Jumbled Up at Wednesday Trivia!

Sixteen locations around the Mid-Atlantic welcomed a total of 179 teams Wednesday evening for Pour House Trivia.

FIRST ROUND:

Early in the first round, teams encountered the most difficult wagering question before halftime. To earn points, you had to have a little retro gaming knowledge:

• The original Nintendo Entertainment System controllers featured five buttons: the cross-shaped control pad, the A and B buttons, and which two other buttons?

Roughly 65% of the field filled in the blanks on the NES controller by pressing at least one of the Start and Select buttons. Other topics in the round included American founding father and beer brand namesake Samuel Adams as well as the doctor who lent his last name to what we now know as Parkinson‘s Disease. The latter question had the lowest bonus success rate of the night, as only 6.1% of teams correctly guessed Dr. Parkinson’s first name, James. Of those teams, Cutthroat (Thick-N-Thin) and Shrimp Forks (Mark’s) went above and beyond to record perfect scores in the first round.

SECOND ROUND:

The audio question on Wednesday played songs from three different 20th-century Disney animated feature films: Pocahontas, The Little Mermaid, and Lady and the Tramp. That was the kickoff for what was far and away the easiest round of the night. Teams encountered questions on the colloquial term dust bunny, the comic book debut of Superman, the blue headgear for United Nations Peacekeepers, and this weekend’s NFC Championship head coaches, Nick Sirianni of the Philadelphia Eagles and Kyle Shanahan of the San Francisco 49ers. In all, this round had 46 perfect team scores.

HALFTIME:

Halftime tasks on Wednesday included naming women featured on postage stamps (such as Martha Washington and Amelia Earhart), then doing a little word association to identify various TV series. Only nine teams (5% of the field) were able to get all 20 points on this puzzle page, which carried an average score of 15.2 points. One team nudged slightly ahead of a second-place scrum at the halftime break:

• Scuby (Barstool): 91
• Satan’s School For Girls (Memories): 90
• Carpet Stretchers (T.J. Stone’s): 90
• Cutthroat (Thick-N-Thin): 90
• The Gang Plays Bar Trivia (Belles’): 90

THIRD ROUND:

As opposed to the second round’s ease, Wednesday’s third round started with the two toughest wagering chances of the night. An Over/Under three-parter had a wagering success rate of 37%, while only 11% of teams earned bonus points for selecting correctly in all three parts. We followed that with the game’s hardest question:

• The law named for this 17th century British chemist states that within a closed system, the pressure exerted by a given mass of an ideal gas is inversely proportional to the volume it occupies. This law is often summarized using the formula PV = K. For your wager, which scientist is the namesake for this law?

That law is known as Boyle‘s Law for chemist Robert Boyle, and that answer was provided by 36% of the field. We also had questions about the Hershey Krackel bar and 2023 Billboard Hot 100 chart-toppers Mariah Carey (for the never-dying All I Want For Christmas is You) and Taylor Swift (for Anti-Hero). This was the only round on Wednesday in which no teams achieved a perfect score.

FOURTH ROUND:

Almost half of our teams (89 in all) nailed the 6-4-2 on the first clue, getting all six points with a correct answer of rubber. The final round of the night began with this Star Trek question:

• Which Star Trek series was the first to be set on a space station and not a spaceship?

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was successfully named by 59% of the field, while a round-low 23% tacked on two bonus points for naming Benjamin Sisko as the Starfleet Commander in charge of that space station. We moved on to topics such as the oh-so-fashionable bucket hat, big-time 1990s internet service America Online, and the etymology of the word whisky. At the end of the round, this Three Clues question asked our players to name a certain NHL team:

• This team won its only Stanley Cup championship in 2007.
• The all-time leader in points, assists, and games played for this franchise is Ryan Getzlaf.
• They play their games at the Honda Center, which was formerly known as Arrowhead Pond.

About 46% of teams were able to name the Anaheim Ducks at some point during that set of clues. A trio of perfect scores occurred in this round, recorded by Comfortably Dumb (Axes), Knocking Puss in Boots (Hops), and The House Never Wins (Mark’s). Nine teams were separated by just three points atop the standings before the final question:

• Fresh Off the U-Haul (Mark’s): 160
• Carpet Stretchers (T.J. Stone’s): 160
• Scott Looks Different (Memories): 159
• SIX TEAMS TIED WITH 157 POINTS

FINAL QUESTION (60.3% success rate):

• Which South American capital city and African country have names that are anagrams of each other?

Those anagrammed names are the capital city of Peru, Lima, and the nation of Mali. Your pair of Perfect 21 teams on Wednesday were Scott Looks Different (Memories) and Carpet Stretchers (T.J. Stone’s). They were also the only teams to reach the 170-point mark in the final standings:

• Carpet Stretchers (T.J. Stone’s): 172
• Scott Looks Different (Memories): 170
• Smartinis (T.J. Stone’s): 167
• Fresh Off the U-Haul (Mark’s): 167
• Sexual Chocolate (Memories): 167
• I Work Here (T.J. Stone’s): 166
• The House Never Wins (Mark’s): 166
• Satan’s School For Girls (Memories): 166
• Cutthroat (Thick-N-Thin): 165
• FOUR TEAMS TIED WITH 164 POINTS

WEDNESDAY’S WINNERS:

Belles’ Sports Bar in Frederick, MD: Power Vacuum  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Gilmore Girls)

Memories Charcoal House in Mount Airy, MD: Scott Looks Different  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Triple 50/50 (World War I or World War II?))

Quinn’s on the Corner in Arlington, VA: Donner Party Platter  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Four-Letter Countries)

GearHouse Brewing in Chambersburg, PA: Peeping Tom Cruises  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: General Medicine)

TGI Fridays in Hagerstown, MD: Shirts and Skins  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: 21st Century Maryland Men’s Basketball)

Idiom Brewing in Frederick, MD: Tokyo Sex Whale  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Wu-Tang Clan)

Axes and O’s in Sterling, VA: Here For the Beer  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: The Office (U.S.))

Hops N Shine in Alexandria, VA: Knocking Puss in Boots  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: The Bear)

Sully’s Pour House in Herndon, VA: Black Zexcellence  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: One-Hit Wonders)

T.J. Stone’s in Alexandria, VA: Carpet Stretchers  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Sailing)

Craftworx Taproom in Gainesville, VA: A Good Day to Die  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: League of Legends)

Barstool Sportsbook in Charles Town, WV: Jones Springs Hooligans  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: She’s All That)

Grape Escape in Gaithersburg, MD: Eagles  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Kindergarten Curriculum)

Shipgarten in McLean, VA: Dutton Ranch  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Flat Earth Theory)

Thick-N-Thin Brewing in Hagerstown, MD: Cutthroat  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: MLB Rules)

Celtic House in Arlington, VA: (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Prince Songs)

Mark’s Pub in Falls Church, VA: Fresh Off the U-Haul  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: George Strait Songs)