Trivia Recap: 9/1

The Team: The Educated Friends

The Players: Mary (English teacher), Hannah (English teacher), Darren (math professor), Ben (social studies teacher), Phil (too complicated to put into words), Brock (something with art and computers), Victoria (veterinarian)

Opening Category: Songs from 1997

Hint of the Day: Cricket

Don’t get too excited. We didn’t even place. But… we did have fun!

Before heading over to Fourscore, I counted up my team’s gift cards and we had $170. You know what that means? That means drinks were on The Educated Friends last night!

Round One:

We rocked this round! Unfortunately, so did everyone else. I’m pretty sure just about every team was tied going into the second round. The opening question about Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” was pretty easy, and the hint of the day came into play in the second question, whose category was Name That Sport.

Round Two:

Things got harder. We did great with the audio clue. The category was I’m Walking Here, so each song had “Walking” in the title. My team made a list of possible titles even before we got the clue, but the best part was when Adam, the DJ, played the opening notes to “Walking on Sunshine” and nearly had a heart attack! I guess he wasn’t expecting such an abrupt beginning and he squealed like a little girl. A few folks considered 9-1-1, but he eventually got his heart rate under control and was able to also play “Walking in Memphis” and “Walking on Broken Glass.” We got all three correct, and did well with Historic Quotes and Shakespearean Titles as well (I will admit that Darren did better at this than the English teachers… Darren is just a wealth of knowledge; the man is brilliant), but we missed a question on World Geography and then another about Oscar-Winning Actresses. Mary actually knew the answer to the World Geography question, and she voiced it, but we didn’t go with it. Obviously, we should have. A similar thing happened with the last question. BOTH Brock and Mary knew it, but neither one spoke up. [insert eyeroll here]

Halftime Sheet:

This was HARD. On the top, we had to identify which song was being sung in the picture provided. I think we missed three. On the bottom, we had to list, in no particular order, the ten contiguous states with the smallest areas. I think we only missed one of these, but we only ended up with sixteen points. Usually we do better. The Street Sharks did better… and it paid off for them in the long run.

Round Three:

Okay. So this particular round had some of the worst categories of all time:

• A Trip to India

• European History

• Celebrity Hobbies

• The Civil Rights Movement

• Multi-Talented Performers

The team joined together to get the question about India correct. It was a three-part prompt. Ben got the first part, Darren the third, and Phil rationalized the third (What’s India’s fruit? It was worded better than that, though) by referencing a lot of recipes. Thanks to Ben, we figured out which King Louis we needed to reference (XIV), Darren and Phil and maybe some others got Paul Newman, which was the answer to Celebrity Hobbies. The one we missed was the last category. It asked about a Disney Channel star. I had no clue. Neither did anyone else.

Sidenote: I love Paul Newman and was really disappointed in myself for not knowing the answer to the two-point bonus that involved him. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is my favorite film of all time. I wrote a ten-page paper about it when I was in college; it was the first of the buddy films. My favorite scene is when Butch goes to blow up the train for a second time and his good friend Woodcock is protecting the money inside. When Paul Newman said, “Woodcock! Is that you, Woodcock?” I always pause and stare at him for a little while. His face is so cute.

6-4-2:

Who knew that Kurt Russell is an Elvis fanatic? We didn’t. We got it for two points.

Round Four:

We don’t know our Stand-up Comedians as well as we thought we did and it cost us five points. We did alright with this round, but my favorite part was the last question about TV Characters. Brock and Phil wanted to go with Captain Underpants, but my gut was telling me Beavis and Butthead… and I was right! It was only for one point, but we got a two-point bonus because Darren knew the name of the guy who created the show. And speaking of Darren… he was hilarious when we were given the clue for Three Clues, One Word. I didn’t even understand the question, but without talking to any of us, he wrote down the response, wagered nine points, and strutted across the restaurant to submit our answer. It was very theatrical! We earned a two-point bonus, but it should have been worth more because the performance was so good!

Final Question:

I didn’t even understand the final question. It was something about change for a dollar and the answer was $1.19. I think we got it right, but it didn’t make a difference because we were behind by too many points.

Next week’s opening category is the WNBA, which doesn’t sound especially fun at all, but it’s what the Street Sharks chose and they are the rightful winners.

Here’s a great thing that happened: When I went up to pay the tab, I found out that one of our gift cards that was meant to have $30 on it actually had $40 on it! So we had $180 to spend and we didn’t use all of it! I’ll continue stockpiling until we have some more wins and a few more gift cards to spend.