was a typical matching question asking to match authors to their debut novels. Is it common knowledge that there were two Brontes? Mary was cooking on this from the time the sheet was laid down which earned a perfect 20/20.

Round three, Q11 (children’s literature): This children’s book starts with some kind of quote about a farmer grabbing his ax to slaughter a pig. Mary knew it was Charlotte’s Web, which made sense. Q12 (health care) asked teams to identify a medical system started by a German immigrant. My mind went immediately to Kaiser Permanente for somewhat obvious reasons and that was correct. Q13 (3 clues, 1 word) was a good question (I don’t remember all the clues). We got it on the second clue and it was “Odyssey”. And then came Q14 on governmental agencies. I take a lot of personal guilt for how this went down. First, I suggested this be our bonus question. Second, Brock and I talked the team into going with the FBI and not the US Marshals for an answer to which agency is responsible for the witness protection program. Mary had made the correct suggestion, but didn’t advocate enough to overturn our gut instincts. That’s trivia! Q15 asked about international singers and was a question about a solo dude from BTS and Mary got the answer, but we failed the bonus. At this point, we are second place, but trailing by a good bit to the Street Sharks.

6-4-2: Name the actor portraying William Hale in the new Scorsese movie Killers of the Flower Moon. The team was torn between Dicaprio and De Niro. EF waited on clue two which landed the answer of De Niro. 4 points.

Q16 (world geography): Basically, which two countries border the Strait of Gibraltar? 🇪🇸and 🇲🇦! Points earned. Q17 (cajun cooking): Paraphrasing, what is the weird name of the Cajun dish which combines white rice and chicken giblets? Darren knew this to be “Dirty Rice” and it sounds delicious! Q18 (triple 50/50): Which movies earned an Oscar nomination or a Razzy nomination? The answer had to be one or the other. Indecent Proposal was a Razzy, Pearl Harbor was an Oscar (apparently for sound), and Fifty Shades of Grey was a Razzy. Team EF got it correct, but personally, I think Indecent Proposal is the best film. Q19 (90’s trends) asked about a trend started during an episode of TV titled “The Orthodontist” or something like that. Mary knew it was “the Rachel” hairstyle. Q20 (College Basketball) included another stumble. What team, who beat Duke, was the only team to score over 100 points in a NCAA championship game? And, who was the coach? I don’t think any team got this correct. It was UNLV and Jerry Tarkanian.

Final Question (International Organizations): What 70s pop song shares its name with an organization started by George Williams in 1844?

It’s the YMCA, team EF got it right, but it finished 1 or 2 points behind the archrival Street Sharks team. Second place equals more beers though. Next week’s first category is “David Sedaris.”