Rock Me, Wednesday Trivia!

Wednesday’s game of Pour House Trivia welcomed 95 teams across 13 venues.

FIRST ROUND:

To start Wednesday’s game, we asked our teams to literally remember the Alamo, as we asked a three-part question to note the 186th anniversary of the battle.  We continued with a discussion of the phenomenon known as the Dark Side of the Rainbow, which stems from the perceived synchronicity between the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon and the film The Wizard of Oz.  The final question of the opening round included a difficult bonus question, as only 19% of our teams knew that a student from the University of Texas prevailed in this month’s Jeopardy! College Championship.  Eleven Wednesday teams recorded a perfect first round score.

SECOND ROUND:

Wednesday’s audio round featured three songs whose titles begin with the word Mr., as we listened to Mr. Tambourine Man by Bob Dylan, Mr. Roboto by Styx, and Mr. Brightside by The Killers.  Other second round topics included the Michigan city of Flint, the controversial work of Michelangelo, and the most successful countries at the recent Winter Olympics.  The second round also included what was easily the most difficult wagering question of the first half:

• Decades after directing The Piano, this New Zealander recently became the first woman to earn two career Oscar nominations for Best Director.  For your wager, identify this woman or name the western film for which she was nominated this year.

Despite being one of the most successful female film directors in Hollywood, Jane Campion is apparently not well-known among our Wednesday teams.  Furthermore, her film The Power of the Dog earned more Oscar nominations than any other film released last year, but this title also eluded most of the field.  Only 23% of the field earned wagering points was at least one of these correct answers, with ten teams tacking on two bonus points by submitting both correct responses.  Eight of those ten teams ran the table by posting a second round score of 36 points.

HALFTIME:

The top half of Wednesday’s halftime page asked our teams to identify celebrities who use a standalone letter in their stage names (or nicknames), while the bottom half matched literary characters to their respective works.  Singer Vitamin C and actress Maggie Q were certainly the most difficult faces to pinpoint, as these two women kept the perfect scores off the board.  The average score reached 14.3 points, with none of our teams notching a perfect score.  These were your highest scoring Wednesday teams at the halftime break:

• H. R. Puff ‘N’ Stuff (Hops N Shine): 88
• Stinkfist (Idiom): 88
• Tokyo Sex Whale (Belles’): 88
• Sad and Demented But Social (Belles’): 88
• Stink Floyd (Belles’): 88

THIRD ROUND:

Topics from Wednesday’s third round included the music group Coldplay (and its recent collaboration with BTS), the landmark 1966 NCAA basketball national championship game between Texas Western College (now known as The University of Texas at El Paso) and the University of Kentucky, and the origins behind PEZ candy.  Since virtually every Pour House Trivia player’s least favorite category is World Geography, it was no surprise that this closing query was the most difficult wagering question of the third stanza:

• As it flows west into the Atlantic Ocean, the Orange River forms a portion of the border between these two coastal nations.  Identify either one of these two countries.

Exactly one-third of our Wednesday teams earned wagering points with one correct answer, which in most cases was South Africa.  Only 11% of our teams earned two bonus points by also giving us the correct response on Namibia, the nation which lies along South Africa’s northwestern border.  As a result, Tokyo Sex Whale (Belles’) and Drink Nova (Sully’s) earned the only perfect scores in Wednesday’s third round.

FOURTH ROUND:

After discussing the work of Robin Williams in Wednesday’s 6-4-2 question, the final round included topics such as the novel (and the casino) Treasure Island, male models, and the animated series King of the Hill.  The final round also included each of the two most difficult wagering questions from Wednesday night.  First up, this question on the subject of Presidential Firsts:

• Due to very unfortunate circumstances, who was the first U. S. President to ride an ambulance?

Most of our teams responded with names that were far too late, such as John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, while forgetting that William McKinley was assassinated in 1901, giving him this dubious distinction.  The second of these difficult questions tested the field’s scientific knowledge:

• The Brits include the letter ‘A’ in the name of which element whose emission spectrum is most often used to officially define one second?

Either spelling was acceptable, as we were looking for the element of cesium (or caesium).  Each of these questions yielded a success rate of less than 20%, but Pterodactyl (Memories) managed to give us both correct responses and post the only perfect score in the final round.  Here is Wednesday’s overall leaderboard heading into the final question:

• I Don’t Know (Moe’s): 159
• Tokyo Sex Whale (Belles’): 158
• Stink Floyd (Belles’): 157
• Stinkfist (Idiom): 156
• Cream Team (Memories): 156

FINAL QUESTION (18.9% success rate):

• A theatrical work written by Alexander Pushkin, an opera composed by Rimsky-Korsakov, and a Tony Award-winning drama written by Peter Schaffer all provided material for which 1980s film that won the Best Picture Oscar?

Knowing that Alexander Pushkin died nearly 200 years ago was likely to be the biggest hint to this question, as about one-fifth of the field responded correctly with Amadeus. For the second week in a row, none of our Wednesday teams earned a Perfect 21, as every squad missed at least one wagering question.  Wednesday’s final leaderboard included these teams:

• Stink Floyd (Belles’): 169
• H. R. Puff ‘N’ Stuff (Hops N Shine): 165
• Fresh Off the U-Haul (Mark’s): 164
• Bad Rhino (Sully’s): 164
• The Owls Are Not What They Seem (Mark’s): 163
• The Gang Plays Bar Trivia (Belles’): 160
• I Don’t Know (Moe’s): 159
• Archived (GearHouse): 156
• Titanic Was an Inside Job (Hops N Shine): 156
• The Legend of Taylor Heinicke (Axes and O’s): 150

WEDNESDAY’S WINNERS:

Moe’s Peyton Place in Springfield, VA: I Don’t Know  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Famous People Named Max)

Falling Branch Brewery in Street, MD: Silver Seals  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Menopause)

Valley Sports Grill in Middletown, MD: We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Shaun of the Dead)

Belles’ Sports Bar in Frederick, MD: Stink Floyd  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Ursula K. Le Guin)

Memories Charcoal House in Mount Airy, MD: Questioning Authority  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Star Trek: The Next Generation)

GearHouse Brewing in Chambersburg, PA: Archived  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Psych)

TGI Fridays in Hagerstown, MD: What the Fork  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: U. S. Presidential Assassinations)

Idiom Brewing in Frederick, MD: Stinkfist (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Amadeus)

Axes and O’s in Sterling, VA: The Legend of Taylor Heinicke  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Friends Guest Stars)

Hops N Shine in Alexandria, VA: H. R. Puff ‘N’ Stuff  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: M*A*S*H)

Sully’s Pour House in Herndon, VA: Bad Rhino  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Rugby)

T. J. Stone’s in Alexandria, VA: NO GAME THIS WEEK  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Celebrity Baby Names)

Craftworx Taproom in Gainesville, VA:  The Girls and the Idiots  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: The Office)

Mark’s Pub in Falls Church, VA:  Fresh Off the U-Haul  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Number Theory)