The Last Frontier of Thursday Trivia!

October 25, 2019

Thursday’s game of Pour House Trivia welcomed 102 teams across 16 venues.  Don’t forget to check the end of this blog post to see the abbreviated schedule for Halloween night next Thursday!

FIRST ROUND:

To open Thursday’s game, we asked our teams to name any two of the three actors who earned Oscar nominations for the 2018 film “Vice”.  While a majority of our teams remembered that Christian Bale portrayed Dick Cheney and Amy Adams portrayed Lynne Cheney, only 11% of the field also remembered that Sam Rockwell earned an Oscar nod for his role as George W. Bush.  The first round also included a look at fjords and a Triple 50/50 question concerning chemical element namesakes.  After closing the round with a discussion of NHL awards, we saw just three teams earn a perfect first round score: Dave Martinez School of Management (Quincy’s), Fan Club (Quincy’s), and Power Vacuum (Champion).

SECOND ROUND:

After a trio of difficult bonus questions, teams hoping for a reprieve in the second round did not find it in Thursday’s audio question.  We asked our teams to identify three musical acts whose names reference sports terms.  We listened to “Your Love” by The Outfield, “Superman” by Five For Fighting, and “I Wanna Get Better” by The Bleachers.  Only 34% of our teams earned wagering points with at least two correct answers, while a mere five teams picked up two bonus points by giving us all three groups.  We continued with this difficult query on the topic of foreign national anthems:

–> Entitled “Wilhelmus” after William of Orange, the national anthem of this country opens by stating that its people are of German blood, and closes by pledging loyalty to the king of Spain.  Name this country that is neither Germany nor Spain.

Just as in the audio question, only 34% of our teams gave us the correct answer of Netherlands.  Other second round topics included the science fiction TV show “Quantum Leap”, the novel series “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, and the SALT treaties signed by Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev.  On an unrelated note, am I the only person who can’t say “Leonid Brezhnev” without also saying “Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs”?  Anyway…  Two teams posted 36 points en route to a perfect second round: Breadsticks (Quincy’s) and Comfortably Dum (Champion).

HALFTIME:

Thursday’s halftime page depicted items with weather-related names, while the bottom half featured a 50/50 section about Super Bowl host cities.  Six teams earned a perfect score of 20 points, while the overall average reached 16.4 points.  Here is Thursday’s halftime leaderboard:

The stellar first half performance by Breadsticks marks the first time in six weeks that Dave Martinez School of Management did not hold the nightly high score at the end of halftime.

THIRD ROUND:

Our teams were quite happy after we started the second half with the nightly Three Clues question, as nearly three-quarters of the field picked up an easy two bonus points on a question regarding the 1980s TV series “Moonlighting”.  Later in the round, we turned the tables on our teams after we asked a pair of multi-answer questions that doled out very few bonus points:

–> Three songs that appeared on “Batman” film soundtracks were performed by one-named artists and reached the top two of the Billboard Hot 100 chart.  Name any two of the three musicians that recorded these songs.

–> According to UNESCO’s database of book translations, the three individual authors with the most translations of their works consist of a British male, a British female, and a Frenchman.  Name any two of these three authors.

On the first question, most teams earned wagering points by naming Prince (“Batdance”) and Seal (“Kiss From a Rose”).  Unfortunately, NONE of our teams also remembered that the Jewel song “Foolish Games” appeared on the “Batman & Robin” soundtrack.  For the literature question, most teams successfully named William Shakespeare and Jules Verne, but we saw dozens of teams turn in the incorrect response of J. K. Rowling.  Instead, the honor for the most translations of work from a female author goes to Agatha Christie.  In what was actually an improvement over the previous bonus question, three teams earned an extra two points by correctly naming all three authors.  Obviously, we did not see any perfect third round scores on Thursday night.

FOURTH ROUND:

After the 6-4-2 question dealt with former U.S. President Grover Cleveland, Thursday’s final round discussed the Disney film “Pocahontas”, the British Thermal Unit, and the dreaded Gorgon Medusa.  In yet another wicked bonus question, NONE of our teams successfully named Benvenuto Cellini as the sculptor of a work standing on the Piazza della Signoria in Florence that depicts Perseus holding Medusa’s detached head.  Coupled with the “Batman” music question, Thursday’s game marked the first time in PHT history that two bonus questions from the same game did not yield any correct responses among a full field of more than 100 teams.  These were your highest scoring Thursday teams after four rounds of play:

THURSDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (64.1% success rate):

–> Because the two countries involved in the transaction used different calendars, the transfer of control of what territory took place either on Friday, October 18, 1867 or Saturday, October 7, 1867?

About two-thirds of our teams gave us the correct response of Alaska.  Try to act surprised, but the only team to earn the Perfect 21 by answering every wagering question correctly on Thursday night was Dave Martinez School of Management (Quincy’s).  Perhaps mirroring the success of the team led by the real Dave Martinez, DMSOM has held the highest overall score after the fourth round and after the final question in each of the last six weeks.  Here is Thursday’s final overall leaderboard:

THURSDAY’S WINNERS:

Lost Rhino Brewing in Ashburn, VA:  Halloweeners   (NEXT GAME ON NOV. 7 – First category: “X-Men” Comic Books)

Quincy’s Bar and Grille in Gaithersburg, MD:  Dave Martinez School of Management   (Next week’s first category: The Three Stooges)

Champion Billiards in Frederick, MD:  Vitrifiers   (NEXT GAME ON NOV. 7 – First category: Nuclear Power Plants)

Loudoun Kitchen and Bar in Leesburg, VA:  Your Mom   (Next week’s first category: Flyers Mascot Gritty)

Smoketown Brewing Station in Brunswick, MD:  99th Precinct   (NEXT GAME ON NOV. 7 – First category: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”)

Beef ‘O’ Brady’s in Frederick, MD:   Bazinga   (NEXT GAME ON NOV. 7 – First category: Taylor Swift)

Olde Mother Brewing in Frederick, MD:  Rum Ham   (Next week’s first category: University of Connecticut Basketball)

Belly Love Brewing in Purcellville, VA:  Sexual Chocolate   (NEXT GAME ON NOV. 7 – First category: 12th Century English Anarchy)

Cushwa Brewing in Williamsport, MD:  Gong Gong and the Butt Demons   (Next week’s first category: “No Retreat, No Surrender”)

The Grille at Flower Hill in Gaithersburg, MD:  Loco Moco   (NEXT GAME ON NOV. 7 – First category: Harry Potter books)

The Derby in New Market, MD:  Beach Bums   (Next week’s first category: The Periodic Table)

Solace Brewing in Sterling, VA:  Rookie Score   (NEXT GAME ON NOV. 7 – First category: Adam Sandler Films)

Jockey Bar and Grill in Boonsboro, MD:  Fat Kids Are Hard to Kidnap   (Next week’s first category: “Blazing Saddles”)

Bad Habits Bar & Grill in Martinsburg, WV:  Creeper   (NEXT GAME ON NOV. 7 – First category: Beatles Songs)

Fish Market Restaurant in Alexandria, VA:  Dad Bods   (Next week’s first category: “A Nightmare on Elm Street” film series)

Mark’s Pub in Falls Church, VA:  Cream Team   (Next week’s first category: “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”)

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