Thursday Night Trivia is So “Smooth”!
With a little chill in the air (and a rather boring football game on TV), we saw an uptick in our Thursday night attendance this week, as seven of our 13 venues topped double digits in terms of the number of teams. Overall, we welcomed 102 teams to a Thursday night game with a wild finish:
ROUND 1:
We kicked off Thursday’s game with a Triple 50/50 question, asking if these three names were either children’s literary characters or brands of wine: Stellaluna, Foxy Loxy, and Blue Nun. Nearly half of our teams earned bonus points with three correct answers:
After questions on Bitcoin and Edgar Allan Poe, we closed the opening round by asking about these two celebrities with very similar names:
That would be former boxing champion Oscar de la Hoya, and fashion designer Oscar de la Renta. Across the board, 14 teams began the game with a perfect first round.
ROUND 2:
Thursday’s audio question featured music groups with durations of time in their names. Exactly one-third of our teams earned bonus points by knowing all three answers: Green Day (“Desensitized”), Vampire Weekend (“A-Punk”), and 30 Seconds to Mars (“The Kill”). The most difficult bonus question of the first round followed in the subject of Sports Films:
–> In addition to three baseball films, which actor has also appeared in films centered respectively on bicycle racing, golf, the NFL Draft, and cross-country racing?
2-POINT BONUS: What is the title of the aforementioned cross-country film?
Nearly every team earned wagering points with the correct answer of Kevin Costner, but only eight teams tacked on those extra two points by remembering the title of this 2015 film:
The final question of the second round also included a difficult bonus question. Just over half of our teams knew that Paris will host the Summer Olympics for the third time in 2024, but only nine teams could name either one of the two years in which it previously hosted: 1900 or 1924. As a result of these two bonus questions, the second round did not yield any perfect scores.
HALFTIME:
Thursday’s halftime page quizzed our teams on TV-themed coffee mugs and the original names of music groups. Our average score of 16.3 points included 13 teams who notched perfect scores on the halftime round. Here are Thursday’s top scores after the first half:
- PC Principals (Fish Market): 90
- Brother of Menelaus (Fish Market): 88
- Power Vacuum (Champion Billiards): 88
- Furry Fun Bridge (Fish Market): 87
- Hans Gruber Preservation Society (Smoketown Brewing): 87
ROUND 3:
Thursday’s third round included a question on the recent alcoholic advertising campaign featuring this Oscar-winning actor:
Surprisingly, only 34% of our teams earned points by knowing that Matthew McConaughey is the new spokesperson for Wild Turkey bourbon. Keeping with the food and drink theme, we followed up by asking about the fruit which appears in the title of both a Billy Joel song and Dr. Seuss’ first children’s book. I’m guessing that very few teams knew the song “Big Man on Mulberry Street”, and instead earned their wager by knowing this book title:
Next up was our most difficult wagering question of the third round:
–> Often used to refer to angles which extend from the center of a circle, what mathematical unit is equal to just under 57.3 degrees?
Only 28% of our teams earned points here with radian:
Only two teams swept the third round with a perfect score: Brother of Menelaus (Fish Market) and We Drink and We Know Things (Grille at Flower Hill).
6-4-2 QUESTION:
We went back to the bookstore for six-point clue on Thursday night:
–> Which best-selling author’s most recent work is the novel “Origin”, which was released five weeks ago?
Only nine teams knew that “Origin” is the most recent installment in the Robert Langdon book series, as penned by Dan Brown.
ROUND 4:
Thursday’s final round began with our most difficult bonus question of the night:
–> NASA’s Dawn spacecraft took off ten years ago to study these two bodies within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. One of these bodies is a giant asteroid, while the other is a dwarf planet. Name either one of these two objects.
Abut half of our teams earned their wagers with the easier of the two answers: the dwarf planet Ceres (the largest body in the asteroid belt). But only four teams knew BOTH answers, essentially gaining two points on the field with the second correct answer of Vesta.
The final round also included our nightly Three Clues question, with this version dealing with a celebrity:
CLUE 1: One of this performer’s earliest screen roles was in “Three Little Pigskins”, a 1934 film starring The Three Stooges.
CLUE 2: In the 1960s, this celebrity played an integral role in the creation of the TV series “Star Trek”.
These two clues were enough for 15% of our teams to earn two points bonus with this correct response:
Indeed, in the 1960s when Lucille Ball was head of Desilu Studios, she gave a certain fledgling science fiction show the support it needed to stay on the air. Thanks to the astronomy question, we did not see any perfect scores in the final round. Here are Thursday’s top scores after the fourth round:
- Brother of Menelaus (Fish Market): 162
- Dire Wolves (Belly Love Brewing): 158
- Unathetico Madrid (Guido’s): 156
- You’re Killing Me Smalls (Fish Market): 155
- PC Principals (Fish Market): 155
FINAL QUESTION (7.9% success rate):
–> Formed in San Francisco in 1966, which rock band but did not score its first #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart until one year AFTER its 1998 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
Although several of its members (including its namesake) were born in Mexico, the band Santana formed in San Francisco. In year after gaining entrance to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, they hit #1 (along with Rob Thomas) thanks to the song “Smooth”:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Whgn_iE5uc[/embedyt]
This question was certainly more difficult than expected, as we saw a grand total of eight correct answers. Oddly enough, three of those correct answers came from the six-team field at Belly Love Brewing! Thursday featured two teams who scored the Perfect 21 with correct responses on every wagering question: Brother of Menelaus (Fish Market) and Unathetico Madrid (Guido’s). Here are your top overall scores from Thursday:
- Brother of Menelaus (Fish Market): 168
- You’re Killing Me Smalls (Fish Market): 167
- Unathetico Madrid (Guido’s): 158
- Dire Wolves (Belly Love Brewing): 158
- Formerly known as TWA (Belly Love Brewing): 158
- Don’t Stop Believing (Grille at Flower Hill): 152
- Turtles All the Way Down (Quincy’s): 152
- Bag of Marbles (Jerry’s): 144
- North Country (Quincy’s): 143
- PC Principals (Fish Market): 143
TONIGHT’S WINNERS:
Quincy’s Bar and Grille in Gaithersburg, MD: Turtles All the Way Down (Next week’s first category: “The Godfather”)
Champion Billiards in Frederick, MD: Power Vacuum (Next week’s first category: Nolan Ryan)
Bunker Sports Cafe in Leesburg, VA: Your Mom (Next week’s first category: “PCU”)
Smoketown Brewing Station in Brunswick, MD: Hans Gruber Preservation Society (Next week’s first category: “Rick and Morty”)
Beef O’ Brady’s in Frederick, MD: Smarty Pants (Next week’s first category: Last Word / First Word – AUDIO)
Jerry’s Sports Bar in Hagerstown, MD: Bag of Marbles (Next week’s first category: King’s X)
Belly Love Brewing in Purcellville, VA: Dire Wolves (Next week’s first category: Parts of Speech)
Cushwa Brewing in Williamsport, MD: Slapsgiving (Next week’s first category: 1990s Cartoons)
Olde Mother Brewing in Frederick, MD: In Dog Beers, We’ve Had One (Next week’s first category: Maynard James Keenan)
The Grille at Flower Hill in Gaithersburg, MD: Don’t Stop Believing (Next week’s first category: Howard Stern)
Right Around the Corner in St. Petersburg, FL: Over 140 (Next week’s first category: Prince – AUDIO)
Fish Market Restaurant in Alexandria, VA: Brother of Menelaus (Next week’s first category: Boy Bands)
Guido’s in Frederick, MD: Unatheltico Madrid (Next week’s first category: “Super Mario Bros. 3”)