A “Host” Of Great Thursday Night Questions!
Season XVII is rolling along, as the second Thursday of league play welcomed 107 teams across 13 venues:
ROUND 1:
Thursday’s opening round gave our teams few surprises. We began by celebrating what would have been the 50th birthday of actor Gary Coleman, but stumped many of our teams on the bonus question, asking for the Tony-winning musical which featured Coleman as a character. Only 24% of the field turned in the correct response of “Avenue Q”:
We continued by asking about the early days of Facebook (back when it was known as ‘thefacebook‘), and remembered this athlete, likely to be the most famous last place Winter Olympian in history:
A final two-point bonus on “Eddie the Eagle” meant that 14 teams swept the first round with a perfect score.
ROUND 2:
Thursday’s audio question featured three musical acts singing about cake. With the songs being more recent than usual, a few of our older teams struggled to name Chris Brown, Flo Rida, and DNCE. We continued with a look at prime numbers, the nation of Argentina, and this classic arcade game:
We closed by asking our teams to name either one of the two elements whose chemical symbols begin with the letter ‘K’. While most of the field earned points with Potassium, a few teams couldn’t get comic books out of their head, guessing Kryptonite for the second element (sorry folks, it’s simply Krypton). Seven teams rolled through the second round without a blemish, three of which earned back-to-back perfect scores to notch 72 points heading into halftime.
HALFTIME:
Girl Scout Cookies and American universities comprised the two portions of Thursday’s halftime page. Our teams must have been hungry, as the overall average score came in at 17.4 points, with 14% of our teams earning a perfect score of 20 points. Here are Thursday’s top scores after the first half:
- Brady’s Deflated Balls (Bunker Sports Cafe): 92
- Brother of Menelaus (Fish Market): 92
- Breadsticks (Quincy’s): 92
- Clever Team Name (Quincy’s): 90
- Rum Ham (Olde Mother Brewing): 90
ROUND 3:
The second half began with a question on this “Mean Green Mother from Outer Space”:
That’s the plant named Audrey Two, from the 1980s film version “Little Shop of Horrors”. Next up was a question in the rather unpopular subject of Shakespearean Quotes:
–> The notable phrases “Frailty, thy name is woman!”, “Murder most foul”, “Brevity is the soul of wit”, “Hoist with his own petard”, and “I must be cruel, only to be kind” are all taken from what Shakespearean tragedy?
Due to the number of teams that earned exactly one point on this question, we’re under the impression that more than a few of our players simply went with their “default Shakespearean tragedy” guess of Hamlet. That was a good choice as it was indeed the correct answer. Later, we looked at the work of Pink Floyd before closing with a question on this NBA player who currently owns the league’s best-selling replica jersey:
Only 14% of our teams earned the final two-point bonus of the round, remembering that superstar Stephen Curry wears #30. As a result, we saw three perfect scores in the third round, including two from the same venue! Uranus Fly Trap and Loretta both notched 36 third round points at Olde Mother Brewing, while Brother of Menelaus matched the feat at Fish Market.
ROUND 4:
After opening the final round with a question on the Minnesota brand (and the Florida city) named Land O’ Lakes, we offered up this query on the subject of classic TV:
–> Premiering in 1963, which sci-fi series began each episode with the narrator ominously telling viewers: “There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission.”?
Sure, this bizarre opening sounds like it could be from “The Twilight Zone”, but our TV experts knew that Rod Serling first hosted his creation back in the 1950s, and never included those words. Instead, just under half of our teams earned points here with this correct response:
Most teams recovering from that miss ran right into the dreaded opera category, which featuring a question on the Verdi work “Aida”. After continuing the round with a look at the “Harvard Lampoon” (NOT “National Lampoon”), we closed with a three-part question on the film career of Paul Rudd. The teams at Olde Mother Brewing certainly gained some momentum in the second half, as the only perfect final score was turned in by Singing Inferno. Here are Thursday’s top scores after the fourth round:
- Brother of Menelaus (Fish Market): 162
- Rum Ham (Olde Mother Brewing): 162
- Singing Inferno (Olde Mother Brewing): 162
- Omarosa Knows (Fish Market): 159
- PC Principals (Fish Market): 155
FINAL QUESTION (68.4% success rate):
–> Throughout her illustrious career, Oprah Winfrey has earned 16 Daytime Emmy Awards. But that number is a distant second to the record 29 awards won by which celebrity who turned 60 years old last month?
Just over two-thirds of our teams gave us this correct answer:
Congratulations to Brother of Menelaus (Fish Market) and Rum Ham (Olde Mother Brewing), as the only teams to record the Perfect 21 with correct answers on all wagering questions. Here are your top overall scores from Thursday:
- Brother of Menelaus (Fish Market): 172
- Omarosa Knows (Fish Market): 168
- Breadsticks (Quincy’s): 165
- Rum Ham (Olde Mother Brewing): 162
- We Drink and We Know Things (Smoketown Brewing): 162
- Enemy Anemones (Olde Mother Brewing): 161
- My Harry Potter Has Hogwarts (Smoketown Brewing): 161
- Best Friends (Right Around the Corner): 161
- Washington Foreskins (Bunker Sports Cafe): 160
- Better Red Than Dead (Right Around the Corner): 160
- Just Good Enough (Champion Billiards): 160
An honorable mention goes out to Singing Inferno (Olde Mother Brewing), who notched 169 points while playing ‘over the limit’.
TONIGHT’S WINNERS:
Quincy’s Bar and Grille in Gaithersburg, MD: Breadsticks (Next week’s first category: “Vanderpump Rules”)
Champion Billiards in Frederick, MD: Just Good Enough (Next week’s first category: “Turtles All the Way Down”)
Bunker Sports Cafe in Leesburg, VA: Washington Foreskins (Next week’s first category: “Spaceballs”)
Smoketown Brewing Station in Brunswick, MD: We Drink and We Know Things (Next week’s first category: International Folk Dance)
Beef O’ Brady’s in Frederick, MD: Punslingers (Next week’s first category: “Weird Al” Yankovic)
Belly Love Brewing in Purcellville, VA: (Next week’s first category: )
Cushwa Brewing in Williamsport, MD: See You Next Thursday (Next week’s first category: “Seinfeld”)
Olde Mother Brewing in Frederick, MD: Rum Ham (Next week’s first category: “Lord of the Rings” Films)
The Grille at Flower Hill in Gaithersburg, MD: Shewolves (Next week’s first category: Food in Song – AUDIO)
Black Walnut Brewery in Leesburg, VA: C.O.T. (Next week’s first category: Heroes of the Alamo)
Right Around the Corner in St. Petersburg, FL: Best Friends (Next week’s first category: Best Picture Oscar Winners)
Fish Market Restaurant in Alexandria, VA: Brother of Menelaus (Next week’s first category: Game Shows)