Do Your Duty As a Citizen and Play Thursday Night Trivia!
Our final weeknight game before Christmas featured several venues with capacity crowds, as we welcomed 95 teams across 12 venues:
ROUND 1:
Thursday’s first round opened with a question on the many portrayals of Ebeneezer Scrooge:
We also touched on the origins of Hanukkah and the etymology of the term orthodontics. After one round of play, 13 teams were each sporting a perfect score of 36 points.
ROUND 2:
Continuing with this week’s theme, we featured three musical acts belting out Christmas tunes, but Thursday’s batch proved to be more difficult than expected, as only 17% of our teams earned bonus points by recognizing U2, Blues Traveler, and Taylor Swift. Later, we asked about the informal ‘hat trick’ name for this hockey legend:
We closed the first half with its most difficult bonus question. After most of the field earned points by knowing that “Dancing With the Stars” awards its winners the Mirrorball Trophy. only nine teams knew that Jordan Fisher took home the honor during the show’s most recent season. The perfect scores hinged on that final question, as seven of those nine teams earned 36 points in the second round.
HALFTIME:
Thursday’s halftime page featured pictures of celebrities born on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, followed by a matching section involving characters of holiday films and TV specials. It must have been a long time since some of you had seen those specials, as the average score came in at only 13.4 points, with just three teams notching a perfect 20 points. Here are Thursday’s top scores after the first half:
- Hans Gruber Preservation Society (Smoketown Brewing): 88
- Mayerhofer (The Grille at Flower Hill): 86
- Brother of Menelaus (Fish Market): 84
- Home For the Holidays (Belly Love Brewing): 84
- Smarty Pants (Beef O’ Brady’s): 84
ROUND 3:
Thursday’s third round included this question on movie music:
–> In addition to being performed by Christina Aguilera in the film “Burlesque”, the oft-recorded hit “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” has been sung in these two other feature films: one from 1953, the other from 2001.
Only 19% of our teams earned bonus points with the two correct answers of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and “Moulin Rouge!”. With the third round touching on such diverse topics as Edgar Allan Poe, peat moss, and “The Newlywed Game”, we saw just three perfect scores: Smarty Pants (Beef O’ Brady’s), Gryffindorks (Beef O’ Brady’s), and We Drink and We Know Things (The Grille at Flower Hill).
ROUND 4:
After opening the final stanza with a question on Route 66, we moved on to Christmas music:
–> The highest charting song by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra is an instrumental medley entitled “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24”. Name either one of the two Christmas carols mashed up within that medley.
Those two answers were “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “Carol of the Bells” :
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq0V2QSK-_0[/embedyt]
Even with a heavy dose of holiday trivia, we managed to sneak in one football question on Thursday night, asking for this running back who notched four touchdowns last week, increasing his league-leading total to 17:
The final round did not yield any perfect scores. Here are Thursday’s top scores after the fourth round:
- Burkittsvillans (Smoketown Brewing): 154
- Smarty Pants (Beef O’ Brady’s): 153
- Power Vacuum (Champion Billiards): 152
- Brother of Menelaus (Fish Market): 151
- Gryffindorks (Beef O’ Brady’s): 150
FINAL QUESTION (5.3% success rate):
–> In 2014, a Spanish colonial viceroy named Bernardo de Galvez became the eighth person in history to be given what honorary status?
Anybody who played on Thursday night does not need this blog to tell them how difficult the final question was… Apparently, this tidbit of information was not as well-covered in the news as we thought, as a grand total of FIVE TEAMS turned in the correct response. A few years ago, Senor Galvez was given Honorary U.S. Citizenship. Needless to say, we did not see any teams earn the Perfect 21 tonight with correct answers on all wagering questions. Here are your top overall scores from Thursday:
- Home For the Holidays (Belly Love Brewing): 158
- PC Principals (Fish Market): 152
- Do We Need All Three for Our Wager? (Fish Market): 150
- Singing Inferno (Smoketown Brewing): 145
- Brother of Menelaus (Fish Market): 144
- Smarty Pants (Beef O’ Brady’s): 143
- North Country (Quincy’s): 142
- FNQ (Champion Billiards): 141
- Clever Team Name (Quincy’s): 140
- Power Vacuum (Champion Billiards): 140
TONIGHT’S WINNERS:
Quincy’s Bar and Grille in Gaithersburg, MD: North Country (Next week’s first category: Fictitious Felines)
Champion Billiards in Frederick, MD: FNQ (Next week’s first category: “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”)
Bunker Sports Cafe in Leesburg, VA: Thoroughly Screwed (Next week’s first category: “Friends”)
Smoketown Brewing Station in Brunswick, MD: Singing Inferno (Next week’s first category: Maine)
Beef O’ Brady’s in Frederick, MD: Smarty Pants (Next week’s first category: Triple 50 / 50 – Dick Clark or Ryan Seacrest?)
Belly Love Brewing in Purcellville, VA: Home For the Holidays (Next week’s first category: Alabama Football Rivalries)
Cushwa Brewing in Williamsport, MD: Slapsgiving (Next week’s first category: West Virginia)
Olde Mother Brewing in Frederick, MD: In Dig Beers, We’ve Had One (Next week’s first category: Christopher Nolan Films)
The Grille at Flower Hill in Gaithersburg, MD: We Drink and We Know Things ** SIX WINS IN A ROW! ** (Next week’s first category: 1960s Sitcoms)
Right Around the Corner in St. Petersburg, FL: Just the Tip (Next week’s first category: Black History)
Fish Market Restaurant in Alexandria, VA: PC Principals (Next week’s first category: Christopher Guest Films)
Guido’s in Frederick, MD: (Next week’s first category: )