Guerrillas in the Mist at Thursday Trivia!

Eighteen venues, including Aslin Beer Co and its 29 teams, hosted a total of 195 trivia squads on Thursday for the evening’s Pour House Trivia game.

FIRST ROUND:

Teams had questions on newly-inducted Baseball Hall of Famer David Ortiz and the Grey Goose vodka brand to start things off on Thursday. A three-parter on things that happened in the year 1889 proved to be the hardest way to get first-round points, as 54% of teams earned their wager by coming within ten years and 11% got two bonus points for getting that year within just two either way. The only team to earn a perfect score in this round was Comfortably Dumb (Loudoun Kitchen).

SECOND ROUND:

The most difficult bonus opportunity came in Thursday’s audio clue, where teams had to name the country featured in each of three song titles. Just ten teams named all three nations from Van Halen’s Panama, Madonna’s rendition of Don’t Cry For Me Argentina from the Evita soundtrack, and Greece by DJ Khaled and Drake. After questions about the dihydrogen monoxide hoax about water and the films in Kevin Smith’s Jersey Trilogy, teams got to the first half’s most difficult wagering query:

• The Eye of the World was the first installment in which epic fantasy series penned by Robert Jordan?

Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series was successfully answered by 41% of the field. However, no teams were able to get all 36 points in this round.

HALFTIME:

Alternate MLB franchise logos and bodies of water by a partial list of surrounding countries were the subjects of the day at halftime. Teams averaged 16.1 points on this page, but almost a quarter of the field managed to get all 20 points! Going into the halftime break, these were the high scores:

• Comfortably Dumb (Loudoun Kitchen): 90
• Scotty Doesn’t Know (Solace Brewing): 88
• I Don’t Know (Aslin): 88
• Point Dexters (Smoketown): 88
• Purr and the Kitty Cats (Solace Outpost): 87
• Mannion’s Men (Quinn’s): 87

THIRD ROUND:

Well, you can’t say we made it easy to start the second half. The hardest question of the night opened round three:

• Michael Jordan and LeBron James have won the most NBA Finals MVP Awards with six and four respectively. However, which three NBA Hall of Famers are tied for third with exactly three Finals MVP awards each?

Only 15% of our teams could manage even two of that trio — Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, and Tim Duncan — while a mere three teams got all three answers for two extra points. Other topics in the round included the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency known as CBP, Three Clues about Philadephia, and the burning of King Kong‘s original sets to portray the burning of Atlanta in Gone With the Wind. We ended things with a question about the Lazarus fish known as the coelacanth; only 8.7% of teams spelled that 10-letter word right for bonus points. As with the previous round, a perfect score eluded the field here.

FOURTH ROUND:

About 80% of Thursday’s teams took a zero on the 6-4-2 question about Thursday itself; 12 teams named it on the first clue about the start of the 1929 stock market crash (which preceded Black Monday and Black Tuesday) for all six points. The case of the Mondays continued into the fourth round proper, as its hardest question led off:

• The song I Ain’t Worried is the latest song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 for which band whose lead singer is Ryan Tedder?

A bit over one-third of the field knew OneRepublic for wagering points, while a round-low 14% tacked on two extra points by guessing that song was on the Top Gun: Maverick soundtrack. Another toughie came two questions later:

• What epic poem ends with the following line: They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow, through Eden took their solitary way?

Approximately 36% of teams named Paradise Lost and received their wager for it. We also discussed Egyptian queen Nefertiti, referenced Jerry Stiller’s role on The King of Queens, and put a bow on the round with an over/under three-parter. We finally got some perfect scores here, earned by XYZs (Olde Mother), Purr and the Kitty Cats (Solace Outpost), and Unemployed Hand Models (Bear Brick Oven). We reached the final question led by these teams:

• Scotty Doesn’t Know (Solace Brewing): 155
• Purr and the Kitty Cats (Solace Outpost): 153
• Unemployed Hand Models (Bear Brick Oven): 153
• Mannion’s Men (Quinn’s): 152
• XYZs (Olde Mother): 151
• I Don’t Know (Aslin): 151

FINAL QUESTION (51.8% success rate):

• Formed as a Marxist guerrilla movement in 1964, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of what country are known by the abbreviation FARC?

More than half the field were able to name Colombia to get the night’s final correct answer! Unfortunately, no Perfect 21s were achieved on Thursday, as no teams got all 21 wagering questions right. An extremely close final leaderboard came together, featured here:

• Washington Foreskins (Loudoun Kitchen): 160
• Mannion’s Men (Quinn’s): 160
• Power Vacuum (Champion): 159
• Educated Friends (Fourscore): 159
• Painful Burning Sensation (Smoketown): 158
• Scotty Doesn’t Know (Solace Brewing): 158
• I Don’t Know (Aslin): 158
• Tiny Petes (Belly Love): 158
• Beer Winners (Loudoun Kitchen): 158
• Cat in the Chat (Loudoun Kitchen): 158

THURSDAY’S WINNERS:

Smoketown Brewing Station in Brunswick, MD: Painful Burning Sensation  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: The Atomic Bomb)

Pour Dog House in Millersville, MD: New Beers Resolution  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Astronomy)

Champion Billiards in Frederick, MD: Power Vacuum  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Pigeons)

Loudoun Kitchen and Bar in Leesburg, VA: Washington Foreskins  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Meryl Streep Oscar Nominations)

Olde Mother Brewing in Frederick, MD: Deck Chairs on the Titanic  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: ACC Mascots)

Belly Love Brewing in Purcellville, VA: Tiny Petes  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Cold War Military Aviation)

Solace Brewing in Sterling, VA: Scotty Doesn’t Know  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Time Travel Films)

Bad Habits Bar & Grill in Martinsburg, WV: Artsy  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: College Football Teams)

• This game is temporarily being played at O’Connell’s Irish Pub in Martinsburg.

Brewery Fire in Taneytown, MD: Five Heads, One Brain  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Thrash Metal)

Fourscore Beer Co. in Gettysburg, PA: Educated Friends  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Taylor Swift Songs)

Crooked Run in Sterling, VA: Transparent Eyeballs  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Leave it to Beaver)

Solace Outpost in Falls Church, VA: Purr and the Kitty Cats  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: High School Musical 3)

Interchange Tiki Bar in Williamsport, MD: Gong Gong and the Butt Demons  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Fallout)

Bear Brick Oven Pizza in Silver Spring, MD: Unemployed Hand Models  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: New Wave British Heavy Metal)

Preston’s Pub in Manassas Park, VA:  Redneck Yacht Club  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: HOST’S CHOICE)

Quinn’s in Arlington, VA: Mannion’s Men  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Muppets)

Aslin Beer Co in Alexandria, VA: I Don’t Know  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Underworld)

Kalypso’s Sports Tavern in Reston, VA: Pain and Agony  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Friday the 13th (film series))

Two Story Chimney Ciderworks in Gaithersburg, MD: 

Mark’s Pub in Falls Church, VA: Southpaws  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Charlie’s Angels (original))