Animal Antics at Monday Trivia!

Memorial Day action with Pour House Trivia brought out 98 teams across 11 venues.

FIRST ROUND:

After each venue’s Winner’s Choice question, we gave a three-parter about Memorial Day:

• 1) The first U.S. celebration of Memorial Day was held in South Carolina three weeks after the close of which war?
• 2) At what specific time does Congress request that Americans observe a moment of silence on Memorial Day?
• 3) Referencing the placement of flowers and flags on military gravesites, Memorial Day was originally known by which ten-letter ‘D-word’?

America’s first Memorial Day celebration came shortly after the end of the Civil War, Congress requests a moment of silence at 3 p.m., and the holiday was first known as Decoration Day. That three-parter had a wagering success rate of 47%, while 7.1% of teams earned bonus points for getting all three answers right. Other topics in this round included the little-heard lyrics to Taps and actress Jane Seymour. No team achieved a perfect score in this round.

SECOND ROUND:

Monday’s audio question featured the hardest way to earn bonus points in the first half. We played a trio of songs that each had the word summer in the title; most teams got that right for their wager, but only 5.1% knew all three musical acts as well: Shawn Mendes or Camila Cabello for I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Lovin’ Spoonful for Summer in the City, and Bananarama for Cruel Summer. Later in the round, a medical query was tough on our teams:

• Headaches and nausea are symptoms of hyponatremia, which is characterized by a low level of which chemical element in the blood?

Just over a third of the field recognized that hyponatremia deals with low sodium levels. Teams also encountered questions on President Obama’s Attorney General picks, S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, and the founding of Vanderbilt University. H.R. Puf’n’Stuf (DRP) had this round’s only perfect score.

HALFTIME:

The top half of Monday’s halftime page gave ten pop culture post-apocalyptic scenes and asked teams to name the pop culture franchise. For the bottom section, they then had to match opera titles to the corresponding missing title character. The average score was 16.6 points, while an apropos 20 teams earned all 20 points. Before the second half began, there was a three-way tie for first:

• Han Solo Tonight (Mark’s): 88
• Ten Thousand Dugongs (Ragtime): 88
• Alien Bounty Hunters (Rockwell): 88
• H.R. Puf’n’Stuf (DRP): 87
• FIVE TEAMS TIED WITH 86 POINTS

THIRD ROUND:

At the midway point of the third round, we unleashed a doozy on our teams:

• All apes are classified into one of two families. As opposed to Great apes such as gorillas and humans, what common name is given to the primates in the family Hylobatidae – sometimes called the Lesser apes?

Even with a crossword hint later given, revealing that the answer is a six-letter word ending with the letter N, only eight teams got their wager for correctly naming the gibbon. However, nobody was able to give that answer before the extra clue for bonus points. Other third-round material covered the state of Wisconsin, the Disney Channel film Descendants, and American figure-skating Olympians Nancy Kerrigan and Michelle Kwan. Once again, this round produced no perfect scores.

FOURTH ROUND:

The night’s 6-4-2 granted the full six points to each of the 36 teams that named water from our first clue. The final round’s wagering questions were no big deal, but our Three Clues query wasn’t easy to figure out at first:

• CLUE 1: The title of a 1997 album released by U2.
• CLUE 2: The second word in the stage name adopted by James Osterberg, Jr.
• CLUE 3: The nickname of legendary college football coach Glenn Scobey Warner.

Only six teams got bonus points for knowing the word pop before the final clue was read. Other subjects in this round included Delta Airlines’ largest hub of Atlanta, the final words of Lord Horatio Nelson, and the tagline to the film Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. This round’s perfect teams were Hipster Fashion Consultants (DRP), Slainte (DRP), and College Broke (Mark’s). After four rounds, we once again had a three-way tie atop the standings, albeit with a slightly different group of teams:

• Han Solo Tonight (Mark’s): 157
• Team Blaine (Bushwaller’s): 157
• H.R. Puf’n’Stuf (DRP): 157
• Cobra Kai (DRP): 156
• Porpoise Pod (William Jeffrey’s): 153
• Hipster Fashion Consultants (DRP): 153

FINAL QUESTION (68.37% success rate):

• Although each team goes by a different name, what animal lends its name to just one team in each of the Big 4 North American men’s pro sports leagues (MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA)?

Over two-thirds of the field notched wagering points on the final question, which was all about bears in sports: MLB’s Cubs, NFL’s Bears, NHL’s Bruins, and NBA’s Grizzlies! The lone Perfect 21 team on Monday was Cobra Kai (DRP), which turned in correct answers for each of the 21 wagering questions in the game. Final overall standings were led by these teams:

• H.R. Puf’n’Stuf (DRP): 169
• Cobra Kai (DRP): 168
• Humble Geniuses (Cushwa): 163
• Hipster Fashion Consultants (DRP): 163
• Slainte (DRP): 162
• 13th Graders (DRP): 162
• Porpoise Pod (William Jeffrey’s): 161
• Ten Thousand Dugongs (Ragtime): 161
• Gong Gong and the Butt Demons (Cushwa): 160
• Han Solo Tonight (Mark’s): 160

MONDAY’S WINNERS:

Ellie’s Pub in Winchester, VA: Benchwarmers  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Sports Films)

Clyde’s in Alexandria, VA: NO GAME (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: The West Wing)

Cushwa Brewing in Williamsport, MD: Humble Geniuses  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Catch-22 (film))

Hidden Key Brewing in Greencastle, PA: It Takes a Village  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Forty Autumns)

DRP in Alexandria, VA: H.R. Puf’n’Stuf  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Pittsburgh Steelers)

Bushwaller’s in Frederick, MD: Team Blaine  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Beastie Boys)

Rockwell Brewery in Frederick, MD: That’s a Bingo  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Types of Beer)

Mark’s Pub in Falls Church, VA: Han Solo Tonight  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: The Lord of the Rings)

William Jeffrey’s Tavern in Arlington, VA: Porpoise Pod  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Baseball Films)

Ragtime in Arlington, VA: Ten Thousand Dugongs  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Pizza) 

Aslin Beer Co in Herndon, VA: Bestin Reston  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Monopoly)

Quincy’s Bar and Grille in Gaithersburg, MD: NO GAME  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Crybaby (film))

Rai’s Pour House in Sterling, VA: Drunken Teachers  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Baltimore Orioles)

Il Forno Pizzeria in Frederick, MD: NO GAME  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Andor)