Monday Night Kicked Off Season XVII!

After a rousing World Series on Sunday afternoon, our regular Monday teams were back in action to start a new 18-week season of Pour House Trivia.  A rather difficult final question separated the winning teams from the rest of the pack.  Let’s check out the recaps, as we welcomed 88 teams across nine venues:

ROUND 1:

We began Monday’s game with a question on chemical elements, asking our teams to name the first three elements of the Periodic Table whose names begin with vowels.  The first answer of oxygen was a cinch for most teams, but aluminum and argon were less popular responses, leading to just 24% of our teams earning two bonus points with three correct answers.  We found three uses for the name Polly before asking about this convenient product found in many public bathrooms:

We closed the opening round by asking our teams to name the NFL team co-founded by Hall of Famer Curly Lambeau.  Nearly every team answered correctly with the Green Bay Packers (who play at Lambeau Field), but only 19% of the field came away with two bonus points, as they remembered which 21st century player amassed the most rushing yards in franchise history:

That is four-time Pro Bowler Ahman Green.  After one round of play, seven teams were holding on to perfect scores.

ROUND 2:

Monday’s audio question featured three songs whose titles included the word “Time”.  Tonight’s answers included “Time After Time” (Cyndi Lauper), “One More Time” (Daft Punk), and “One Last Time” (Ariana Grande).  By far, the third song was the most difficult to pin down, leading to just 13% of our teams earning bonus points with three correct answers.  We continued with this query in Greek mythology:

–> By disguising himself in women’s clothes within the court of King Lycomedes, this ancient Greek warrior attempted to avoid fighting in the Trojan War.  The plan proved to be ineffective, as he was later killed during the war.  Name this legendary figure.

Apparently, very few of you had heard of the cross-dressing tale of Achilles, as only about half of our teams answered correctly here, with a majority of those earning only one point (which usually means that there were plenty of educated guesses on this question).  Moving on, we discusses U.S. State Nicknames and Slang Terms, before closing the second round with a question on this children’s literary character:

Only 19% of our teams tacked on the final bonus points of the first half by knowing the H.A. and Margaret Rey created Curious George.  Thanks to the two tough bonus questions which bookended this round, we did not see any perfect scores in the second stanza.

HALFTIME:

Monday’s halftime page featured photographs of Winter Olympic medalists.  We gave our teams a bit of a break by having them simply name the sport at which each athlete excelled, rather than the person’s name.  The overall average score came in at 15.2 points, with eight teams notching a perfect score.  Here are Monday’s top scores at the halftime break:

• Merciless Peppers of Quetzalacatenango (Il Forno):  89
• I Don’t Know Who (Morgan Inn):  88
• Kitten Mittens (Cheesetique):  86
• Giant Meteor (Cheesetique):  86
• Party of Six (DRP):  86
• Zack Morris is Trash (Il Forno):  86
• Cher’s Zombie Army (Uno Pizzeria):  86

ROUND 3:

Monday’s second half got off to an interesting start with this question in pop music:

–> Selling over ten million copies worldwide, which 2014 album took its title from the year in which its singer was born?

It seems as though most teams knew that this was “that Taylor Swift album”, but only about half of our teams remembered that she was born in 1989:

Furthermore, only eight teams earned two bonus points by also knowing that singer Ryan Adams released a track-by-track cover version of this album just one year after its release.  We continued with a look at the film work of actor John C. Reilly, the recent merger between Dow Chemical and DuPont, and the comparative ages of these celebrities:

Once again, the music question was largely responsible for keeping the perfect scores off the board, as we did not see any team record 36 points in the third round.

6-4-2 QUESTION:

We took a quick snack break for Monday’s six-point clue:

–> Which brand-name food product was introduced in 1964 to compete with Country Squares, a product sold by Post?

Only seven teams earned the full allotment of points with this correct answer:

ROUND 4:

It eventually became a recurring theme, but on Monday night, the first bonus question in each round was always the most difficult, as we discovered with the art question that began the final stanza.  Most of the field knew (or deduced) that Maurits Cornelius was the forename of Dutch artist M.C. Escher, but this bonus question proved to be the most difficult of the night:

–> This artist created a series of three works which collectively share their title with which 20^th century novella?

This is actually just ONE of the three works referenced in the bonus (it’s been split into three sections above).  Those works share their name with the Franz Kafka work “Metamorphosis”.  Only seven teams picked up these two hard-earned points.  We closed the round with questions on the video game “Mortal Kombat” and Rosie O’ Donnell, but once again, the first bonus question of the round kept the perfect scores off the board.  Here are Monday’s top scores heading into the final question:

• Merciless Peppers of Quetzalacatenango (Il Forno):  160
• Kitten Mittens (Cheesetique):  158
• I Don’t Know Who (Morgan Inn):  157
• Zack Morris is Trash (Il Forno):  153
• Two Unsavories (DRP):  153

MONDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (16.7% success rate):

–> Which document derives its name from a combination of Greek words meaning ‘double’ and ‘to fold over’?

On this difficult question, it was actually those with a scientific background that held the advantage here, as they may have remembered words such as diplopia (double vision) or diploid (a cell containing two sets of chromosomes).  In the end, we saw about one-sixth of our teams answer correctly with diploma.  Congratulations to Kitten Mittens (Cheesetique), as the only team to notch a Perfect 21 on Monday by correctly answering all wagering questions.  Here are your top overall scores from Monday night:

• Merciless Peppers of Quetzalacatenango (Il Forno):  166
• Kitten Mittens (Cheesetique):  165
• Giant Meteor (Cheesetique):  163
• Cher’s Zombie Army (Uno Pizzeria):  159
• I Don’t Know Who (Morgan Inn):  157
• Arrondissements of Ouagadougou (Greene Turtle – Hagerstown):  153
• Zack Morris is Trash (Il Forno):  151
• Salty Cucumbers (DRP):  144
• Two Unsavories (DRP):  143
• MC (Il Forno):  139
• The People (Greene Turtle – Hagerstown):  138

TONIGHT’S WINNERS:

DRP in Alexandria, VA:  Salty Cucumbers  (Next week’s first category: #1 Hits of 1995)

Greene Turtle in Hagerstown, MD:  Arrondissements of Ouagadougou  (Next week’s first category: Foreign Lakes)

Morgan Inn in Woodbine, MD:  I Don’t Know Who  (First category: One-Hit Wonders)

Hershey’s Restaurant in Gaithersburg, MD:  Killer Snails  ** 18 WINS IN A ROW! **  (Next week’s first category: The Winter Olympics)

Uno Pizzeria in Frederick, MD:  Cher’s Zombie Army  ** SEVEN WINS IN A ROW! **  (Next week’s first category: Audiobooks – AUDIO)

Cheesetique in Arlington, VA:  Kitten Mittens  (Next week’s first category: “Celebrity Big Brother” – U.S. version)

Bushwaller’s in Frederick, MD:  Who the F is Alice?  (Next week’s first category: Fluid Dynamics)

Greene Turtle in Urbana, MD:  Magic 8-Ball  (Next week’s first category: HOST CHOICE)

Il Forno in Frederick, MD:  Merciless Peppers of Quetzalacatenango  (Next week’s first category: French Phrases)