PHT Season XVIII Playoff Recap!
Saturday’s playoff games welcomed 132 teams vying for a potential berth in World Series XVIII:
FIRST ROUND:
Our playoff game began with questions concerning Jefferson Davis, the most prolific winners of the NHL’s Hart Trophy, and this bizarre short film:
You read that correctly… The credits of this film include “Evil Dead” collaborators Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, both of whom were about 20 years old at the time. After closing the round with a look at the TV shows created by Aaron Sorkin, we saw nine teams earn a perfect first round score.
SECOND ROUND:
We traveled back to 2004 for the audio question, asking our team to identify the titles of a film, pop song, and TV series which all debuted in that year. Most of our teams recognized the voice of Hilary Swank in “Million Dollar Baby” and the song “Heaven” by Los Lonely Boys, but pinning down the narrator (and leading actress) from this show proved to be a bit more difficult:
Only 14% of our teams earned bonus points on this opening question. Later, we looked at U.S. National Parks as well as the origin stories behind Kermit the Frog and the bobby pin. The final wagering question of the first half proved to be its most difficult:
–> The 13 minutes of animated sequences in this Disney movie were not actually produced by Disney, due to having abandoned traditional animation for computer animation three years earlier. Name this 2007 film which earned three Oscar nominations for Best Original Song.
Only 28% of the field closed the first half with this correct response:
With a noticeable increase in the difficulty level, All Glory to the Hypnotoad posted the only perfect score of the second round.
HALFTIME:
A playoff bonus was in store for our teams, as Saturday’s halftime page was worth a whopping 24 points. We displayed 12 pictures of celebrities appearing in music videos, offering one point each for naming the celebrities and the respective musical acts whose videos were depicted. Eleven teams recorded a perfect score of 24 points, while the overall average reached 18.7 points. These were your highest scoring teams at the end of the first half:
- All Glory to the Hypnotoad: 94
- High School Prom: 92
- Ingenious Bastards: 92
- Vitrifiers: 90
- Prestige Worldwide: 89
THIRD ROUND:
The second half of Saturday’s playoff game kicked off with a look at the OTHER offices held by John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and John Quincy Adams. Next up, our teams were transported back to middle school math class for this question:
–> The difference between these two numbers is six, while the difference between their squares is 180. What are these two numbers?
The field performed admirably on this head-scratcher, with the majority of our teams arriving at the correct answers of 12 and 18 (whose respective squares are 144 and 324). Other third round topics included the basilisk and the carabiner. We closed the round by the discussing the hit songs from the grunge band Alice in Chains:
Two teams notched a perfect third round score: Unsavories and J.T. Snow School of Babysitting.
FOURTH ROUND:
As we gear up for next month’s Super Bowl, the final round appropriately included this question:
–> Among the NFL’s eight current divisions, which is the only one in which ALL FOUR member teams have won a Super Bowl?
Thanks to the most recent Super Bowl, this question now has an answer, as the Philadelphia Eagles became the fourth and final team from the NFC East to win the Lombardi Trophy. We continued with a look at the work of author Kurt Vonnegut and the striking resemblance between these two actresses:
The final stanza yielded two perfect scores: Meet the Press and Zambookie. Here is your playoff leaderboard after four rounds of play:
- Unsavories: 164
- J.T. Snow School of Babysitting: 160
- Brother of Menelaus: 159
- Ingenious Bastards: 155
- Tokyo Tentacle Storm: 155
FINAL QUESTION (39.4% success rate):
–> What is the most common college athletic nickname that is NOT used by a team in one of the four major professional sports leagues?
About two-fifths of our teams earned wagering points on this final question with the correct answer of Bulldogs. Congratualtions to George Washington’s Camel, who was the ONLY team to answer all 21 wagering questions correctly during Saturday’s playoff game. Here are your highest overall scores:
- J.T. Snow School of Baby Sitting: 168
- George Washington’s Camel: 163
- Blockheads: 162
- Ralf Fines: 160
- All Glory to the Hypnotoad: 157
- F.U. Darts: 157
- Insubordinate and Churlish: 157
- Unsavories: 156
- Hamster Condiments: 155
- FIVE TEAMS TIED WITH 153 POINTS
