Pacific Pondering at Weekend Trivia!

May 23, 2022

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Eight area venues welcomed a total of 72 teams over the weekend, each ready to take a bite out of some Pour House Trivia.

FIRST ROUND:

Our weekend squads were primed and ready if the opening rounds were any indication. Friday’s teams found a question on the plant pigment chlorophyll the most difficult, but handled other questions on ivory and the inaugural recipients of the Nobel Prize well. The latter topic wasn’t easy to score a bonus on, however; only about a third of the field knew that physicist and Nobel honoree Wilhelm Röntgen discovered x-rays. Saturday’s first round dealt with the Hitchcock film Psycho and the 25th anniversary of Pokemon to start. A three-parter on people with L.L. initials saw just over one-quarter of teams get all three answers right for the bonus, though. A well-played set of opening rounds brought perfect scores to a total of 16 teams.

SECOND ROUND:

While Friday’s audio question regarding musical acts with J.T. initials was pretty successful overall, Saturday’s was a bit rough. Three very short clips of famous songs were played; just over half the field knew two of the three song titles for wagering points, while four teams identified all three for their bonus. Later in Friday’s second round, teams got knocked loopy by the hardest wagering question of the first half:

  • While it can affect athletes of any sport, the neurological disease dementia pugilistica is most commonly associated with (and named for) athletes of which sport?

Since their fighters are referred to as pugilists, that sport would be boxing. About 71% of teams earned their wager with that answer. Saturday’s teams encountered questions on Clinton staffers removing the letter W from White House keyboards just before George W. Bush began his presidency, the history of the Major League Baseball Commissioner position, and PBS mainstay This Old House. Store-Bought Dopamine (Doc Waters), Fermenting Discussion (Mason), and Crosby’s Fan Club (Mason) went the distance in the second round and picked up perfect scores.

HALFTIME:

The topics at halftime on Friday were suited-up TV characters and rulers matched to the empires they founded, while Saturday’s teams handled film characters by their costumes and B.S. terms. The average score over the weekend was 13.7, and fifteen teams — including just one on Saturday — scored the full 20 points. Our weekend leaderboard at this point was topped by a perfect team:

THIRD ROUND:

Overall, the third rounds this past weekend proved to be the toughest of the respective night, with each second half starting with the hardest bonus question of the game. Friday opened with a question about the only two towns in Nevada that outlaw gambling, and just 13% of the field identified the counties of one of those locales (Lincoln for Panaca, and Clark for Boulder City in case you need to know where not to go to hit the tables in Nevada). The third round on Saturday began with a query on actor John Malkovich, but only two teams knew either of the films Malkovich received Oscar nominations for (1984’s Places in the Heart and 1993’s In the Line of Fire). For difficult wagering questions, Friday’s game went a little sour:

  • Produced by DeKuyper Distilleries, what is the six-letter name of the line of Schnapps liqueurs whose varieties include Island Punch, Berry Fusion, and Sour Apple?

The Pucker brand was named by 26% of the field. Other Friday topics included tennis star John McEnroe and repeated assassination survivor Rasputin. As for Saturday’s game, teams discussed 80s musical act Midnight Oil and Vermont‘s 14-year run as an independent republic before hitting their toughest wagering question:

  • After intense pressure from the Soviet government, Boris Pasternak was forced to decline the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. Pasternak earned the award for which 1957 novel, later adapted into an Oscar-winning film?

About 36 percent of the field knew that novel-turned-film was Doctor Zhivago. Because of the round’s difficulty, particularly with the bonus questions, no team turned in a perfect score here.

FOURTH ROUND:

Before the final round, 6-4-2 questions on the dwarf planet Pluto and the name Charlie awaited Friday and Saturday’s teams respectively. A bit of presidential wordplay tripped up the Friday field to start the round; Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew were the last 20th-century U.S. President-VP duo to have the same number of letters in their last names. Saturday’s fourth-round question on Larry Flynt ended up the hardest for that evening’s teams, but 68% still named him for wagering points. Other topics in the round over the weekend included noted runt of the litter-turned-giant canine Clifford, Hall of Fame musician Madonna, the return of the CSI television franchise, and Barbie‘s controversial butterfly tattoo in 1999. However, 13 teams scored a perfect 36 points in the fourth round this past weekend! The pre-final question scoreboard was led by these squads:

FRIDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (58.5% success rate):

  • From the Latin word for “weight,” which verb is defined as “to consider carefully or weigh in the mind”?

SATURDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (42.1% success rate):

  • According to anthropologists, about one-third of the world’s current languages are spoken exclusively on which two-word island located just south of the Equator?

A return to normalcy with the weekend finals saw more than half of Friday’s field correctly name the verb ponder, while more than two-fifths of Saturday’s teams take the right trip to the island of New Guinea. The only Perfect 21 over the weekend went to That’s So Clavin (Pretzel and Pizza), which answered every wagering question correctly on Saturday! That team took its rightful place atop the weekend standings:

WEEKEND WINNERS:

Springfield Manor Winery in Thurmont, MD: Five Heads, One Brain  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Distilled Things)

P. B. Dye Golf Course in Ijamsville, MD: ON HIATUS (FIRST CATEGORY AFTER HIATUS: Cryptozoology)

Dragon Distillery in Frederick, MD: Prancing Ponies  (NO GAME NEXT WEEK — FIRST CATEGORY ON JUNE 3: Seinfeld)

Doc Waters Cidery in Germantown. MD: Sexual Chocolate  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Dynamic Duos)

Flying Ace Farm in Lovettsville, VA: Areola 51  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Tiger Woods)

South Mountain Creamery in Frederick, MD: Cleanup on Aisle Four  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Star Wars Battles)

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

Pretzel and Pizza Creations in Hagerstown, MD: That’s So Clavin  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Foreign Islands)

Mason Social in Alexandria, VA: Fermenting Discussion  (NO GAME NEXT WEEK — FIRST CATEGORY ON JUNE 5: Potent Potables)

Earn $100 for Referring PHT

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