The Hills Are Alive With Monday Trivia!

Twin 19-team outings at Ragtime in Arlington, VA and Aslin Beer Co in Herndon, VA led the Monday night charge with Pour House Trivia, in which 152 teams attended across 14 locations.

FIRST ROUND:

The first round on Monday featured a look back at the passing of Pope John Paul II this week in 2005, a three-parter about Little things, and examples of primates such as lemurs and gorillas. The round wrapped up with a question about the only two states to border both Virginia and West Virginia, those being Maryland and Kentucky. There were 44 perfect team scores in this round, making up almost a third of the field.

SECOND ROUND:

The most difficult way to earn points in the first half was in Monday’s audio question, which asked teams to name three songs from their karaoke versions. Only 17% of teams recorded bonus points for naming all three titles: Like a Prayer by Madonna, When I Come Around by Green Day, and Encanto track We Don’t Talk About Bruno. In other second-round subjects, teams handled questions about the New Orleans Hornets temporarily moving NBA cities to Oklahoma City in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the three-man unit (Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short) which hosted Saturday Night Live in 1986 to promote the film Three Amigos, and prolific novelist Agatha Christie. Here, seven teams lasted the entire round with a perfect score.

HALFTIME:

Unlikely celebrity duos (such as RuPaul and Kurt Cobain) in photographs made up the top half of Monday’s halftime page, while the second section asked teams to figure out whether certain company names are officially hyphenated or not. On average, the halftime page score was 17.5 points while 24 teams were able to get all 20 points. A sizable group of 90-pointers found themselves just behind the first place team at the halftime break:

• Cheddar Biscuits (Mark’s): 92
• Dog Park Mafia (William Jeffrey’s): 90
• Witiots (Bushwaller’s): 90
• Santos L Halper (Ragtime): 90
• Hipster Fashion Consultants (DRP): 90
• ALL CAPS (DRP): 90
• Pursue This (Bushwaller’s): 90

THIRD ROUND:

The night’s toughest wagering question came early in the third round, on a musical Last Word/First Word:

• Which eight-word title would combine a Billy Joel song about a girl named Virginia with a song from Khalid that reached the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 2017?

Linking those titles together would get you Only the Good Die Young, Dumb, and Broke, a correct answer provided by 35% of the field. A presidential question came next and proved to be tricky as well:

• In addition to Chester Arthur, which other two U.S. presidents took the Presidential Oath of Office within the state of New York?

A bonus success rate of 36% was noted here for teams that could name both George Washington (who took the Oath in NYC’s Federal Hall) and Teddy Roosevelt (who did so in Buffalo after William McKinley’s assassination). From there, we talked about Spaniards and handled a rendition of Elton John’s Rocket Man by actor William Shatner. Nine teams earned perfect scores in this round.

FOURTH ROUND:

Monday’s 6-4-2 about the number one was answered correctly by 19 teams after a single Canadian football-related clue. The first question of Round 4 proved to be the bonus killer of the night:

• Which two pitchers share the Boston Red Sox franchise record with 192 career pitching wins?

Doing so decades apart, Cy Young and Roger Clemens are tied at 192; while 44% of teams knew at least one of those players, only 5.9% were able to name both for bonus points. Later in the round, a historical word origins question played tough:

• As a reference to the Germanic tribes which sacked Rome in 455 A.D., which term was coined by 18^th Century French bishop Henri Gregoire, in order to denote the destruction of artwork and buildings following the French Revolution?

That term, vandalism, was given by about two-fifths of the field. Other topics in the round included William Blake’s poem The Tyger and Gary Oldman’s turn as Winston Churchill in 2017’s Darkest Hour. A quartet of perfect scores were earned in this round: H.R. Puf ‘n’ Stuf (DRP), Hipster Fashion Consultants (DRP), Porpoise Pods (William Jeffrey’s), and Revivalist Hurricanes (Ragtime) each recorded all 36 points. The top eight teams again kept things close heading into Monday’s final question:

• Hipster Fashion Consultants (DRP): 167
• H.R. Puf ‘n’ Stuf (DRP): 167
• Killer Snails (Quincy’s): 165
• Porpoise Pods (William Jeffrey’s): 162
• FOUR TEAMS TIED WITH 161 POINTS

FINAL QUESTION (38.82% success rate):

• A hill in the Irish county of Meath is the namesake for a fictitious estate from which American novel?

Meath’s Hill of Tara was the namesake for the estate in Gone With the Wind. Monday’s Perfect 21 teams were Gong Gong and the Butt Demons (Cushwa) and Prestige Worldwide (William Jeffrey’s). After all Monday’s games were finished, these were the overall point leaders:

• Hipster Fashion Consultants (DRP): 179
• H.R. Puf ‘n’ Stuf (DRP): 178
• Killer Snails (Quincy’s): 177
• Porpoise Pods (William Jeffrey’s): 174
• Get Off My Lawn (Quincy’s): 173
• Whazzup (Ragtime): 173
• Prestige Worldwide (William Jeffrey’s): 173
• Bass Slappers (Il Forno): 171
• Lowered Expectations (Quincy’s): 171
• Cobra Kai (DRP): 171

MONDAY’S WINNERS:

Ellie’s Pub in Winchester, VA: No Probllama  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Gene Kelly Musical Films)

Clyde’s in Alexandria, VA: Porch Pirates  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Greek Mythology)

Cushwa Brewing in Williamsport, MD: Gong Gong and the Butt Demons  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: The Gospels)

DRP in Alexandria, VA: Hipster Fashion Consultants  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Into the Wild)

Bushwaller’s in Frederick, MD: Witiots  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Last Word / First Word (TV))

Rockwell Brewery in Frederick, MD: Jerk and Thrive  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Arrested Development)

Mark’s Pub in Falls Church, VA: Cream Team  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Walton Goggins)

William Jeffrey’s Tavern in Arlington, VA: Porpoise Pods  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Yu-Gi-Oh Egyptian God Cards)

Ragtime in Arlington, VA: Whazzup  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Pittsburgh Steelers) 

Aslin Beer Co in Herndon, VA: No Question  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Irish Whiskey)

Quincy’s Bar and Grille in Gaithersburg, MD: Killer Snails  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Spamalot)

Whitlow’s in Washington, DC: Space Jam  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Avatar: the Last Airbender (TV series))

Rai’s Pour House in Sterling, VA: Deep Fried Chuckles  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: The Great British Bake-Off)

Il Forno Pizzeria in Frederick, MD: Bass Slappers  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Ted Lasso)