A Graceful Weekend of Trivia!

Thanks to another massive crowd of nearly two dozen teams at Springfield Manor Winery, our weekend field reached 61 teams across five venues.

FIRST ROUND:

While most of our weekend teams were not fazed by the first round wagering questions, we doled out very few bonus points in the early stages of these games.  Four of the six bonus question yielded success rates of under 15%.  First, none of our 34 Friday teams knew that China produces more cucumbers than any other nation on Earth.  Later, only three Friday teams earned bonus points by remembering that Ryan Day (and not Urban Meyer) is the current head football coach at THE Ohio State University.  Meanwhile, just two of our 18 Saturday teams picked up two bonus points on a Three Clues question that began with these two facts:

CLUE 1: This board game with a one-word name was co-created in 1998 by Microsoft employee Richard Tait.

CLUE 2: The game was launched in Starbucks stores rather than traditional toy stores.

The elusive answer to this question was the game Cranium.  None of our 61 weekend teams notched a perfect first round score.

SECOND ROUND:

For the respective audio questions, Friday teams were asked to identify three fashionable songs: “Blue Suede Shoes” by Elvis, “Short Skirt Long Jacket” by Cake, and “Forever in Blue Jeans” (Neil Diamond).  Our Saturday teams were quizzed on sound effects from the films “Star Wars”, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”, and “Transformers”.  Other second round topics included the Magna Carta, the video game “Final Fantasy”, the Great Lakes, and the novel “A Tale of Two Cities.  Two weekend teams earned a perfect score of 36 points in the second round: Uncle Jack (P.B. Dye) and Offbeats (Pretzel & Pizza).

HALFTIME:

Biographical film roles were featured on this weekend’s halftime page.  Seven teams earned a perfect score of 20 points, while the overall average reached 14.5 points.  Here is the weekend leaderboard at the halftime break:

• Uncle Jack (Belles’):  87
• Mud Duck Hunt Club (P.B. Dye):  86
• Smarty Pants (Belles’):  84
• Offbeats (Pretzel & Pizza):  83
• DC Swampers (Belles’):  82

THIRD ROUND:

Our Friday teams were given a wicked bonus question to begin their second half, as only two teams knew that King Edward I (or Edward Longshanks) was depicted as the primary antagonist in the film “Braveheart”.  Despite that level of difficulty, it pales in comparison to the first bonus question of Saturday’s second half.  Not surprisingly, none of our Saturday teams knew that the Beatles version of the country song “Act Naturally” served as the B-side to the hit “Yesterday”.  The third round progressed smoothly for both sets of teams, earning points on questions regarding the film “Die Hard”, college football alma maters, and President James K. Polk.  Mud Duck Hunt Club (P.B. Dye) posted the only perfect third round score last weekend.

FOURTH ROUND:

Final round topics from last weekend included the opening of the 2019 NFL season, the film “The Jazz Singer”, the nation of Yemen, and the works of authors James Patterson and John Grisham.  Maybe we should have swapped the first round with the fourth round, as nearly one-third of our weekend teams earned a perfect score of 36 points in the final round. These were your highest scoring teams after four rounds of play:

• Mud Duck Hunt Club (P.B. Dye):  162
• DC Swampers (Frey’s):  156
• Uncle Jack (Belles’):  154
• Uncle Jack (P.B. Dye):  154
• FOUR TEAMS TIED WITH 153 POINTS

FRIDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (25.0% success rate):

–> Situated just a few miles from the Mississippi River, which tourist attraction was originally owned by a publisher named S.C. Toof, who named it for his daughter?

SATURDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (55.6% success rate):

–> A scene in which film series features Julia Roberts portraying a fictional character who pretends to be Julia Roberts?

The correct answers to these questions were Graceland and “Ocean’s Eleven”.  None of our weekend teams earned a Perfect 21 last weekend.  Here is your final overall leaderboard:

• Mud Duck Hunt Club (P.B. Dye):  167
• T2-J2 (Frey’s):  165
• Uncle Jack (P.B. Dye):  163
• Degenerates from Upcountry (Springfield Manor Winery):  160
• DC Swampers (Belles’):  157
• This is How We Go Down (Springfield Manor Winery):  154
• Smarty Pants (Belles’):  152
• Offbeats (Pretzel & Pizza):  149
• Cultured Heathens (Pretzel & Pizza):  148
• FOUR TEAMS TIED WITH 147 POINTS

LAST WEEKEND’S WINNERS:

Springfield Manor Winery in Thurmont, MD:  Degenerates from Upcountry   (Next week’s first category: U. S. Olympic Gymnastics)

Black Walnut at P.B. Dye in Ijamsville, MD:  Mud Duck Hunt Club   (Next week’s first category: Triple 50/50 – Clint Eastwood Film Quote or John Wayne Film Quote?)

Frey’s Brewing in Mount Airy, MD:  T2-J2   (Next week’s first category: Marvel Comics)

Vanish Brewery in Leesburg, VA:  NO GAME THIS WEEK   (NEXT GAME ON SEP. 6 – First category: “Alien”)

Waynesboro Country Club in Waynesboro, PA:  NO GAME THIS WEEK   (Next week’s first category: John Hughes Films)

868 Estate Vineyards in Hillsboro, VA:  NO GAME THIS WEEK   (Next week’s first category: Military History)

Belles’ Sports Bar in Frederick, MD:  DC Swampers   (Next week’s first category: “Rocky Horror Picture Show”)

Pretzel & Pizza Creations in Hagerstown, MD:  Offbeats   (Next week’s first category: Spanish-American War)