We’ve only five days until World Series XV, and some teams are firing on all cylinders!

MONDAY’S STATS AND FACTS (47 teams across six venues):

Highest Overall Score: Beat the Bookworm (Il Forno) with 172

Highest Score After Round 4: PC Principals (Basic Burger) with 161

Highest First-Half Score: The Arrondissements of Ouagadougou (Greene Turtle), H.R. Puff ‘N’ Stuff (Basic Burger), PC Principals with 90

Perfect 21 (correct on all wagering questions): Beat the Bookworm

–> Monday’s halftime page featured TV Moms and Athlete Dads.  The average score reached 16.7, with 18% of our teams scoring a perfect 20 points.

–> Only 10% of our teams earned six points on our 6-4-2 question, as it must be a common misconception that the second most populous U.S. city on the Pacific coast is San Diego (and not San Francisco).

MONDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (21.9% success rate):

–> In 2001, which American company paid 57 million dollars for the naming rights to a new professional sports stadium? (you’ll find the answer later in this blog)

_______________________________________________________________

DRP in Alexandria, VA

_________________________________________________________________

Greene Turtle in Hagerstown, MD

This week was the last week before the Summer Season kicks off, and it was definitely a fun one.  Thanks to some odd luck involving the Winner’s Choice and the audio question we had TWO questions about hit songs from the 1980’s (you’re welcome Bryan!).  The first one was specifically about #2 hits of the 1980’s, while the standard audio question dealt with the song ‘Down Under’ by Men At Work.

The halftime page asked teams to identify TV moms (first or last name was fine), as well as matching athletes to their athletic parents.  Teams did pretty well overall on this page and we even had two perfect pages!  In the second half the Henrietta Lacks question wiped the field, but luckily nobody picked Non-Fiction Works for their bonus (shocker, I know).  The final question of the night was about American Companies, and asked about a company that purchased the naming rights to a stadium in 2001.  The hint was really in the price they paid, which was 57 million, the answer to this being Heinz.

Only a few teams got this right and things changed up a bit, with the final three being this:

First Place:  The Arrondissements of Ouagadougou

Second Place:  That’s a Niner

Third Place:  Leprechauns

Next week we start with a question about the ‘Survivor All-Star Seasons’, so study up and I’ll see you all then!  Good luck to my teams who will be competing in the World Series this Sunday!  I’ll see you all next week!

Until next time,

~ Chad

_________________________________________________________________

Morgan Inn in Woodbine, MD

Back again at Morgan Inn in Woodbine after a Memorial Day hiatus, great to see you all!  First off, I would like to give props to Morgan Station as the House Champs for Morgan Inn, good luck at the World Series this Sunday, I can tell by your questions that you are really looking forward to the experience.  I’ll do a brief run down for you tonight, here are some of the subjects of round one, first off who knew that this was an Olympic sport?

Or that Hyundai has started a luxury line?

Now to top it off, we are going to see the return of this TV comic duo.

We went “down under” for our second round audio clue and the 80’s Australia phenom, “Men at Work”.

By the way, just in case you were wondering, THIS is a vegemite sandwich.

We also talked a bit about the Periodic Table, former Senator Joe Lieberman, and then redesigned the bar for a better flow of positive energy. Lastly we learned never to forget your bear spray if you are going hiking, or bounty hunting?

Third round started with the Great Apes native to Asia, which sometimes come to visit us here in North America.

We talked about the Grammy winning a cappella group Pentatonix, and the “Immortal Life” of Henrietta Lacks. We played a little “Scattergories”, and took a walk to Mordor with Samwise Gamgee.

The final round began with the end of strife between the U.K. and Northern Ireland, and moved immediately into what some call your “head voice”.

We took a walk through the willows, in three clues format, and examined the historic American behind the Quaker Oats logo. Lastly on to the Huston family, with father Jon directing this classic line from “Treasure of the Sierra Madre”.

Tight game going into the final question, with only five points separating 1st and 3rd place. Here are the results:

First Place:  Morgan Station

Second Place:  Westward Ho!

Third Place:  Men & Pausers

Summer Fling starts next week so make sure you are here to start accumulating those points! Our first category will be Barney Fife.

~ Ronnie

Hershey’s Restaurant in Gaithersburg, MD

We had a good battle between two teams for the 1st place spot at Hershey’s Restaurant in Gaithersburg on Monday night!  One of them was a first time team who really seemed to enjoy themselves, so I hope we’ll be seeing them again sometime soon in the future!  We reached the final question with the new team in second place, but still with a chance to possibly take the win.  Unfortunately we didn’t have any team answer the final question correctly, so there was no upset, but are top three teams for the night were I Like To Play Myself in third place, with the Boomers finishing in second place, and the win going to High Water Mark!!

Good luck to all of those teams participating in this weekend’s World Series!  Our winners picked the year 1958 for next week’s opening category, so study up, and I’ll see everyone back on Monday at Hershey’s Restaurant!

~ Jon J

_________________________________________________________________

Uno Pizzeria in Frederick, MD

Offseason?  What’s that?  Tonight might have been one of the hardest games of Pour House Trivia here at Uno Pizzeria all season, and it was mostly for fun!

Highlights of the Night:

In “My-Favorite-Punching-Bag”: As hosts, we can sometimes catch flak from teams.  Sometimes its good-natured ribbing, sometimes its a bit more hostile.  But when the opportunities rise for me to fire back? In rapid succession? Hehehe.  Kudos to Tequila Mockingbird for being good sports 😉

In “Should’ve-Given-Bonus-Points”: For spelling Feng Shui correctly.  I think my favorite misspelling was funcshway.  All one word.  Courtesy of fellow PHT host Devin playing for S+Gs on his day off.  Oh you poor sweet thing 😉 they weren’t the only team to misspell it though, so bonus points for correct ones probably wouldn’t have been a bad idea.

In “A-Needle-In-A-Syringe-Stack”: To top off what turned out to be a slugfest for all my teams tonight, the hardest question of the night was certainly the final.  Even as a fan of all things Pittsburgh I have to admit that was really tough, and I probably wouldn’t have gotten to the correct answer of Heinz.  Though I have to wonder if that was just close to the haggled price and they decided to do that for fun, or if they specifically aimed to pay that much?  The former is cute, the latter is obnoxious.  Makes me wonder…

When all was said and done tonight, the game went down as follows.

In third place, Litigators!

In second place, Roaming Gnomes!

In first place, Tequila Mockingbird!

Great game guys!  Next week we’ll kick off the summer fling with a category on Animal Behavior!  Study up, and we’ll see you next time!

Until then,

~ Ian

_________________________________________________________________

Basic Burger in Arlington, VA

And we hit the ground running after a week off at Basic Burger – nine teams with us tonight!  Even Old Ox Brewery joined us with samples and swag, thanks guys!  The toughest question of the opening round came right off the bat with our Winner’s Choice question about Children’s Literature.  When asked to name the 1908 story that contained  Rat, Mole, Toad, and Badger, many took a wrong turn by saying “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride”, when it was “The Wind in the Willows” we were looking for.  Our best wrong answer of the night – sorry guys, but the book turned movie about a wayward middle schooler is not “Diary of a Little Bitch” – but “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” (they knew it, they were foolin’).

Round 2 started with everyone earning their wager on the audio clue, but only HR Puff ‘n’ Stuff was able to name the Men at Work album “Business as Usual” to earn the bonus points on that one.  The halftime puzzle saw more than half of our teams get a perfect score when naming TV moms and athlete dads.  Scores at the end of the second round were very close, with two ties and only six points separating first place from fourth place.

Round 3 had a board game question that threw our teams for a loop.  One of my favorites, Scattergories was the subject, and players had to name four of the missing letters from its 20-sided die (after we excluded Q and X).  This was the most missed question of the round, and again, only HR Puff ‘n’ Stuff could name all four to earn the bonus (U,V, Y, Z).  The 6-4-2 question also took down some of our teams tonight.  Too many guessed too early – the second most populous city along the Pacific coastline is NOT San Francisco as many guessed, but San Diego (which is almost TWICE AS POPULOUS!).  Those questions caused our ranks to change drastically, so the final round was important to these players.

The question on Film Directors had the most “not a clue” answers by our teams.  The name John Huston is not familiar to our younger players, so many did not earn their wager, and only PC Principals and Kitten Mittens knew his Oscar-winning film to earn the bonus.  In the end, the absolute toughest question of the night was the final one.  I was very careful not to emphasize any particular word so as not to give it away, and I guess I did a good job because only one team answered correctly,  Congratulations to Giant Meteor, who moved all the way from sixth place to first place.  Your winners were:

First Place:  Giant Meteor 2017

Second Place:  PC Principals

Third Place:  HR Puff ‘n’ Stuff

Next week’s first category:  “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York”

Cheers!

~ Kate

_________________________________________________________________

Il Forno in Frederick, MD

Coming soon…

Next week’s first category:  Judith Butler