Getting Schooled with Weekend Trivia!

A half-dozen venues hosted a total of 55 teams over the weekend across three nights of Pour House Trivia action.

FIRST ROUND:

On Friday, the hardest wagering question ended up being a Three Clues set about Alexander Hamilton, which had a 75% success rate; 42% earned bonus points for naming Hamilton before the final clue. Another question on Friday asked teams to parse out a certain phrase:

• Meaning unconventional or bizarre, this three-word phrase could be used to describe Humpty Dumpty’s fate, but it is also the title of a 1979 Michael Jackson album.

A little over three-quarters of our teams were successfully Off the Wall with that one! Other topics in this round included the origins of the whoopee cushion, the giant pandas found at DC’s National Zoo, and the Australian Open major tennis tournament. Seven teams ended up with perfect scores at the end of the first round.

SECOND ROUND:

Subjects in the weekend audio clues included a trio of pop culture clips from 1998, singers with one-word stage names, and narration in TV series. The toughest wagering chance in any first half this past weekend came in Saturday’s second round:

• Bauxite is the principal ore of which element that is the most abundant metal in the Earth’s crust?

About 41% of teams correctly named aluminum as the most abundant metal in the Earth’s crust. Friday’s round featured this basketball question:

• After winning 11 NBA titles in 13 seasons as a member of the Boston Celtics, which man who passed away in 2022 became the namesake for the award given to the NBA Finals MVP?

Bill Russell was the right answer there, named by 60% of the field. Otherwise, teams encountered queries on cartoon elephant Babar, doctor and life saver Henry Heimlich, and children’s literary superhero Captain Underpants. No teams were able to put together a perfect score in any second round over the weekend.

HALFTIME:

At various points over the weekend’s halftime pages, teams had to match Super Bowl moments to the appropriate game, name celebrities who passed away in plane crashes, and figure out alphanumeric terms (such as A1 steak sauce and the 4-H organization). The average weekend halftime score was 14.9 points, but just two teams all weekend were able to get all 20 points! We reached the halftime intermission with these teams ahead of the field:

• Magnificent Seven (Flying Ace): 89
• Beer Pressure (Dragon): 88
• Slightly Agitated (Belles’): 88
• Gen X (Flying Ace): 87
• Lone Strangers (Mason): 87

THIRD ROUND:

The midpoint of Friday’s third round featured the hardest question of the weekend:

• Excluding Woody from Toy Story, only one fictional character has been portrayed by Tom Hanks in multiple feature films. For your wager, you can either name that character or name the most recent film to feature that character.

Featured most recently in 2016’s Inferno, Hanks has portrayed Dan Brown literary character Robert Langdon in multiple film adaptations. While 21% of teams earned their wager with either correct answer, no team had both; this was the only question all weekend where nobody earned available bonus points. We got geometric for Saturday’s trickiest wagering question:

• A regular octahedron is a three-dimensional figure with eight faces of identical shape and size. On this figure, each of those eight faces are of what shape?

An octahedron is comprised of equilateral triangles, named by about 60% of Saturday’s squads. In other third-round action this weekend, we discussed orange juice found in cocktails such as the Alabama Slammer and Tequila Sunrise, the origins of the Guinness Book of World Records, and Football Hall of Famer LaDainian Tomlinson‘s NFL-record 18-game touchdown streak. Once again, a perfect score eluded the field in the this round.

FOURTH ROUND:

Teams encountered 6-4-2 questions about the Nationwide insurance company, the word Commodore, and former Beatle Ringo Starr depending on the day. The most difficult wagering chance in the fourth round came on Friday:

• Seymour was the first name of which American often dubbed the father of supercomputing?

Even with an additional multiple-choice component, just 42% of teams correctly identified Seymour Cray; however, two teams did so early for bonus points. On Saturday, this animal question proved to be the toughest:

• Which aquatic salamander of the Proteidae family is found across a majority of the eastern U.S., and has a common name derived from the misconception that it emits a bark-like sound?

That animal is known as the mudpuppy or waterdog; 47% of teams earned their wager here. Other topics in this round included TV series The Good Wife and its similarly-named spinoff The Good Fight, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge that connects NYC boroughs Brooklyn and Staten Island, and the plot of the 1991 film Misery. Lone Strangers (Mason) had this round’s lone perfect score! This is how the top of the leaderboard looked before the final question:

• Slightly Agitated (Belles’): 161
• Lone Strangers (Mason): 158
• Southpaw Fish (Belles’): 154
• Magnificent Seven (Flying Ace): 153
• Quality Guesswork (Pretzel and Pizza): 153

FRIDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (35.7% success rate):

• The ibis was chosen as the mascot for which NCAA Division I school because, according to legend, it is the last animal to seek shelter during a natural disaster and the first to reappear afterward?

SATURDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (76.5% success rate):

• Among all letters which do not appear in the English spelling of any of the months of the year, which letter is alphabetically first?

SUNDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (80% success rate):

• Introduced in 1952, which current publication refers to its staff of writers and contributors as The Usual Gang of Idiots?

More successful by the night, the ibis is the mascot for the Miami Hurricanes, the first letter in the alphabet not found in the name of a month is the letter K, and The Usual Gang of Idiots is the tongue-in-cheek name for the staff of Mad! However, no teams were able to record a Perfect 21 for giving correct answers to all 21 wagering questions in any weekend game. One final look at the weekend standings gives you these high-scorers:

• Slightly Agitated (Belles’): 167
• Lone Strangers (Mason): 163
• Ten Thousand Dugongs (Mason): 162
• Southpaw Fish (Belles’): 162
• The A-Team (Mason): 160
• Beer Pressure (Dragon): 158
• Slightly Agitated (South Mountain): 157
• WTF (Flying Ace): 155
• Who Dey (South Mountain): 154
• PB and J (Belles’): 154

Honorable mention goes to Merd’s Nerds (Flying Ace), playing with more than the seven-player eligibility limit but putting up 170 points!

WEEKEND WINNERS:

South Mountain Creamery in Frederick, MD: Slightly Agitated  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Alex G Albums)

Dragon Distillery in Frederick, MD: Beer Pressure  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery)

Flying Ace Farm in Lovettsville, VA: WTF  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Submarine Films)

Belles’ Sports Bar in Frederick, MD: Slightly Agitated  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Weimar Germany)

Pretzel and Pizza Creations in Hagerstown, MD: Quality Guesswork  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Sister Wives)

Mason Social in Alexandria, VA: Lone Strangers  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Radio Frequencies)