PHT Summer Fling Championships!

September 29, 2018

After 16 weeks of summer, the 2018 PHT Summer Fling Championships had finally arrived! Our four simultaneous games welcomed a total of 72 teams for a set of questions that tested every facet of their knowledge:

FIRST ROUND:

Saturday’s game opened with a Triple 50/50 question on rankings and titles, followed by a look at the upcoming return of ABC’s TGIF sitcom programming block. The third question of the opening round tossed our teams a curveball:

–> For your wager, what is the FIRST and LAST name of the man whose 56-game hitting streak is a New York Yankees record?

2-POINT BONUS: What is the FIRST and LAST name of the man whose 34-game hitting streak is a Boston Red Sox record?

It’s out of the ordinary to require both first and last name on any question, but there was a specific reason this requirement was added. Most of our teams knew that Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak is a Yankees record (since it is also the MLB record). But the wording of this question provided a subtle hint which only 22% of our teams were able to decipher. The longest hitting streak in Red Sox history was put together by Joe’s younger brother, Dom DiMaggio:

The first round closed with the most difficult bonus question of the first half:

–> From 1985 to 1987, the three winners of the Tony Award for Best Musical were each based on works penned by 19th century authors. For your wager, name any two of the three authors who wrote those novels.

A few teams may have actually been saved by simply submitting the most famous 19th century authors they could think of, as the answers were Victor Hugo (“Les Miserables”), Charles Dickens (“Drood”), and Mark Twain (“Big River”). While about half of the field named any two of these three authors, only one team (Save the Clock Tower) picked up this elusive two-point bonus, as Save the Clock Tower (Maryland) turned in three correct answers. None of our teams opened the Summer Fling finals with a perfect first round.

SECOND ROUND:

Saturday’s audio question featured three prominent actors who have dabbled in recorded music. We listened to Jennifer Lawrence, Jack Black, and Bruce Willis, with 31% of our teams picking up bonus points by recognizing all three singers. We followed with the most difficult wagering question of the first half:

–> Used in the treatment of sleep apnea, what is the full name of the scientific concept often abbreviated as CPAP?

Only 22% of our teams responded correctly with Continuous Positive Airway Pressure. Later, we drank a little kombucha and remembered this groundbreaking form of transportation:

Even after closing the first half with a relatively easier question concerning the work of Daniel Day-Lewis, the second round did not yield any perfect scores. After two rounds of play, only two teams (Killer Snails and Tokyo Ra) had answered all ten wagering questions correctly.

HALFTIME:

Saturday’s halftime topics included pictures of celebrity endorsers and words formed from the letters in the phrase ‘BUYER BEWARE’. This page yielded 14 perfect scores and an overall average of 18.2 points. Here is your halftime leaderboard:

Arrondissements of Ouagadougou (Maryland): 87
Unsavories (Virginia): 87
Save the Clock Tower (Maryland): 84
Oliver’s Army (Virginia): 84
State Senator McCheese (Frederick): 83
Momentary Lapse of Reason (Frederick): 83

THIRD ROUND:

The second half opened with a Three Clues question concerning former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, which saw just nine teams pick up two bonus points by turning in an early correct answer. We continued with a pair of animal questions (sort of). After asking our teams about the horse coat color known as ‘roan’, we offered up this rather difficult query on the subject of 21st century pop hits:

–> Since 2008, three songs have topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart with the names of animal species in their titles. For your wager, name any two of these three songs.

Your answers? “Fireflies” by Owl City, “Dark Horse” by Katy Perry, and “Panda” by Desiigner. In what was the most difficult wagering question of the day, only six teams gave us any two of these three correct answers, with none of our teams earning bonus points by naming all three. We closed the round by noting the striking resemblance between a film character and a board game character.

Thanks to the pop music question, none of our teams recorded a perfect third round score.

6-4-2 QUESTION:

6: In 2005, what university became the only school to produce both a #1 overall NFL draft pick and a #1 overall NBA draft pick in the same year?

4: One year prior, coach Urban Meyer led my football team to a perfect 12-0 record, but did NOT win the national championship.

This was certainly one of the most difficult sports questions we have ever asked. Few teams ventured a guess on the six-point clue, while many teams who waited were then thrown off by the four-point clue. Most of us only remember Urban Meyer as the head coach of Ohio State or Florida, but before heading to Gainesville, he spent two years out west:

In 2005, both Andrew Bogut and Alex Smith were drafted first overall out of the University of Utah. Seven teams earned the full six points on this question.

FOURTH ROUND:

After a difficult stretch early in the second half, the final round eased up a bit on our teams, who performed very well with topics such as poetic quotes and this home exercise regime:

The third question of the final round had a profound effect on the standings, as the category of Oscar-Winning Films garnered a lot of popularity as a potential five-point bonus category. We asked our teams to name either one of the two films to have won the Best Picture Oscar with a period in the official title. Only 21% of our teams earned their wager (with most turning in the more popular answer of “Kramer vs. Kramer”) while just four teams snagged two bonus points by also naming the 1940s film “Mrs. Miniver”. We closed with a three-part question loosely related to the catch phrases of Homer Simpson:

1) This is the stock ticker symbol of the company that produces Scotch Tape and Post-It Notes.

2) This exclamation is repeated at the start of “Song 2” by Blur.

3) Slogans found on this product’s website include “Helping imagination take shape for over 50 years!” and “Fun to use, not to eat!”.

Our teams easily swept bonus points with the answers of MMM (representing 3M), “Woo hoo!”, and Play-Doh. Two teams earned perfect final round scores: Dave Martinez School of Management (Maryland) and High School Prom (Virginia). Here is your overall leaderboard after four rounds of play: