We kicked off the month of May with trivia at seven venues, all of which featured very competitive games.  We are now less than six weeks away from Pour House Trivia World Series XV, as two of our teams had the chance to clinch a House Championship and punch their ticket to the big game on June 11:

MONDAY’S STATS AND FACTS (62 teams across seven venues):

Highest Overall Score: PC Principals (Basic Burger) with 164

Highest Score After Round 4: B-58s (DRP) with 155

Highest First-Half Score: PC Principals and Walking Talking Stephen Hawking (Basic Burger) with 86

Perfect 21 (correct on all wagering questions):  An extremely difficult third round question (see below) meant that NO TEAM scored the Perfect 21 tonight.

–> Monday’s halftime page featured a bottom half involving films of the 2000s, and it proved to be the demise for many teams.  The average on that half was just under six (out of ten), leading to an overall average of 14.6.  No team scored 20 points, but two teams (PC Principals and Password is Taco) scored the nightly high of 19 points.

–> Our 6-4-2 question was equally difficult, with just four teams able to earn six points by knowing that comedic piano player Victor Borge hailed from Denmark.

–> The most difficult question of the night was not our final question, but a third round question on Winter Olympic events.  Only 18% of our teams knew that the shortest Olympic speed skating event is 500 meters.  Only nine months until the 2018 games!

MONDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (23.4% success rate):

–> In addition to Swaziland and the Republic of Congo, what is the only other African nation to feature an elephant on its national coat of arms?  (you’ll find the answer later in this blog)

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DRP in Alexandria, VA

Tonight, we had the Capitals playing the Penguins, the Orioles playing the Red Sox, and eleven teams playing Pour House trivia this Monday night at DRP!  As we are approaching the end of Season XV, that means that our World Series is a little more than a month away, and our loyal teams are now fighting even harder for those all-important standings points.  But, if you don’t have enough standings points, never fear, because you could still earn a seat at the World Series by competing in our Playoffs in early June.  But, that’s all in the future.  Let’s see what happened tonight.

In Round 1, out of our eleven teams, we only saw three questions in which teams earn no points.  Every other question, teams were able to at least earn their wager.  The one question that everyone did well in was the middle names of U.S. presidents.  Only two teams here failed to earn the bonus two points.  Round 2 continued with some awful movies like “Tremors” and the Graboids.  But Question 4 on where the talus is in the human body left a lot of zeroes as most teams incorrectly said “toe” instead of “ankle”.

The halftime puzzle sheet proved to be difficult trying to guess films from the 2000s based on three Oscar-winning stars.  But, the average was 15 so it was still high-scoring.  Round 3 started off with a question on “Pomp and Circumstance”, one of those songs that you hear all the time, but never quite remember he title.  In fact, one team asked me to name that tune with them humming it since they didn’t know the title.  In Round 4, a few teams were too young to know about “Just the facts, ma’am”, but they made up for it answering questions on Coleridge and Horatio Nelson.

Tonight’s Final Question was about Africa, specifically, which country besides Congo and Swaziland has an elephant in the national crest.  Today, this country is the world’s leading exporter of cocoa beans.  But way back when, this country was the world’s leading exporter of another product—a product associated with elephants and considered illegal by many Western nations.  Like ivory.  That meant our correct answer was Cote d’Ivoire.  The lateral thinking for this was a bit of a grasp as only four teams nailed it.  That led to a big lead change and eventually, our medal table looked like this:

First Place:  Worst-Case Ontario

Second Place:  DRD

Third Place:  Alternate Best Music Festival

Next week’s first category:  Imperial Russian History

Увидимся на следующей неделе (See you next week),

~ Chris

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Greene Turtle in Hagerstown, MD

The first game of May started out simple enough here at the Greene Turtle in Hagerstown, but had a pretty wild finish.  Honestly, with a category of African Countries to wrap it up, I wouldn’t expect anything less.  We kicked things off with a question about an All-Time Tennis Great.  The question asked about Margaret Court and what country she’s from; only about half knew she was from Australia.  I loved having a question about the film series ‘Tremors’, those movies are ridiculous but fun.  I was glad a few teams managed to get that the monsters are called Graboids.

The audio question today was about songs with a word in common, and featured one of my favorite bands, Fall Out Boy!  The halftime page was definitely simple for one half and super tough for the other half.  The ‘B’ cartoon characters most teams aced, but the movies of the 2000s was just brutal.  Overall this led to a rather low average score on the page (I only knew like 3 of the movies).  In the second half, we started out asking about a tune you might know, which is played anytime somebody graduates from something, or when Macho Man Randy Savage walked into a room.  Pretty much everyone knew it was ‘Pomp and Circumstance’, but nobody knew the title was from Othello.

The final question of the night was difficult, which I fully expected.  It turns out that the move for tonight was to bet zero points on the final, which a few teams did (and it really paid off!).  Third place tonight went to Quality Guesswork, or as I like to call them, DQON and the Quality Guessers.  Second place went to LDC and Company, and the win goes to Shirts and Skins!  Tonight was their night, congrats!!  Next week we start with a question about Baltimore Ravens History; my favorite!  Good choice!  I’ll see you all then!

Until next time,

~ Chad

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Morgan Inn in Woodbine, MD

It’s Monday, it’s Morgan Inn, it’s time for another edition of Pour House Trivia!  We announced the dates for the playoffs, including the Maryland Pub Crawl and World Series XV.  They’re just around the corner, so make sure you get in and score those points.  For the first round we covered subjects such as the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted, the middle names of some U.S. Presidents, Ferrari sports cars, and C.S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia”. We also visited this building in NYC, though not quite to the extreme of this couple.

We had a very sweet audio clue to start off the second round, teams scored well coming up with “Sugar”, though only a couple could name all of the artists we listened to for bonus points.  We also talked about a small step the MLB has taken to help speed up the pace of the game, a particularly “bird-like” bone in our ankles, and three clues for actor Tony Shalhoub, who is great in just about everything he’s ever been in.  We also went back to this cult horror film series, which if you could believe it, starred a famous female country artist AND the father from “Family Ties”.  What a mix!

The puzzle page beat up the teams a bit, we had a 99% success rate on identifying some cartoon characters, but the bottom half (naming films of the 2000s from their cast members) turned out to be a struggle.  The third round itself wasn’t too bad, and teams got some great scoring opportunities with our last word/first word, pomp and circumstance, the Lego brand, and the deepest lakes in the United States.  They also did well with naming the shortest distance competed in this Olympic sport:

The final round kept it close for a number of our teams, and we had an ongoing tie that it looked as if we were going to have to break if things stayed on course.  The Black Dahlia was by far the toughest question in the round, but after that if was smooth sailing.  These teams masterfully answered correctly in subjects such as YouTube’s current owner, an erroneous catch phrase from TV’s Dragnet, and the bird with the longest wingspan, the albatross.  They also answered well with three people who all share the last name of Nelson, including this fictional astronaut with a magical roommate:

The final category was African Countries, and unfortunately it was by far the hardest question of the night, with a zero success rate.  A couple of teams wagered zero, and one of those team’s decision changed the outcome of the game. Here are the results:

First Place:  Westward Ho!

Second Place:  Men & Pausers

Third Place:  Morgan Station

Next week’s first category:  “Napoleon Dynamite”

~ Ronnie

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Hershey’s Restaurant in Gaithersburg, MD

 

 

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Uno Pizzeria in Frederick, MD

It was an intimate game of Pour House Trivia on Monday night here at Uno Pizzeria in Frederick.  I hope some of our regular teams weren’t getting blown away by the wind!  That being said, we kept a good pace tonight, stopping only to spell some tricky words, argue about the pronunciation of Victor Borge’s name, yell at immature bar managers, and groan at teams’ dad jokes.

Tequila Mockingbird was looking for their first win of the season, and if the first half was any indication, it looked like it was going to be their night!  The team did not miss anything more than a one-point wager, and topped the field on the halftime page as well.  Holding on to a ten-point lead at the break, they were hoping to put the game away by the end of the fourth round.  After being the only team to score six points on the 6-4-2 question, they pushed their lead to 13 points to clinch that victory.  The phrase “Always a bridesmaid…” might apply here as Tequila Mockingbird finished in second place ELEVEN TIMES this season before finally taking home the top spot tonight!  The final was mostly a formality tonight, but we took care of our business and when all was said and done it looked like this.

Honorable mention to the Uno’s staff for piping up now and then with correct answers all night!

In second place tonight, Firebreathing Rubber Duckies!

In first place tonight, Tequila Mockingbird!

Good game tonight guys; next we’ll kick things off with The Silence of the Lambs!  Grab a bottle of chianti and study up, and we’ll see you next time!

Until then,

~ Ian

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Basic Burger in Arlington, VA

Guess what?  It’s gonna be MAY!  Alright, so it IS May and ENOUGH with the JT meme already – although I DID play the song for everyone tonight, but that’s it!  Let’s let the April showers bring May flowers and enjoy the crazy weather.  However, tonight’s first question was not a fair weather friend to most of our teams.  On our Triple 50/50, we asked if a name belonged to a Washington Wizard or a fictional wizard, and only 50% earned their wager on this winner’s choice question.  At the end of the round, three teams were tied for first with 36 points.

Round 2 had one of the toughest questions of the night, in the category of Latin science terms, as not many recognized that the talocrural region, is the region where the foot and the leg meet, and did not correctly name ankle as the joint we were looking for.  The halftime puzzle had an easy start, with all teams recognizing the B name cartoon characters, but the bottom half caught everyone off guard, so no one had a perfect score.  At the end of round 2, Walking Talking Stephen Hawking and PC Principals were still solidly tied for 1st.

In Round 3, all the teams quickly recognized the ever popular graduation song – “Pomp and Circumstance” – but not even our English majors could recognize the phrase as being from Shakespeare’s “Othello”.  The second question of the round was the toughest of the night with only PCP earning their wager by naming the shortest speed skating event – the 500 meter.  Round 4 saw some of the biggest upsets of the night – half our teams did not earn their bonuses and second place Walking Talking dropped all the way to fifth place.  Carpe Beer-um and PCP were tied for first at the end of Round 4, so it all came down to that final question.   Only three of our eight teams knew the answer to tonight’s final, keeping PCP in first, but rearranging many other ranks.  Your winners were:

First Place:  PC Principals

Second Place:  Kitten Mittens

Third Place:  Carpe Beer-Em

THERE IS NO GAME AT BASIC BURGER NEXT WEEK.  OUR NEXT GAME WILL BE MAY 15th!

Next game’s first category:  “Twin Peaks”

Cheers!

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Il Forno in Frederick, MD