A New Month and Another New Venue…

Wednesday night featured the opening of our newest Virginia venue, as we welcomed Quinn’s on the Corner in Arlington to the PHT family.  We also welcomed Scott Sharpnack as our newest host!  That game featured a nice mix of veteran teams and newbies.  Overall, Wednesday’s game featured 88 teams at 16 venues:

ROUND 1:

Our game began with a Disney question, asking for the two words that were combined to form the name of this mysterious material:

About half of our teams knew that the word Flubber was formed by combining flying and rubber.  After the field waltzed through a question about the waltz, we closed the round with its most difficult bonus question.  We asked our teams to name the South American archipelago at which Charles Darwin made his observations that contributed to his theory of evolution.  Nearly every team answered correctly here with the Galapagos Islands:

When asked to name the country which controls the Galapagos, only 22% of our teams earned an extra two points with Ecaudor.  This was the sticking point for most of the field, as exactly one dozen of our teams began their night with a perfect first round.

ROUND 2:

Wednesday’s audio question featured drunk TV characters, specifically “Sweet Dee” Reynolds from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, Linda Belcher from “Bob’s Burgers”, and numerous characters from “Parks and Recreation”.  We continued with the most difficult wagering and bonus questions of the first half:

–> What two-word avian nickname is given to the Constitutional Amendment that moved the U.S. Presidential inauguration date from March to January?

2-POINT BONUS: What is the exact number of that Amendment?

It seemed as though most of our teams had heard the term before, but only 32% knew the derivation of the political term lame duck.  Furthermore, only eight teams earned the two-point bonus with the 20th Amendment.  Later, we asked about the Oklahoma university which goes by the athletic nickname of the Golden Hurricane (yes, it’s singular):

The second round did not yield any perfect scores on Wednesday.

HALFTIME:

Film sequels and animal names were the topics on Wednesday’s halftime page.  Nine teams notched a perfect score of 20 points, with an overall average of 15.2 points.  Here are Wednesday’s top scores after the first half:

• Show Me On the Doll (Belles’):  90
• Tokyo Sex Robot (Belles’):  88
• Fourth Place (Belles’):  86
• Treason Season (Quinn’s):  86
• Southpaw Fish (Valley Grill):  86
• Ahhh!  Real Munsters (Furnace):  86

ROUND 3:

Wednesday’s third round began with the most difficult bonus question of the night:

–> Which Philippine president was honored by Time Magazine as its Person of the Year for 1986?

This question was asked with the potential of a crossword-style hint, but nearly half of our teams were bold enough to venture a guess before the hint was revealed, in order to earn a two-point bonus.  It did not go well for most of those teams, as we saw many incorrect guesses of Ferdinand Marcos.  Only seven teams earned bonus points with his successor, Corazon Aquino:

Our following question proved to be the most difficult wagering question of the night, as only 23% of our teams knew that the auto manufacturer which was the first to make three-point safety belts a standard feature was Volvo.  We continued on with question on the Old Testament figure Jezebel and the recent business acquisitions of Derek Jeter (specifically, minority ownership in the Miami Marlins).   A perfect score in the third round was well-earned, as only FOWL from Memories noted 36 points in Wednesday’s third stanza.

ROUND 4:

Our final round looked at Literary Characters and the Anglerfish.  Later, much to the chagrin of many teams, we also asked a question about this fairly recent country hit:

The most difficult bonus question of the round was asked in the form of our nightly Three Clues question, with this version asking for a name:

CLUE 1: The 2009 film “Star Trek” opens with James Kirk’s father being killed while commanding a ship of this name.

CLUE 2: The first name of the current head men’s basketball coach at the University of Houston.

Only nine teams earned bonus points here with Kelvin (Sampson).  The final round also saw exactly one perfect score, and once again it was at Memories, as Sexual Chocolate took the honor in the final round.

Our most Here are Wednesday’s top overall scores after the fourth round:

• Tokyo Sex Robot (Belles’):  156
• Mueller Time (Quinn’s):  156
• FOWL (Memories):  155
• The Fan Club (The Tavern):  153
• Stupid Sexy Flanders (Valley Grill):  152
• Team Awesome (Memories):  152
• Lone Pine Mall Rats (Barefoot Bernie’s):  152

FINAL QUESTION (31.9% success rate):

–> In contrast to traditional retail stores, Goodwill thrift stores see their revenues peak during which calendar month?

Due to its popularity as a great spot to pick up cheap Halloween costumes, the correct answer was October.  Despite the fact that only about one-third of our teams answered this final question correctly, we had five correct answers from the six teams at Bennigan’s in Frederick!  Tough room!  On the opposite end of the spectrum, Most Awesome Purveyors of Excellence were the only team to answer correctly at Bennigan’s in Clarksburg, giving them their first win ever!  that’s quite a birthday gift for one player:

Wednesday did not see any teams earn the Perfect 21 tonight by answering all wagering questions correctly.  These were your top overall scores from Wednesday:

• Tokyo Sex Robot (Belles’):  165
• Flight Level Awesome (Belles’):  158
• Literally Anything (Bennigan’s – Frederick):  157
• Show Me On the Doll (Belles’):  156
• Teachers (Bennigan’s – Frederick):  156
• Southpaw Fish (Valley Grill):  156
• Schniggles (Whole Foods Market – Vienna):  154
• Kitten Mittens (Quinn’s on the Corner):  151
• Hojo Mojo (Bennigan’s – Frederick):  149
• Momentary Lapse of Reason (Bennigan’s – Frederick):  148
• No Reservations (Whole Foods Market – Vienna):  148

TONIGHT’S WINNERS:

Whole Foods Market in Vienna, VA:  Schniggles  (NEXT GAME ON NOV. 29 – First category: Watergate)

Valley Grill in Middletown, MD:  Southpaw Fish  (Next week’s first category: “Hamilton” Lyrics)