An Electrum-ifying Night of Thursday Trivia!

After a night off to celebrate Independence Day, Pour House Trivia returned with a full slate of Thursday games.  Overall, we welcomed 110 teams across 14 venues.

FIRST ROUND:

We began Thursday’s game with opening round questions concerning film prequels, Ralph Lauren (and his cameo on “Friends”), and this majestic National Park:

The first stanza also included a surprisingly difficult bonus question.  After most of our teams knew that Yellowstone was the first National Park in U.S. history, we offered two bonus points to any team that could also name the year in which the park was commissioned.  Even with a ten-year window either way, only eight teams landed close enough to the correct answer of 1872.  As a result, only six teams earned a perfect first round score.

SECOND ROUND:

Thursday’s audio question included three songs which included the word “Tears” in the title: “Tears in Heaven” by Eric Clapton, “Tears of a Clown” by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and “No Tears Left to Cry” by Ariana Grande.  Later, we asked about this celebrity who once referred to himself as a “Cablinasian” due to his diverse ethnic background:

After a difficult bonus question regarding Scottish geography (specifically, the Orkney Islands), only two teams ran the table in the second round: Clever Team Name (Quincy’s) and Brother of Menelaus (Fish Market).

HALFTIME:

Thursday’s halftime round featured pictures of film scenes featuring dancing, with the bottom half quizzed our teams on the highest-grossing restaurant chains in the country.  As with any question in which teams must give a straight list of answers, earning most of the points is easy, while earning all of the points can be extremely difficult.  Such was the case tonight, as the overall average reached a relatively high 17.2 points with just ONE TEAM earning the full 20 points: We Just Blue Ourselves (Fish Market).  Here is Thursday’s halftime leaderboard:

• Clever Team Name (Quincy’s):  92
• Brother of Menelaus (Fish Market):  90
• PC Principals (Fish Market):  88
• We Just Blue Ourselves (Fish Market):  86
• Wingin’ It (Dawg House):  85

THIRD ROUND:

Whenever the Over / Under category is announced, it is a popular choice for the bonus category (especially when Opera as another option), and Thursday was no exception, as the Over / Under topic would be sports.  However, this proved to be one of the more difficult questions of the night, with less than half of our teams answering any two of the three questions correctly, and only nine teams earning bonus points with three correct answers.  We continued with a discussion of the alloy electrum and this fashionable piece of TV history:

The latter portion of the round did not let up on our teams, as questions on the Volkswagen Golf and the opera “Madame Butterfly” meant that the third round did not yield any perfect scores.

FOURTH ROUND:

We began Thursday’s final round with a look at the Chris Issak song “Wicked Game” (and its sultry music video), but only seven teams earned bonus points by knowing that Issak would go on to appear as a SWAT team member in the film “Silence of the Lambs”:

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JaGSX-3WJg[/embedyt]

Speaking of wicked, we closed Thursday’s game with the two most difficult wagering questions of the night.  First up, this query combining politics and sports:

–> Instead of pitting the two major parties against each other, the annual Congressional Women’s Softball Game features a team of bipartisan Congresswomen playing a team of women with what occupation?

Only 16% of the field responded correctly with journalists.  Finally, our nightly Three Clues question dealt with three uses of the word “Birdman”, but even after hearing all three clues, only 37% of our teams earned any points here.  Just as in the third round, none of our teams swept the final round on Thursday night.  These were your highest scoring Thursday teams after four rounds of play:

• Brother of Menelaus (Fish Market):  158
• PC Principals (Fish Market):  157
• We Just Blue Ourselves (Fish Market):  152
• Wingin’ It (Dawg House):  150
• Thoroughly Screwed (Bunker Sports Cafe):  148

THURSDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (7.9% success rate):

–> For your wager, what is the only letter of the alphabet which begins the names of three different countries that all border each other on the continent of Africa?

In what was the most difficult final question of the Summer Fling season, only eight teams gave us the correct answer on the final question.  Our successful teams headed to west central Africa to derive the correct answer of C:

Thanks to the final question, none of our teams managed to record the Perfect 21 tonight.  Here is your final overall leaderboard from Thursday night:

• We Just Blue Ourselves (Fish Market):  164
• Fan Club (Quincy’s):  159
• Rum Ham (Olde Mother Brewing):  157
• You Can’t Sit With Us (Fish Market):  154
• 1-2-3 Drink (Cushwa Brewing):  149
• Slapsgiving (Cushwa Brewing):  148
• Brother of Menelaus (Fish Market):  146
• PC Principals (Fish Market):  145
• Pen Cap (Fish Market):  145
• Interrogangbang (Fish Market):  145

THURSDAY’S WINNERS:

The Grille at Flower Hill in Gaithersburg, MD:  Salty Spittoon  (Next week’s first category: Nintendo History)

Black Walnut Brewery in Leesburg, VA:  Five Sure  (Next week’s first category: FIFA World Cup)

Dawg House in Waynesboro, PA:  YOLO Swaggins  (Next week’s first category: Triple 50/50: Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts)

Orioles Nest #331 in Frederick, MD:  NO GAME THIS WEEK  (Next week’s first category: “SpongeBob SquarePants”)