Trivia Recap: 9/15

Who's a valuable player? This girl.

The Players: Hannah (English teacher), Mary (English teacher), Ben (social studies teacher), Darren (math professor), Phil (too complicated to put into words but definitely a damn fine lawn helper), Greg (Phil's friend, career a mystery), and Victoria (veterinarian)

Opening Category: The Sound of Music

Hint of the Day: Whale

Round One:

Did you know that the moonlight shines on the wings of wild geese? No? Well, neither did we. The Educated Friends missed the first question of the game... but in the long run, it didn't matter all that much. The men got "Candle in the Wind" and nocturnal/diurnal, but Mary and I were spot on with our Renaissance man answer of "Michelangelo." It's because we're both looking for a Renaissance man. Unfortunately, it seems that the Renaissance men in Adams County are already married.

Weirdly, we all killed Triple 50/50: Minor League Sports. Though none of us had any evidence to support our answers, we all opted for the combination of "hockey, baseball, baseball" and that was right. It earned us a two-point bonus.

Round Two:

Although I wasn't much of an asset when it came to TV theme songs, I knew a thing or two about American Authors (along with several of my team members) and spaghetti sauce. Phil wanted to go with Ragu, and he thought that's the answer we were going with, but apparently when Phil said "Ragu" the rest of us thought he said "Prego" and "Prego" is what I had said right off the bat. So when Darren walked our five-point answer of "Prego" up to Adam and Phil realized we hadn't written "Ragu," he was worried.

He was worried for no reason, I should add, since "Prego" was the correct answer.

Greg proved his worth with "Huntsville." The clue was something about a populated city in Alabama (I forget the exact wording) and both Darren and Ben were toying with the idea of "Montgomery." Greg was all like, "One hundred percent, it's Huntsville." So we listened to him and it earned us three points. Woohoo, Greg!

Halftime Sheet:

We only missed one. I was convinced the answer was "Steve Irwin" but my team thought it was someone else whose name I cannot remember at the moment because it's late and I'm tired and I don't feel especially well. (I'll explain why in a moment.) Anyway, we put down not Steve Irwin and it was wrong. But Steve Irwin was wrong too. The real answer was, like, a Russian hockey star or some such nonsense as that. Alex Ovechkin. How were we to recognize his face carved from wax?

Side note: I have a lot of weeds in my yard. Weeds to the point that I can edge my garden three or four times each summer and these stupid viney things called Creeping Charlie still encroach upon my flowers and strangle things to death. Randomly, I asked my concert husband Phil if he'd help me with my lawn. He's taken the request quite seriously. Today, we got into some serious lawn repair. I had to mow yesterday in preparation and I was go-go-go from the time I got home from school to about 7:30 when I sat down on the couch to watch Jeopardy. By 8:00, I was feeling crummy. I slept terribly, waking up every hour or so because my glands were swollen and my throat hurt. I had a weird dream about a French owl (she spoke a little English, fortunately) who had been hit by a car and was worried about its nestlings who were being held captive by two French dancers in a yellow farmhouse not far away. I needed to use a phonebook to find the number for a wildlife rehabilitation center. No one would answer the phone and it was just a very stressful dream. I went to work exhausted and then came home to mow the grass, like, five more times because Phil did this thing to the lawn that eliminated a good chunk of the weeds but I then had to bag the mess that it made. And that made a mess in my lungs and it turns out, at the age of forty-one, I have some serious fall allergies. I'm hoping to sleep tonight... but we'll see.

Round Three:

South America was the first category and Ben drew a map. It didn't help us to get the right answer, but I'm still adding it to the collection. Someday, there will be a coffee table book of his napkin- and halftime-sheet drawings and you will buy it to put on display in your living room. We all got the next musical question, "In the Orchestra," correct... simply because "Violin" seemed like a logical answer. "3 Clues, 1 Number" was a bit harder. It had to do with speed skating and distances and ultimately our math guy Darren figured it out. Phil helped him to rationalize things, though. The good news? Their efforts paid off and we got the points. All nine of them PLUS our five bonus points! Woot! Woot! Go team!

"Time for Some Bubbly" was one of my shining moments. Did you know the frothy stuff on champagne is referred to as "Mousse?" Neither did my team... but yours truly figured it out! We got the points (all one of them; Phil felt "one-point confidence" in my answer) and I received some accolades.

Unfortunately, Mary and I over-rationalized the "Science Fiction Characters" clue and opted for "Jules Verne" instead of "H.G. Wells." Darren had originally said "H.G. Wells" and we should have listened to him because he was right. We lost two bonus points for that one.

6-4-2:

We needed to figure out the last name of someone and that someone had the last name of "Banks." I forget the clues because they didn't mean anything to me, but we got four points.

Round Four:

Good ol' Ben understood the significance of the show Robot Chicken (apparently this is stop-animation, so I should probably watch an episode or two, eh?) and Darren helped him come up with the bonus answer of "Seth Green." We chose "Toys and Games" as our bonus category (Phil insisted it was called "Poison Games") and Darren got this immediately. Did you know Wonder Woman had an invisible plane and a toy company (I forget which one; maybe Darren will put this detail in the Facebook comments) sold an empty box claiming to contain it?

The next category was "Shark Attack" and I knew I was going to be good at this but my team seemed skeptical. I guess they didn't believe that I used to check shark books out of the library and I've not only seen all the Jaws movies but I've also read the book AND I love Shark Week. But, whatever. The answers were 1) Dorsal, 2) Whale Shark (which I had written down before the clues were even given, mind you), and 3) Florida. Florida is where the majority of shark attacks have occurred. Several members of my team were leaning toward California, but they finally realized that I was right and we went with Florida and it paid off.

Next was "Ancient Landmarks" and we didn't know the answer. We didn't even know it after we heard it. But the last category was "Classic Song Lyrics" and I secretly thought to myself, "This is your category, Hannah." Because if there's one thing I love, it's songs from the 50s and 60s. This one was soooooooo easy! The answer was "Me and Bobby McGee" but I was the only one on my team who knew it! And then Ben was trying to figure out the bonus question (which I didn't really understand), but once I figured out what he was trying to come up with, I was all like, "Oh. Kris Kristofferson?" And he was like, "Yes!" And so we put it down because I watched a whole Sunday Morning episode about that song and how he wrote it and Janis Joplin changed the lyrics to "windshield wipers slappin' time" and I freaking love that song so much!!!

Not only was I the only one on my team who knew the answer, I WAS THE ONLY ONE IN THE RESTAURANT WHO KNEW THE ANSWER. So... turns out I'm not the weakest link. Yay, Hannah!

Final Category: Beer

Phil had expected Mary to get the answer to the final question because she usually does, but then the category was announced as "Beer" and there's no one who knows beer better than Phil and so he had the answer pronto and we turned it in and got twelve more points as a result... which made us the overall winners by one point! GO EDUCATED FRIENDS!!!

Next week's opening category: Old Crow Medicine Show. I'm sure the answer will be "Wagon Wheel" and the clue will involve Darius Rucker. Adam had absolutely no clue who Old Crow Medicine Show was when I told him our category. He was very, very puzzled and referred to them as "a type of band." Hopefully, he checks them out before next week. Adam, if you're reading this, my favorite song is "8 Dogs, 8 Banjos." Give it a listen.