An All-Star(Fish) Weekend of Pour House Trivia

The first (official) weekend of Summer featured four games of pub trivia and 26 teams, as we completed the second week of the Summer Fling Season:

ROUND 1:

Our opening rounds provided few surprises for our weekend warriors, as we discussed topics such as the recent “Wonder Woman” film, the MLB All-Star Game, U.S. Governors, and some “Juicy” brand names:

Our toughest bonus question of the first round was asked on Saturday, as no team was able to come up with the 2003 crime drama which was the most recent film directed by Patty Jenkins prior to “Wonder Woman”.  The correct response was “Monster”, the film for which won Charlize Theron won her Academy Award:

The only perfect first round on the weekend came on Sunday as the Arrondissements of Ouagadougou scored 36 points by being one of the few teams to know that the first MLB All-Star game was played in Comiskey Park.

ROUND 2:

Both of our weekend audio questions featured a TV theme.  While our Saturday teams had no trouble recognizing all three of the featured TV sitcoms (“The Addams Family”, “Designing Women”, and “The Middle”), the journalists and newscasters featured on Sunday proved to be a bit tougher to pin down, as only one team (Dutchess at Tilted Kilt) scored a two-point bonus on Sunday’s audio question.  Perhaps it was this NBC newsman and part-time bassist that gave our teams some trouble:

The toughest wagering question of either first half this weekend came on Sunday, asking about the 2017 film which garnered controversy for supposed “whitewashing”.  Apparently, film executives had no problem casting an actress with Scandinavian heritage to portray a character named Motoko Kusanagi:

Across both days, only two teams scored a perfect 36 points in the second round: Uncle Jack and Demented and Sad But Social (both from Belles’ Sports Bar)

HALFTIME:

The focus of Saturday’s halftime was music group logos, while Sunday’s dealt with ten-letter film titles.  The average of Saturday’s halftime page was 16.3, with the high score coming from Last Place (Pretzel & Pizza Creations), who topped the field with 19 points.  Sunday’s average was slightly higher at 16.8, as the only perfect score of the weekend was turned in by the Arrondissements of Ouagadougou (Captain Benders).  Here are the top overall scores after the first half from last weekend:

• Uncle Jack (Belles’):  87
• Demented and Sad But Social (Belles’):  86
• Arrondissements of Ouagadougou (Captain Benders):  85
• Fat, Drunk, and Stupid (Captain Benders):  85
• Sanford and Son (Pretzel & Pizza Creations):  85

ROUND 3:

As usual, our third rounds included our most “academic” questions of the weekend, hitting on topics such as Sir Isaac Newton, the Kon-Tiki, Queen Victoria, and the exact location of Cyprus.  The toughest wagering question of the round discussed this musical instrument associated with Celtic music:

Only 30% of our Sunday teams arrived at the correct answer of penny whistle (though you may also know it as a tin whistle).  We didn’t completely exclude lighthearted questions in the third round, as we concluded Saturday’s third round with a question on a new Netflix series which tells the origin story of this “sports organization”:

Yes, former “Community” star Alison Brie is now portraying one of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling.  The third round featured just one perfect score, as Dutchess (Tilted Kilt) snagged all three bonus questions and took a commanding lead with a score of 36 points in the third round.

6-4-2 QUESTION:

Both of our 6-4-2 questions dealt with musicians, and both questions seemed to be fairly easy for weekend teams.  In each case, about one-third of our teams earned six points, by knowing (on Saturday) that Alanis Morissette once appeared on the Nickelodeon series “You Can’t Do That on Television”, and (on Sunday) that Eddie Van Halen blasted the guitar solo on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”.

ROUND 4:

If there’s one thing we learned this weekend, it’s that whether you love him or hate him, Donald Trump has changed the answers to a lot of standard Presidential trivia questions.  He’s the oldest U.S. President (on Inauguration Day), he’s the second president to have been divorced, and he’s the most recent President (since Eisenhower) to have not held public office before.  Oh, and one more…  We missed one of those “updates” on Saturday by asking which letter begins the surnames of five different U.S. Presidents.  Until this year, the letter ‘H’ was the only correct answer, but now you can add ‘T’ to that list.  Thankfully, we were able to correct it in time for the late game!

Both nights featured a fourth round bonus question which stumped all of our players.  On Saturday, our Three Clues question would have given a two-point bonus to any team that knew the name of Marilyn Monroe’s character in this musical film:

Apparently, it had been a long time since any of our players had seen “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (if at all), so no team earned bonus points here until we gave the obligatory “Gilmore Girls” clue, leading many teams to give us the correct response of Lorelai.  We did not have any perfect scores in the final round on either night this weekend, though several teams rolled up an impressive 34 points heading into the final question.  Here are the weekend’s top overall scores after the fourth round:

• Arrondissements of Ouagadougou (Captain Benders):  158
• Dutchess (Tilted Kilt):  153
• Uncle Jack (Belles’):  150
• Fat, Drunk, and Stupid (Captain Benders):  146
• Sanford and Son (Pretzel & Pizza Creations):  146

SATURDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (57.1% success rate):

–> In zoology, members of the class Asteroidea have what common name, derived from the rays or arms that stem from a central body?

SUNDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (62.5% success rate):

–> As a result of a governmental decision in 1949, what is the world’s largest country (in terms of land area) to be officially represented by a single time zone?

Both of our final questions were answered correctly by just over half of our teams this weekend, who gave us the respective correct answers of Starfish and China.  Because of the difficult third round, no team was able to score the Perfect 21 tonight.  Here are the top ten (official) scores overall:

• Dutchess (Tilted Kilt):  165  (a bold 12-point wager despite having a first place lock!)
• Arrondissements of Ouagadougou (Captain Benders):  159
• Fat, Drunk, and Stupid (Captain Benders):  158
• Uncle Jack (Belles’):  155
• Sanford and Son (Pretzel & Pizza Creations):  147
• Fill Stick (Tilted Kilt):  146
• Off Beats (Pretzel & Pizza Creations):  146
• Rogue Hen (Belles’):  139
• Smarty Pants (Belles’):  137
• Last Place (Pretzel & Pizza Creations):  136

** An honorable mention for the score of 155 points goes to Demented and Sad But Social (Belles’), who played ‘over the limit’ tonight with more than seven players.

TONIGHT’S WINNERS:

Belles’ Sports Bar in Frederick, MD:  Uncle Jack  (Next week’s first category: “Fraggle Rock”)

Pretzel & Pizza Creations in Hagerstown, MD:  Sanford and Son  (Next week’s first category: “House, M.D.”)

Captain Benders in Sharpsburg, MD:  Arrondissements of Ouagadougou  (Next week’s first category: “Caddyshack”)

Tilted Kilt in Frederick, MD:  Dutchess  (Next week’s first category: Second Largest Cities)