Saturday was a great day for trivia as we finalized our field for World Series XV next weekend.  We also gave away hundreds of dollars of cash at events in both Maryland and Virginia!

SATURDAY’S STATS AND FACTS

Highest Overall Score:  Heavy Metal Parking Lot (Virginia) and Screaming Death Monkey (Maryland Game 1) with 174

Highest Score after Round 4: Heavy Metal Parking Lot with 165

Highest First-Half Score:  Heavy Metal Parking Lot and Screaming Death Monkeys (Maryland Game 1) with 91

Perfect 21:  Worst Case Ontario (Virginia) and Off Beats (Maryland Game 1)

–> Collectively, the halftime pages played to an average of 14.8, with just three teams (Worst Case Ontario, Stink Floyd, Fellowship) scoring a perfect 20 points today.

–> Our 6-4-2 questions, dealing respectively with “Groundhog Day”, Mexico, and the giant panda, yielded six points from 8% of our teams overall.

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Virginia Playoffs at Capitol City Brewing

What a day!  Twenty-two of Virginia’s finest trivia squads descended on Capitol City Brewing Company in Shirlington for a bigger-than-ever showdown: the Season XV Pour House Trivia Playoffs!

That’s right Coach, I said playoffs!  Our diehards from Cap City, DRP, Basic Burger, and elsewhere clashed to determine who would take home a coveted World Series invitation – not to mention $100 cash for first place.  Here’s how it all went down:

In Round One, we kicked things off with health-conscious desserts, affordable lodging, and political middle names.  We looked forward to the upcoming nostalgia-baiting cash grab of Jumanji 2: Electric Boogaloo (or whatever) starring the delightful Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.  Lots of teams guessed that Chris Pratt would star in that film – he’s not even in it!  I guess it does seem like something he would do.  None of our 22 teams missed their 5-point bonus, meaning the standings stayed pretty tight, with four teams scoring a perfect 36.

Round Two included a rare category, “Pro Sports Update!”  With ESPN and Fox Sports playing at every bar nowadays, our writers have to throw some real curveballs when it comes to ongoing sporting events, lest the “crawl” at the bottom of the screen give away the answer.  Most teams, but not all, were able to identify the Penguins and Warriors as the two current playoff teams (in two different sports) who’ve won at least four championships.  Our toughest two questions of the first half dealt with emergency chemistry and 1970s TV detectives – those players who came up with “air bags” and “Telly Savalas” were able to break out of the pack!

Best Wrong Answer: No gag prizes yesterday (ain’t nobody got time for that!) but I loved one guess at a halftime picture of Liam Neeson looking grim on an airplane.  The “common bond” for that picture page was hyphenated films – one team came up with “Take-Off”!  It’s exactly like Taken!  But on a plane!

After the halftime sheet, we had Heavy Metal Parking Lot, Worst Case Ontario, and TBD atop the standings.  However, no team had achieved a “commanding lead” or suffered an irrevocable setback – just about everyone was clustered in the 70-90 point zone.

In the third round, we dealt with medicine, U.S. state capitals, and beloved children’s picture book authors.  A three-parter on famous backing bands gave a few teams a boost, provided they could recall Herb Alpert’s legendary Tijuana Brass.  The “TJB” are best known nowadays for the zippy theme song from “The Dating Game” and this salacious album cover (featuring a model who was three months pregnant!):

Intriguing Guess: Our 6-4-2 was all about a new Broadway musical, based on a comedy film that takes place entirely within rural Pennsylvania.  A few teams went with “Kingpin”, which is really a great guess, as it’s set largely in Amish country, but… as a musical?  I’m trying to imagine the “we don’t have a cow” scene as a showstopping dance number!

In Round 4, those of us who couldn’t come up with “Turd Blossom” dreamed up some gratuitously unkind nicknames for former White House strategist Karl Rove… and all those who incorrectly guessed at Peter Falk for the aforementioned Round 2 question on 1970s TV detectives got another swing at it – Mr. Falk was recognized for his supporting role as the kindly grandfather in The Princess Bride!  Going into the Final, it was Parking Lot, Worst Case Ontario, and Poe Puree holding the top 3 spots.  Would any of them trip up and allow a squad from the middle of the field to break out?

Nope!  Most teams deduced that they could just spell out the tortured acronym of the USA PATRIOT Act, and picked up their wagers without changing the standings much at all.  In the end, these teams earned prizes:

First Place:  Heavy Metal Parking Lot

Second Place:  Worst Case Ontario

Third Place:  Poe Puree

Fourth Place:  Del Ray Posse (decided via tiebreaker over TBD)

What a thrill to host a Pour House playoffs event like this!  I hope you guys had half as much fun as I did… and hope to see you at the World Series in Hagerstown!

~ Austin

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Maryland Pub Crawl

Game 1: Champion Billiards in Frederick

Our 9th Maryland Pub Crawl began as it always does, with a packed house at Champion Billiards in Frederick.  More than 30 teams walked in hoping for a chance to be in the thick of things when the final winners would be called out ten hours later.  While the first two rounds progressed rather smoothly, the two-point bonuses were certainly hard to come by.  The most difficult of these asked for the film for which Telly Savalas earned an Oscar nomination.  Four teams were able to surmise the correct response of “The Birdman of Alcatraz”.  One team that was not phased by the difficult bonus questions was Screaming Death Monkey, who finished the first half just one point shy of a perfect game at 91 points.

The second round began with the most difficult wagering question of the afternoon.  Even with multiple choice, only five teams could come up with the correct response of rheumatoid arthritis in reference to the class of drugs known as DMARDs.  Just as they had in the first half, Screaming Death Monkeys performed nearly flawlessly, missing only two possible points after the medicine question.  A correct answer on the final sealed the deal with an impressive score of 174 points.  But with two full games yet to play, many teams were still alive for the Pub Crawl Championship!

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Game 2-A: Orioles Nest in Frederick

For our second game of the PHT Playoffs, our teams were split among two of our regular venues: the Tilted Kilt and the Orioles Nest.  I handled to hosting duties at Orioles Nest.  Kicking things off was a question about when things happened, AKA “Name That Year”!  We asked about three different events that all occurred in the year 1876 (it certainly helped our teams that knew that Colorado is nicknamed “The Centennial State”).  I enjoyed the audio question for the second game, this time being about Broadway musicals.  I got a kick out of one of the teams answering The ABBA Musical instead of the correct response of “Mamma Mia!”, though most did well recognizing “The Sound of Music” and “The Phantom of the Opera”.  The second round ended with the category of Three Clues / One Country.  This question proved to be quite difficult, asking about the country of Mali.

As expected, the halftime page for our second game was tough, as we quizzed teams with fast food logos and Nobel Prize-winning authors.  I guess ti goes without saying that the fast food logos was easier for teams to handle than the authors.  Mischief Managed took home the top sore of 18 points.  In the second half, the “Philomena” question proved to be the hardest question of the third round, while the Last Word / First Word question where the answer was “Charlie’s Angels in America” only garnered a rate of about 25% correct.

The final question of the night asked teams to complete a cryptic list of geographic locales, which included places such as Carlos Elmer’s Joshua View, Arizona; Clarke’s Mountain, Oregon; Ike’s Point, New Jersey; and John E’s Pond, Rhode Island.  It turns out that those were four (of the five) natural features whose official names include a possessive apostrophe.  The missing name from the last was Martha’s Vineyard.  This was a tough one and virtually everyone missed it, leading to some scoring changes.  The top three scores for this game at Orioles Nest were as follows:

First Place:  Time to Get Schwifty

Second Place:  Quality Guesswork

Congrats Schwifty!!  And good luck to everyone at World Series next week!  Thanks for playing!

~ Chad

Only Dennis from Quality Guesswork would be in the picture…

Time to Get Schwifty was all about it though!

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Game 2-B: Tilted Kilt in Frederick

For the second game of the Maryland Pub Crawl and Playoffs, I took the mic at the Tilted Kilt.  And hoooooo boy what a game it was…

Today we learned that no matter how many people actually know about Missy Elliot, I still sound like the whitest person alive when I say “Supa Dupa Fly”.  That said, the fact that Henry VIII married multiple Annes and multiple Catherines hit many teams like a ton of bricks.  Which in all honesty, should’ve been a sign of things too come, but alas, foresight was never my forte.  Neither is Nobel laureates, which seemed to be a common issue among the teams as well.  Everyone was familiar with the “pizza pie” in That’s Amore, though no one could spell Pasta Fagioli.

Taking the top spots for this game: Screaming Death Monkeys, Uncle Jack, and Smarty Pants!

Congratulations to the teams moving on to the World Series! Those teams with the energy left for the pub crawl, after an already long day of trivia, we’d see them soon enough for the final game of the night.

Until then,

~ Ian

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Game 3: Belles’ Sports Bar in Frederick

Thanks again to everyone for participating in the Maryland Pub Crawl and Pour House Trivia Playoffs game here at Belles’ Sports Bar in Frederick, it was an epic game!  We hosted 27 teams total between the playoff contenders and the remaining teams battling it out in the Pub Crawl for $$$. Here are some examples of some of the topics:

Now that was just a few of the subjects in this fine game, and it was real close all the way up to our final question:

We took thirteen teams to go on to the World Series, but keep your ears open because you may get a call to come join us on June 11. Here are your Pub Crawl winners, and thanks again to you all for spending some time with us.

~ Ronnie

First Place:  Screaming Death Monkeys

Second Place:  Uncle Jack

Third Place:  Fisted Sister