Let’s just start off by saying that tonight’s final question was certainly quite interesting.  Whether your team was happy or sad when the final answer was announced, you can’t deny that it involved a topic that we usually don’t touch on here at Pour House Trivia.  Snack foods and death make for an eerie combination!  Nonetheless, I’m sure it’s a fact none of you will forget anytime soon, and isn’t that really the point of all this?  Anyway, on to the recaps:

WEDNESDAY’S STATS AND FACTS (102 teams across 14 venues):

–> Highest Overall Score: Sexual Chocolate (Memories) with 178

** Highest score of Season XV **

–> Highest Score after Round 4: Satan’s School for Girls with 167

–> Highest First Half Score: Areola Grande (Valley Grill) and Sexual Chocolate with 92

–> Perfect 21 (correct on all wagers and final): Because of the difficult final question, no team managed to score the Perfect 21 tonight.

–> Our halftime page featured chemical elements and (unauthorized) pictures of celebrities on “South Park”.  The page played to an average score of 168, with 15% of our teams scoring a perfect 20 points.

–> About 10% earned six points on our basketball-themed 6-4-2 question, by knowing that a player has exactly ten seconds to shoot a free throw after receiving the ball from the referee.

TONIGHT’S FINAL QUESTION (10.9% success rate):

–> Before his 2008 passing, organic chemist and food storage technician Fred Baur requested that his body be cremated, so his ashes could be stored in which type of container that he is credited with designing? (you’ll find the answer later in this blog)

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Whole Foods Market in Vienna, VA

Once a month I get to come to Whole Foods Market in Vienna and see my regulars!  They are all such nice people and we had a great game tonight!  It was a hard fought battle by our top three teams. Most of the teams did well in the first half, with the exception of a question on which AL East team has had its players lead the league in home runs in each of the last four years.  Ah… who needs ’em, the Orioles are a Maryland team anyway… 😉

The puzzle page played a little tougher than usual, with the bottom half stumping many of the teams.  I also took a moment to apologize during this half, as I was taking song requests from kids who wandered towards my table.  You know, there is only so much One Direction a person can take!

Barry Manilow’s Closet took the lead early in the game, grabbing bonuses that many of our other teams had a bit of trouble with.  The third round featured a wide array of topics including Catholic Popes, Demi Lovato, and Doctor Who.  The final question hit on a rather unique topic, and although it was certainly an interesting fact, it stumped our teams tonight!  In the end, here are your top three teams:

First Place:  Barry Manilow’s Closet

Second Place:  Brexit Brits

Third Place:  Shiggles

Our next game will be May 30th!  We’ll start with an opening category on Aphrodisiacs.

~ Zach

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Valley Grill in Middletown, MD

Tonight was our first official game on the patio here at Valley Grill Sports Bar in Middletown, and although it was a little chilly and dark at the end, we still had a few teams stick to it and play outside for the whole match.  Thirteen teams here at Valley, and no team ran away with the game early as it was competitive from start to finish.  Subjects for our first round included the winner’s choice category of the state of Michigan, followed by our Armed Forces academies, cosmetics, and fictional location from some popular novels.  We also had Three Clues for scientist Nikola Tesla, though I’m not sure he ever envisioned anything like this:

Round two went pretty well although it did contain our second biggest miss of the night, the capitals of Brazil, Australia, and Pakistan.  We did some colorful band names for the audio clue, tasted a little Canada Dry with our meals, and talked about Melissa McCarthy’s latest spoof on White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.  Our biggest “hit” of the night was our local Baltimore Orioles, and just how well they have been hitting dingers, Here’s Mark Trumbo’s sweet stroke for you few teams that answered the Red Sox:

No big surprises in round three, though I loved the reactions I got from making you think the latest voice actress for Smurfette was Courtney Love.  LOL!  It pays to listen to the entire question in Pour House, so a ton of teams answered correctly with Pope Leo, which without our embedded hint would have been a very difficult question.  We also had your identify the Gulf of Mexico via some waterways, as well as the first iteration of Dr. Who by the actor who portrayed the iconic sci-fi character.  Lastly we talked about the latest additions to the Garbage Pail Kids, which are OBVIOUSLY not influenced at all by politics:

The final round featured a number of great scoring moments including one I will detail shortly as surprising for me. You won’t shop through Etsy and find any building for sale that were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, but you may find that hand knitted scarf you wish your Grandma would’ve made you for Christmas.  Teams also scored well with ASAP as part of rapper Rakim Mayers’ stage name, and the last days of Pompeii, to which it was revealed that someone of a Judeo-Christian background wrote of God’s wrath in their final moments.  Finally that pull that surprised me, going from the recent Michael Bay vision or all the way back to the first generation cartoon series, almost all teams pulled Starscream as Megatron’s second in command from the Transformers.  Great job!

Lastly, the final question was one of the toughest we’ve had in awhile, so I would love to give a huge shout out to Suck it Trebek as the ONLY team to answer correctly that a Pringles can has officially served as a burial urn.  Here are the results:

First Place:  Shakeweight

Second Place:  Fat Kids are Hard to Kidnap

Third Place:  Areola Grande

Next week’s first category:  Snare Drum Rudiments

~ Ronnie

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The Tavern in Olney, MD

A lot of teams were playing well tonight for our game of Pour House Trivia here at The Tavern in Olney!  Our current back-to-back winner, Mamma Lu’s, was back to try for a hat trick, but everyone else was in to stop that streak!  Both times this team won, they came back on the final question.  The first week they came back from fourth place on the final question, and last week they jumped from SIXTH place to 1st on the final.  Unfortunately, that “three-peat” would not come to fruition this evening…

Our game was extremely tight throughout the entire night, with the largest lead at the end of any round was just three points.  All of teams performed very well, with no question hitting below 50%.  After the fourth round, our top three teams were within six points of each other, but everyone went with the big 12 point wager (or just under).  It would have been a great night to play it a little conservatively, as our final question was not answered correctly by any of our teams.  Some great guesses, but they all came up short tonight!

After the scores were tallied from the final, Moving Forward finished in third place.  Playing tough to take second place was Olney The Lonely!  Happy to be back in winner’s circle for the first time in a few weeks was our first place team: Lonely Toomah Fan Club!!  Their pick for next week’s winners choice category is Film Noir, so study up and come join the fun we have on Wednesdays at The Tavern!!

~ Jon J

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Belles’ Sports Bar in Frederick, MD

At Belles’ Sports Bar in Frederick, tonight’s game was off to a tough start, with only one team able to identify the European language that uses a “hacek” symbol – Czech.  But by the second question our teams were back on their games, with every team earning bonus points for knowing both the oldest (U.S. Military Academy) and newest (U.S. Air Force Academy) of the five Service Academies.  Teams continued to breeze through the second round.  Every single team knew their beverages (Canada Dry was named for its country of origin) and their “Saturday Night Live” skits (Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer as the Easter Bunny).

The halftime puzzle, which featured real-life celebrities as “South Park” characters, couldn’t stump these players. All of our teams scored at least 18 points!  Moving into the third round, three teams earned bonus points for identifying both Demi Lovato and Katy Perry as the most recent “Smurfette” voices.  Teams also had no trouble when it came to the Garbage Pail Kids, a certain 9th Century Pope, or the Gulf of Mexico.

As we approached the final, it was a pretty close (and high-scoring) game, however the last question threw almost all of our players for a loop.  Asked to name the food container organic chemist Fred Baur designed and hoped to be cremated in, every team but one guessed Tupperware.  But only Just Good Enough turned in the correct answer – a Pringles can!   This was enough to land them the top spot for the night, followed by Kobe Buffalo Meat in second place and Pookie and the Bwain.

~ Allison

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Bennigan’s in Frederick, MD

We had a big night here at Bennigan’s in Frederick!  House veterans and a handful of newbies duked it out for what looked like a runaway game of Pour House Trivia at first, but came down to the wire!

Highlights of the Night:

In “What-Kind-of-Muggles”: Our Winner’s Choice category tonight was Harry Potter, and the world is so inundated with the HP franchise that I didn’t think for a second that we would get anything but nine-point wagers and correct answers on it.  Three-quarters of the field put their bonus chips on it.  Imagine then my shock as half the teams turned in incorrect answers. When I tell you I hollered.

In “Getting-Our-Capitals-Crossed”: The World Capitals question tonight was murder on the teams tonight, with the correct answers causing groans and roars and arguments to erupt all around me.  Devisive.  Devisive is a good word. Hooooo boy.

In “What-Kind-of-Weirdo”: Who wants to be buried in a Pringles can?  I get that he designed the thing, but come ON man, that’s just too much.  Tupperware was too much, and most teams put that!  How do you reach that point, of saying with a straight face to the people you love that you’ll be leaving behind: “Put me in the can.  No, not the Sour Cream and Onion, the Cheddar, you know I like them best!”  OK I invented that last part, but I can’t get it out of my head that if the guy wanted to be buried in a can, he CERTAINLY wanted a specific flavor.  No one can tell me differently.

The final caused a last second tiebreaker as the podium got shaken up…

In third place, sadly losing the tiebreaker after battling back from an early deficit, Many Bothans!

In second place tonight, also fighting tooth and nail back to the podium and winning the tiebreaker, Literally Anything!

In first place tonight, after getting knocked down a few pegs last week, taking back their top spot, Momentary Lapse of Reason!

Great game everyone! Next week we’ll kick things off with NBA Teams! Study up, and we’ll see you next time!

Until then,

~ Ian

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Woodside Deli in Gaithersburg, MD

Six strong team at Woodside Deli in Gaithersburg for tonight’s game of Pour House Trivia.  A couple of new teams joined the steady group of regulars.

Round 1 was a fairly easy round with a single painful question, the grammar question.  The teams that missed the grammar question knew they were in trouble and only wagered their one point, but Contribution was unfortunate to have chosen this question as their bonus category, as they fell a little bit behind the field.  At the end of the first round, Nobody Loves Chachi held the lead at 36, with three other teams within three points.

Round 2 was quite similar to Round 1, except this time it was the audio question that brought in some troubles.  Everyone knew Deep Purple, but Blue October and White Town were the mystery bands.  None of the top teams lost their five-point bonus in this round.  This round started to spread the field a little bit.  After turning in the only perfect score on the halftime puzzle page, Nobody Loves Chachi increased their lead by reaching 90 points.  High Water Mark maintained second place at 83, while we had a tie for third place between The Fellowship and Kickin Cancer’, each at 78.

The second half was a blur of trivia knowledge.  No true stumpers, no huge swings, just Contribution capitalizing on a pair of two-point bonuses in the final round to get back into the top three.  High Water Mark kept their consistency throughout the rounds, while Nobody Loves Chachi expanded their lead.  The Fellowship and Kickin’ Cancer stumbled a bit, but were both still within contention at the end of the fourth round.

Going into the final question, our top four teams were:

Nobody Loves Chachi – 162

High Water Mark – 153

Contribution – 147

The Fellowship – 145

Would the final make or break all of the teams?  Unfortunately for everyone, the final went 6 – 0 against our competitors, as no team was able to surmise the correct response.  The most common answer was Tupperware, and we also had some guesses of Thermos and Pyrex, but the correct answer was a Pringles Can!

The top three stayed the same with Nobody Loves Chachi taking gold, High Water Mark taking silver, and Contribution scoring the Bronze.

Next week’s first category is “Khan”!

~ Scott

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Nido’s Ristorante in Frederick, MD

This week at Nido’s in Frederick, we started out with a question about movie musicals, asking about a character who had the last name of Bennett which most teams figured out was Annie.  However, the first half of the game ended up being very interesting.  Sometimes in a game of trivia we run into what I affectionately refer to as the “Third Round of Death”, meaning we have a third round where there are multiple questions that are extremely difficult, leading to scores getting completely decimated.  This week, however, we ran into something much less common: the SECOND round of death!  Between the Colorful Bands audio question and the MLB Teams question, things got rough for several teams tonight.  The second round also had a World Capitals question that ended up being tough as well, as some teams learned that the capitals for Brazil and Australia are NOT actually Rio de Janeiro and Sydney, respectively (they’re Brasilia and Canberra).  This was a big reason why The Witiots jumped out to a rather large lead after halftime, which was a lead they never relinquished for the rest of the night.

I liked the halftime page for tonight as well, which asked teams to identify celebrities based on their ‘South Park’ appearances, as well as matching up chemical elements to their Latin names.  The matching part was tricky, the key is definitely to know what the symbols for those elements are, as they are based on their Latin names.  Tonight’s final question was about food miscellanea, and proved to be a rather difficult one as well.  We learned that the guy who invented the Pringles can wanted to be cremated so he could be buried in one actually (I wonder what flavor of can he wanted….).  However, the fact that Tom Brady nailed the final question didn’t really change anything, with Tom Brady taking third place while The Misfits took second and the win went to The Witiots!  Nice work!  Next week we open up with a question about Italian Cuisine, so I will see you all then!

Until next time,

~ Chad

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Top Golf in Alexandria, VA

We’re starting to get a regular following here for Wednesday night trivia at TopGolf Alexandria, as all four of our teams tonight are returning from previous weeks.  That means our teams are picking up those all-important standing points that will determine our House Champion and to get a seat at our World Series to be held this summer!  Let’s see what happened tonight.

Our first round started relatively smoothly which resulted in a tie going into Round 2.  Round 2 was noticeably harder as teams had to identify national capitals that were purposely built to alleviate overcrowding and/or moved to a politically-neutral area.  Only one team managed to get any points at all for this question.  But that’s okay as we had additional questions on soft drink brands and MLB home run leaders, which proved to be much easier for our field tonight.

Our halftime puzzle sheet had teams do a reasonable job.  But, everyone missed figure 8, which was George R.R. Martin the author of the “Fire and Ice” trilogy that became “The Game of Thrones”.  Teams then had to identify the original Latin name for some chemical elements.  A daunting task at first, but once teams figured out you only needed to find the symbol to get the Latin name, teams were able to rack up significant points.

The 6-4-2 proved to be quite unique in that three of our four teams got four points.  But, Two Balls, One Bag could not figure it out after four points.  So, we gave as the last clue the total number of players in a regulation NBA game.  Our last team noticed that the basketball game was on TV all around the bar.  But, they must have miscounted or added the two referees in, because they guessed 12, which earned them no points.  Round 4, Question 5 was our highlight as one team did not know the answer outright, but eventually guessed Pompeii as the city that was destroyed and could possibly be an example of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Our Final Question proved to be the most difficult as everyone missed it.  They had to identify the food container that Fred Baur invented to seal in freshness as well as for convenience.  Everybody guessed “Tupperware”, but the actual answer was Pringles can.  So, everybody lost points, which led to our medal table for tonight:

First Place:  Two Balls, One Bag

Second Place:  I Thought This Was Speed Dating a/k/a Don’t Re-Accommodate Me, Bro

Third Place:  Easter Bunnies

Next week’s first category:  Famous Sausages

Join us every 7:00pm for more trivia at TopGolf Alexandria!

Until next time,

~ Chris

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Bennigan’s in Clarksburg, MD

We hosted an exciting game tonight at Bennigan’s in Clarksburg!  We had twists, turns, lead changes, fun, food, shenanigans, trivia, name-calling, sports, everything you need to have a stellar time!  It was great!  The Celtics were on TV and certainly I was getting flack from teams because I pronounced it KEL-tic rather than SELL-tic last week, even though I was reading the word out of context so my pronunciation was correct in more situations, just unlucky that sports were the context.  Either way, I just made fun of everyone and went on my way…  It says a lot about the relationship you have with the crowd when you can just give them all crap and still feel welcome.  I am truly blessed to have such a fun crowd to work with every week here!

The game started with Rhymes with Orange strongly in first place. They started the game with seven players but knew they’d be having eight after a round or two so they weren’t playing for anything but fun and pride.  They were very strong tonight, who knows if it was the 8th man or just their normal greatness but they certainly showed that they were one of the strongest teams here.  A good chunk of regulars tonight with little to no newbies, it sure was competitive.

We asked a hard question right out of the gate tonight with the Audio clue of round 2.  Colorful bands, but maybe we should’ve titled it “Lesser Known Bands” as only half of the teams able to salvage points with TWO of the three colors.  One team, Strangers have the Best Candy, was able to pick up the two-point bonus, the only team to do so. Maybe they were guessing colors but either way, they gained some ground on the rest of the field.  Strangers Have the Best Candy looking strong all night, keeping it close as only a duo tonight!

As we approached the final, the lead traded a few times between Dusty Baker and Rhymes with Orange with Roaming Gnomes close behind and Strangers Have the Best Candy close to the top as well.  Dusty Baker led by a small margin on Orange but they didn’t need to bet to cover them because of their ineligibility.  Therefore, a safer bet of nine points rather than 12 on the final saved Dusty Baker from falling too far back when they missed on the final, as every team did.

A difficult final meant that the game would come down to wagering.  Roaming Gnomes bet five points, keeping them tied with Dusty Baker after a double miss there; Strangers bet 0 and kept within the money too.  Third place went to Strangers have the Best Candy, a good fought game and a great bet to lock in the prize money!  Well done!  Roaming Gnomes trailed Orange and Dusty all game but a conservative bet on the final helped them out a LOT as they were able to force the tiebreaker AND they came out victorious there!  An unlikely victory but a good game nonetheless! Dusty Baker taking second place tonight!  Fun times, back next week with Ocean City Bars!  Good luck everybody!

~ Bill

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Memories in Mount Airy, MD

Another week, another close game of Pour House Trivia at Memories Charcoal House in Mount Airy!  Things stayed very competitive all night, with the first breathing room coming post-final!  Each week, the top teams at Memories continue to put up high scores, making this one of the toughest venues for PHT!

It would be no different tonight, as two teams dominated the first half, with both Sexual Chocolate and Satan’s School for Girls topping 90 points at the break!  With a score of 92, Sexual Chocolate rattled off a PERFECT first half.  Every wager, every two-point bonus, and all 20 questions on the halftime sheet were answered correctly by Sexual Chocolate.  How long could they keep up this pace?  The team finally missed a two-point bonus on a third round “Doctor Who” question, and only scored four points on the 6-4-2.

By missing out on those four possible points, Sexual Chocolate actually relinquished the lead to Satan’s School for Girls, who rolled into the final question with a one-point lead.  Scores of 167 and 166 would be good enough for runaway victories at most other venues, but tonight one of these teams unfortunately would not win.  Tensions mounted as everyone stayed within range of each other… and then the final hit.

“Devastating” is a word that could be used.  With Sexual Chocolate being the only team to get the correct answer, they took this down at the very last second – and they almost went with a wrong answer!  Your winners tonight:

First Place: Sexual Chocolate

Second Place: Satan’s School for Girls

Third Place: Heisenberg

For the winner’s choice category for next week…  Oh, it’s true, it’s DAMN true…  We’ll be asking an audio question on Pro Wrestling Entrance Themes!

You can find them all online, so study up and I’ll see you next week!

~ Nick

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Furnace Bar and Grill in Thurmont, MD

Tonight at the Furnace Bar and Grill in Thurmont, our powerhouse team of We Need an Adult was going for itds fourth win, while our regulars such as Member Berries and Goobers were each going for their first Pour House Trivia victory.  It would prove to be a daunting task.  There were two questions in the first half in which We Need an Adult was the only team to earn points.  In addition, We Need an Adult scored the only perfect 20 on the halftime puzzle page, giving them a halftime lead of 21 points.

They did not take their foot off the gas pedal!  By the time we reached the end of the fourth round, We Need an Adult held a commanding 25 point lead, allowing them to wager it all for zero risk.  In fact, all of our teams wagered the full 12 points, but no one was able to come up with the correct answer on the final question.

We had a solid effort by Team Mike, as he played as a solo tonight and finished just outside of the top three.  Taking home third place tonight was Member Berries, while our silver medal was awarded to the Goobers.  We Need an Adult is now riding a four-game winning streak.  Will anyone be able to knock them off the podium?  Find out next week here at the Furnace Bar and Grill in Thurmont, where our game will open with a question in the category of the TV show “Rick and Morty“!

Until next time…

~ Devan

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Barefoot Bernie’s in Hagerstown, MD

At Trivia Night, No One Can Hear You Scream…

Happy Alien day everyone!  At Barefoot Bernie’s in Hagerstown, there’s no screaming out answers because our teams are professionals.  On this beautiful Wednesday that really felt like spring, we we had 42 questions of fun and several new teams.  Let’s welcome the Panty Droppers and Forrest Grump!  of course, it’s also good to see some old teams that haven’t been back in a while… like Sparks and Slapsgiving!

With a full slate of teams, we had some close calls.  For our audio question, only Slapsgiving could name all three colors to snag a two-point bonus.  At the half, we had three perfect puzzle pages and a tie for first place between Pen Island and Alternative Answers.  Despite some tough questions in the third round, scores did not change much.  By the end of the 6-4-2, our top three teams were two points from each other!

These top three teams continued to slay tonight’s set, as none missed a wager in the final round, though an extra two-point bonus by Alternative Answer gave them a whopping three-point lead as we finished the round.  We asked a rather difficult final question tonight.  All around the trivia tables, teams debated a myriad of different food containers which could be possible answers.  When we called time, only TexyLand had the right answer of a Pringles Can!  It’s too bad that this answer wasn’t enough to get that latecomer into the standings.  Instead, it was some old favorites on the winners circle.  Pen Island took third, Sad Fat Dragons grabbed second, and Alternative Answers scored another victory this week!  It’s their fourth in a row as they increased their overall lead in the standings!

Next week’s first category:  The Appalachian Trail

We’ll see you then!

~ Sean

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Applebee’s in Waynesboro, PA

We had a packed house tonight at Applebee’s in Waynesboro, with eight teams battling it out in what ended up being a rather tough game.  We started out with one of our more amusing Winner’s Choice categories, which was Dead “Simpsons” Characters, and then moved into one of our “Three Clues/One…” type categories, where teams were correctly able to guess that Nikola Tesla worked with Alternating Current and was portrayed by David Bowie in a 2006 film.  We wrapped up round one with our Hint of the Day question (Courtesy of our Facebook page), asking about fictional countries and the literary works in which they are found.  At the end of Round One we had a close game, as there were only seven points separating first and last place.

Round Two started off with a difficult audio question about “colorful” band names, a question that saw only a handful of teams earn points and only one team correctly naming all three for a two-point bonus.  We then moved into a sports question talking about our Baltimore Orioles and their home run dominance over the last few years. Combine their strong second round with a perfect puzzle page, and at the half Alternative Facts had started to distance themselves from the pack.  Wingin’ It was right behind them, however and this would turn into an epic battle.

Wingin’ It started off Round Three hot, in part by being only one of two teams to correctly guess that Demi Lovato and Katy Perry had both voiced Smurfette in the “Smurfs” movies.  Our 6-4-2 question was focused on basketball, with only We HATE Groot getting it correct on the six point clue.  However, Wingin’ It was able to guess it on the four point clue, and had taken the lead at the end of round three, and were able to hold onto that lead into the final.

The final was a very very tough one tonight, as no teams were able to correctly guess that Fred Baur designed the iconic Pringles can.  However, there wasn’t a whole lot of wager changes for this one, so the leaderboard remained the same in the end.  Here are your top three:

First Place:  Wingin’ It

Second Place:  Alternative Facts

Third Place:  JuJu and Friends

Next week’s first category:  New Kids on the Block

See you then!

~ Kyle

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I would like to take this moment to announce a VERY SPECIAL event on June 14th.  More details to follow!  In the meantime, here are your top teams tonight:

First Place:  Unfrozen Caveman Lawyers

Second Place:  Sparklers

Next week’s first category:  “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”