Blast Off With Thursday Night Trivia!

September not only means the start of football season, but also the end of the Pour House Trivia Summer Fling season!  With the playoff fields from all four divisions molding into shape, which teams are revving up to make a run at the money?  Thursday night’s game featured 89 teams across 13 venues:

ROUND 1:

Thursday’s opening round started very well for most of our teams, but a pair of bonus questions quickly separated the top teams from the rest of the field.  First, we asked our teams to name any one of the four players who were Major League Baseball’s first African-American All-Stars in 1949.  Here are the four men we were looking for:

1949 Baseball All-Stars

Of course, every team named Jackie Robinson (far right) to earn their wager, but we gave bonus points to any team that could come up with a second name as well.  Those teams that stuck to the Brooklyn Dodgers for their second guess earned two extra points, naming pitcher Don Newcombe (next to Jackie) or catcher Roy Campanella (far left).  Some teams earned their bonus by naming Larry Doby, who became the first black player in the American League when he signed with the Cleveland Indians in 1947.  Across the board, 26% of our teams earned bonus points here.  The round concluded with a question on the gemstone aquamarine, with 21% of our teams earning another two-point bonus by knowing that it is the birthstone of March.  Seven teams kicked off their game with a perfect score of 36 points in the first round.

ROUND 2:

Our nightly audio question featured three pairs of pop songs, with each pair sharing an identical title.  Bonus points were doled out in droves, as most of our teams knew all three song titles: “California Girls (Gurls)” (Beach Boys, Katy Perry), “Superman” (Lazlo Bane, Five for Fighting), and “Photograph” (Ed Sheeran, Nickleback).  The second round continued with this thought-provoking question on the topic of Disney films:

–> Premiering in 1959 and 1989 respectively, these two movies represent either end of the longest gap of Disney Princesses appearing on film.

Teams were only required to name of the two films in order to earn points here, but exactly one-third of our teams earned a two-point bonus by naming both “Sleeping Beauty” and “The Little Mermaid”.  Who can forget that memorable scene where these two characters enjoyed a seaside picnic?

Little Mermaid Sleeping Beauty

Funny, I don’t remember this scene either…   Anyway, after questions concerning Applebee’s restaurants and the Stephen Crane novel “The Red Badge of Courage”, we saw nine teams earn a perfect score in the second round.

HALFTIME:

Thursday’s halftime round featured pictures of “BIG” movies, with the bottom half dealing with “SMALL” words and phrases.  Unfortunately, the scores lingered towards the small side, with an average score of just 12.8 points.  We did see some teams reach 19 points, but there were no perfect scores recorded tonight.  Here are Thursday’s top scores after the first half:

ROUND 3:

As usual, the third round offered up our most difficult wagering questions of the night, starting with this query on the topic of Toys & Games:

–> Spinning off such toys as “Funny Face”, “Brunette Betty”, and “Dapper Dan”, which toy introduced in 1955 featured metal filings which were moved with a magnetic wand in order to add features to a cartoon face?

A few of our teams were able to work off of the other names to determine that alliteration was going to be in play, but only 29% of our teams arrived at this correct response:

Wooly Willy

The round continued with a rather difficult Over / Under question in the category of Astronomy, as many teams greatly overestimated the number of men who have walked on the moon (it’s only TWELVE!).  Only 17% of our teams earned bonus points here by correctly answering all three clues.  We closed the round in the subject of TV Superheroes, as we asked about this comedic Marvel character who has appeared on numerous TV series over the years:

Tick

With only 22% of our teams earning bonus points by knowing that Tick’s sidekick is named Arthur, only one team notched a perfect score in the third round: PC Principals from Fish Market.

6-4-2 QUESTION:

Thursday’s 6-4-2 question had our teams performing some quick counting to arrive at the correct answer to this six-point clue:

–> How many people who would need to die for Prince Harry to become King of England?

Yes, it’s sort of a morbid question, especially when two of the people involved are toddlers, but the list is as follows: Elizabeth, Charles, William, George, Charlotte.  Across the board, 32% of our teams earned the full six points.

ROUND 4:

The final round eased up on our teams, as we touched on topics such as the Mockingbird and the first Super Bowl title for the Baltimore Ravens.  We learned that Jessica Alba started her own consumer goods company (and then almost immediately forgot it), before taking a quick trip to New Orleans to enjoy this sweet cocktail known as the Sazerac:

Sazerac

The only sticking point for many teams was the final question of the round, which dealt with the not-so-popular topic of World Geography.  We asked our teams to name any two of the three countries that border both Germany and Italy.  Most teams earned their wager, but only 22% of the field earned bonus points by naming all three:

Western Europe Map

Ten teams notched perfect scores in the final round.  Here are Thursday’s top scores after the fourth round:

–> This three-word phrase was first heard in a 1966 hit song.  On June 18, 1983, it became fodder for newspaper headlines thanks to the efforts of a pioneering American.  What is this phrase?

This was certainly a difficult question, but teams were able to clue off of the date, since there weren’t too many pioneering Americans of the 1980s…  unless you’re talking about space exploration.  The date marked the second mission for the Space Shuttle Challenger, on which astronaut Sally Ride made her first voyage into space.  Those newspapers referenced the 1966 song “Mustang Sally”, which featured the refrain “Ride, Sally, Ride”.  Just under one-fifth of our teams answered correctly here, leading to several come-from-behind victories!  Congratulations to Breadsticks (Quincy’s) and Washington Foreskins (Fish Market), as the only teams to record the Perfect 21 tonight by answering all wagering questions correctly.  Here are your top overall scores from Thursday:

TONIGHT’S WINNERS:

Quincy’s Bar and Grille in Gaithersburg, MD:  Breadsticks  (Next week’s first category: “BoJack Horseman”)

Champion Billiards in Frederick, MD:  Just Good Enough  (Next week’s first category: New England Patriots)

Bunker Sports Cafe in Leesburg, VA:  Washington Foreskins  (Next week’s first category: 1990s Snack Foods)

​Smoketown Brewing Station in Brunswick, MD:  Iowretta  (Next week’s first category: Australian Olympians)

Beef O’ Brady’s in Frederick, MD:  Stupid Sexy Flanders: Tokyo Drift  (Next week’s first category: Teams the Ravens Have Destroyed)

Jerry’s Sports Bar in Hagerstown, MD:  LB Cool J  (Next week’s first category: “The Office” – U.S. version)

Belly Love Brewing in Purcellville, VA:  Ironic  (Next week’s first category: Rush – AUDIO)

Cushwa Brewing in Williamsport, MD:  Bees?  (Next week’s first category: Cellular Biology)

Olde Mother Brewing in Frederick, MD:  Three Fingers Worth  (Next week’s first category: Movies of 1986)

Right Around the Corner in St. Petersburg, FL:  McAuley (Next week’s first category: Marvel Superheroes)

Fish Market Restaurant in Alexandria, VA:  PC Principals  (Next week’s first category: American Revolution)

Guido’s in Frederick, MD:  Unathletico Madrid  (Next week’s first category: “The West Wing”)