With one of the biggest nights of the sports year in the backdrop, our first Monday night trivia game in April was a heck of a roller coaster ride!  After most of our teams breezed through two rounds, the end of the third round came on strong, featuring our two hardest questions of the night back-to-back!  A few teams were able to escape unscathed, but who rose to the top of the pack?

MONDAY’S STATS AND FACTS (66 teams across seven venues):

Highest Overall Score:  Eat Ham (DRP) with 170

Highest Score After Round 4:  Eat Ham with 161

Highest First-Half Score:  PC Principals (Basic Burger) with 92

Perfect 21 (correct on all wagering questions):  A rather difficult homophones question in the third round meant that no team scored the ‘Perfect 21’ tonight.

–> Our baseball-themed halftime round played to an average of 16.8, with two teams (PC Principals and B-58s) scoring 20 points.

–> Abolitionist John Brown was the subject of our 6-4-2 question, which was easy enough for the 22% of teams who scored six points.

–> The hardest question of the night was answered correctly by just 10% of our teams:

– The group of phosphate minerals that rank at number five on the Mohs scale of hardness is pronounced identically to a word that describes a strong desire or liking for something, especially when used in a food context. Name either spelling of that homophone.

MONDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (63.0% success rate):

–> In 1965, General Mills introduced a group of six brand name snack foods: five of which were known as Daisies, Whistles, Buttons, Bows, and Pizza Spins.  The sixth item is the only product in this group which is still available today.  What is this product?  (you’ll find the answer later in this blog)

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DRP in Alexandria, VA

Today in the world of sports, we had two big events today.  First was MLB Opening Day, and second was the NCAA Men’s Basketball Finals between North Carolina and Gonzaga.  However, even though we had all these sporting events everywhere and on television, that did not stop 15 of our most loyal teams from coming out to DRP for some Monday night Pour House Trivia!  Right away, we started separating the pack by asking for the two Beatles singles that hit No. 1 in the U.S. with one-word title.  Most teams did not need any “Help!” with this answer.  Speaking of No. 1 singles, our Audio Question was quite easy as many teams earned points for naming singers from Rihanna to Otis Redding.

Speaking of Opening Day, our halftime puzzle sheet asked our teams to match famous World Series events with years.  Needless to say, our baseball fans excelled and picked up points, while other teams were trying to make do with only the first half of our puzzle.  With that, we then had a three-way tie for first place with fourth place only two points behind and fifth place one point behind that.

Round 3 had one of our classic Pour House puzzlers as teams had to identify and spell correctly the full name of the protagonist from “Around the World in Eighty Days”.  Unfortunately, many picked the incorrect translation and said “Phineas” instead of Phileas Fogg, leading to only four teams picking up the bonus and pushing ahead.  Round 4 had a confusing question on movie misquotes that had teams scratching their heads over quotes from “Snow White”, “The Empire Strikes Back”, and “All About Eve”.  Only our true cinephiles could make the proper corrections.

 A final question on snack foods had most teams able to reason out the correct answer.  They had to guess which General Mills snack introduced in 1965 as part of a package, is the only still on the market today.  It was clear to many that we were looking for Bugles because of their mass-producible shape and simplicity.  But, as usual with a packed house and that many teams getting the right answer, we had a tie for third place between our two natural rivals at DRP: HR Puff ‘n’ Stuff and B-58s.  To break the tie, they were asked to guess the population of Italy in 2015.  And with a difference of five million between the two, HR Puff ‘n’ Stuff emerged victorious with our medal table looking like this tonight:

First Place:  Eat Ham

Second Place:  MSC

Third Place:  HR Puff ‘n’ Stuff

Next week’s first category: Beer (Drink up!)

Until next time…

~ Chris

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Greene Turtle in Hagerstown, MD

This week at The Greene Turtle in Hagerstown, we started things out with a question about the 2017 UEFA Champions League.  That’s a soccer thing for those of you who are unaware (where they kick it with their feet!).  In this question we learned that there are three different teams from Spain that are still alive in the quarterfinals of the tournament, and two of them are in Madrid!  The audio question of the day was about songs that topped the charts in the first week of April throughout history.  Most teams got Rihanna, but Falco was surprisingly difficult, and only a few knew Otis Redding.  The French food lingo question in the second round actually proved to have a big impact on the game, as the field was split between the group of five sauces being called Mother Sauces or Sister Sauces (the answer is Mother Sauces).  That split definitely cost some teams a ton of points.

Halftime asked teams to identify things with a commonality in their titles (they were all “____ of the _____” titles), while also matching up different World Series moments with the years that they occurred.  The second half of the page really hurt a lot of teams and dropped average scores on the page rather low.  We also had a tough shared last name question and a tough homophone question in the third round that really shook things up.  The final question of the night was about snack time and it actually changed things up in the end as well!  We ended up with Quality Guesswork in third, That’s A Niner in second, and the win goes to The Arrondissements of Ouagadougou!

Next week’s first category:  Antarctic Geography

So study up!  I’ll see you all then!  Until next time,

~Chad

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Morgan Inn in Woodbine, MD

Happy Opening Day to everyone, and kudos to Orioles slugger Matt Trumbo for that walk off home run for our opening day win!  We were a few teams shy tonight as we had a number of players spend their day down at Camden Yard, but five teams competed nonetheless, and it turned out to be a fairly close game of Pour House Trivia here at Morgan Inn in Woodbine.  Our first category of the night was about the University of Mississippi alum and New York Times bestselling author John Grisham, and most of the folks answered correctly so great job.  Other subjects in the first round included a biological definition for a ‘non-discriminatory” eater, the 2017 NBA All-Star game, reality TV hit “Top Chef”, and this MSNBC show and host with “restless leg” syndrome:

Round two breezed right along with only a couple of misses for all of the teams, making it the best scoring round of the night.  We went to some Billboard Chart toppers for the month of April (throughout history) for our audio clue, and climbed the highest peak in the lower 48 U.S. States, while picnicking with a bucket of KFC.  We also found out that The Power Rangers reboot film embellished the characters to have them align more readily with current social norms, and went back to the 70’s for this car company before they changed their name:

The halftime puzzle was a bit polarized, with a top score of 20 and a low score of 9, with most of the success matching up some major events in World Series history to the appropriate year.  Round three still managed to keep the scores going, with the toughest question of the round regarding a trip around the world in approximately two months and twenty days.  Folks did fairly well knowing the countries of origin for the last three Popes, the outermost layer of our skin biologically speaking, and some Walmart owned brands you can buy and save a little $$$.  We also talked about music via the “ballad form”, one of which being this famous ballad from the 1960’s.

The final round contained the toughest question of the night that actually wiped out our teams, good thing it was the first question and those one wagers were available.  Folks had to correct some commonly misquoted film quotes, which proved to be a difficult for our players tonight.  The most success was in the subjects of Greek architecture and the nation of Italy.  Folks did stumble a bit identifying the periodical “Seventeen”, but crushed it when it came to The Bible, the eldest son of Jacob and Leah, and said son’s “tasty” first name:

We stuck with a food theme for the final and three of our five teams nailed it. Now everyone go home at make “witch fingers” with your Bugles! Here are the results of tonight’s game:

First Place:  Westward Ho!

Second Place:  Morgan Station

Third Place:  Menace 2 Sobriety

Next week’s first category:  Disneyworld!

~ Ronnie

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Uno Pizzeria in Frederick, MD

Another Monday night in the books for Pour House Trivia at Unos, and hoooo boy was tonight a rough one!

Highlights of the Night:

In “Quiet-In-The-Peanut-Gallery”: You know it’s gonna be a rough night when you can’t even get through giving out the categories without the teams voicing their displeasure loud and often.  When things go exactly as they themselves feel it will, it only gets worse.

In “Time-Out,-Start-Over”: Then there are the questions that require things to come to a screeching halt and more explanation given.  The film quote question tonight was a good question I thought, but after the first answers started coming in with only 20 seconds left, and I saw what they were “????”.  It was clear we needed to review and reassess.

In “Somehow-That-Doesn’t-Seem-Right”: It’s one thing to take a shot in the dark on a two-point bonus you don’t know the answer to.  It’s another to put down a fictional character for your answer when I’m looking for a real person…

Defensive wagers abound on the final, and in the end it made the difference.

In third place tonight, Firebreathing Rubber Duckies!

In second place tonight, Tequila Mockingbird!

In first place tonight, as a solo no less, Stink Floyd!

Good, tough game tonight guys! Next week we’ll kick things off with a category about Italy! Study up, and we’ll see you next time!

Until then,

~ Ian

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Hershey’s Restaurant in Gaithersburg, MD

At our Monday game at Hershey’s Restaurant in Gaithersburg, an impressive winning streak by a solo player finally ended.  Lissa from Jon Jeffries Fan Club, by herself, has won the last three weeks in a row here.  Now what made this a great game to watch was that she led the entire game, all the way up to the final question!  Our team in second place kept it close through the game, and they fluctuated between two and six points behind the leader throughout the game.

The Fan Club said they were feeling a little unsure about the final category tonight, and decided to roll the dice with a zero wager.  That became the fatal undoing!  After the question was answered, Nobody Home finished tonight’s game in third place.  They say “All good things must come to an end” and unfortunately, Jon Jeffries Fan Club dropped to second place.  Finishing in first place and ending that winning streak was our winners Dangerous Curves!!

They picked “Famous Drummers” for next weeks winners choice category, so study up and join us on Monday at Hershey’s Restaurant!

~ Jon J

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Basic Burger in Arlington, VA

I was worried the nice weather was keeping people away from trivia, but by start time we had seven teams joining us at Basic Burger tonight – as well as another beer sponsor – Bold Rock Hard Cider, made right here in beautiful Virginia! We are always glad to welcome new teams and free beer! 😉  Spring is in the air and the first round started with a very apropos question regarding Opening Day for Major League Baseball.  Half of our teams lost the spring in their step when they missed the first question about the only pitcher to have an opening day no-hitter: Bob Feller.  However, that ended up being the toughest wagering question of the first half.  As usual, the hardest parts were the bonus questions.  In question four, many knew Charlotte lost out on the NBA All-Star game due to the HB2 laws, but many did NOT know that New Orleans ended up hosting instead.  In the second round, all the teams could name Sierra Nevada as the California mountain range, but only three could specifically name Mt. Whitney as the tallest mountain peak in the contiguous United States.

The half-time puzzle was a cinch for most, with majority scoring 18 points or more.  The toughest of all was identifying Debbie Gibson’s album “Out of the Blue”.  Kudos to PC Principals for being the only team to do so.  Round 3 left some teams really wracking their brains on the last two questions.  Q4 was identifying a homophone – one a phosphate mineral, the other a word describing a strong desire for something. Only Kitten Mittens and PCP said apatite or appetite to earn points.

I was curious to see how my venue would do with the first question of the final round, plus I love movie quotes and learned a couple things tonight!  Teams were given the quotes “Mirror, mirror, on the wall”, “Luke, I am your father”, and “fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.” and were told one word in each of these quotes is incorrect and to fix the quote with the correct word.  Only two teams earned their wagers by getting two correct, but no team got all three – answers: magic (magic mirror), No (instead of Luke), and night (instead of ride). Many were kicking themselves after that one!  First and second places were consistent throughout the game and the final question did not change that.  Kitten Mittens and PCP came down to a tiebreaker question for first place.  Your winners were:

First Place:  PC Principals

Second Place:  Kitten Mittens

Third Place:  Walking Talking Stephen Hawking

Next weeks first category:  Butter

Cheers!

~Kate

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Il Forno in Frederick, MD

The Jeff King Experience is on a 90-game win streak (or so it seems).  They’ve won a bunch of games at the end of last season under the name The A Team.  After a World Series loss in January, they’ve come back with a new team name and they have not lost since the name change.  They looked to continue the streak on a night where the NCAA National Championship was running alongside the game of trivia, both games the intense focus of many a bar patron, but for very different reasons.  UNC’s victory was quite reminiscent of The Jeff King Experience, seeing as UNC lost in the tournament to Duke but then would string together a long streak of wins to take it down!  We’d see if Jeff King kept up their streak as well.

It was actually close for the first half.  Piggy Doodles was having the game of their lives tonight, missing no wagers, picking up many a bonus, and a 19 on the halftime page.  This effort combined to a 2nd place standing going into the 3rd round, where they’d hope to replicate that luck.  Well, the good news is, Piggy Doodles opened the 3rd round by getting the first three wagers correct. The bad news was the confidence wasn’t there, betting the one, three, and five respectively, stuck into using their highest wagers on the final 2 questions of the round, and those were tough.

Round 3, Question 4 was perhaps our hardest question in a while, seeing no teams pick up points there.  Apatite isn’t a super well known mineral so it was up to teams to pull the word “appetite” from the food definition we provided.  It didn’t work out as we saw the field get blown including two teams with a five-point bonus chip on there and Piggy Doodles with their seven.  It got worse from there as they missed the final 3rd round question and dropped significantly out of the top.  Fighting at half strength, the finish after the first half seemed amazing!  Their luck did not keep up with them.

Jeff King led very easily tonight, picking up points wherever they may come, even nailing all three on the Movie Quotes question that left most teams scratching their heads.  A 19 point lead going into the final meant that they would extend the win streak.  2nd place went to Alternative Answers and 3rd to MC.  A good finish for The Jeff King Experience who need to keep it up until June.  Hopefully they can take down a victory at the World Series!  Until next time, later dudes!

~ Bill

Next week’s first category:  Fictional Rabbits (other than this one)