Wednesday Night Trivia Does Not Need Gimmicks!

For the third night in a row, our game featured an extremely challenging final question, as 96 teams threw down at 14 venues.  Let’s see which teams avoided the speed bumps on Wednesday night:

ROUND 1:

Wednesday’s game didn’t pull any punches in the first round, as the first bonus question of the night proved to be the most difficult of the first half.  While most of our teams knew that Nashville had recently overtaken Memphis as the most populous city in Tennessee, only six teams earned bonus points by knowing that it sits along the Cumberland River.

We closed the round with this question on the topic of sports films:

–> Seven of the 16 sports films that have won Academy Awards have focused on this sport, including two films that won the Oscar for Best Picture.

2-POINT BONUS: Name BOTH of the Best Picture-winning films which focused on this sport.

Just over half of our teams earned their wagers with the correct answer of boxing, while 16% of our teams also earned a two-point bonus with these films:

The first round did not yield any perfect scores on Wednesday night.

ROUND 2:

Tuesday’s audio question featured a bit of a Halloween theme, as we asked our teams to identify music groups whose names include creatures one might dress up as on Halloween.  The field had no problem recognizing the songs of Alien Ant Farm (“Smooth Criminal”), Vampire Weekend (“Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”), and The Zombies (“She’s Not There”).  We followed up with our nightly Three Clues question, which focused on a current TV series:

CLUE 1: Its lead performer has won three Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (but none for this show).

CLUE 2: An episode entitled “Luther Braxton” aired immediately after Super Bowl LXIX (49).

Very few teams even ventured a guess at this point, leading to just seven teams earning a two-point bonus with “The Blacklist”:

Though he has yet to win any Emmy Awards for this series, James Spader won three awards for his work on “The Practice” and “Boston Legal”.  Once again, we did not have any teams notch a perfect second round score.

HALFTIME:

Wednesday’s halftime page featured pictures of “Treehouse of Horror” parodies from “The Simpsons”, as well as a 50/50 section on the works of Beethoven and Mozart.  With an average score of 15.3 points, we saw six teams record a perfect 20 on Wednesday night.  Here are Wednesday’s top scores after the first half:

• [Vacant] School of Management (Bennigan’s – Clarksburg):  86
• Shakeweight (Valley Grill):  86
• Stephen Hawking’s Karaoke Machine (Memories):  85
• Stupid Sexy Flanders (Valley Grill):  85
• The Fan Club (The Tavern):  84
• Witiots (Nido’s):  84

ROUND 3:

Wednesday’s third round included a question on the film work of a certain former professional wrestler:

–> Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has played the title character in three feature films.  One of these films was his first lead role, one was a family comedy, and the last was a film based on mythology.  Name any two of these three films.

Most of our teams were able to name two films, but only 22% earned bonus points with the three correct responses of “The Scorpion King”, “Tooth Fairy”, and “Hercules”.  We followed up with our most difficult wagering question of the night, asking our teams to give us the meaning of TAFKAP, an acronym often heard in the realm of pop music.  Only 17% of our teams earned points by knowing that the acronym was a reference to this musical legend:

Yes, that phrase stands for The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.  After closing with a question on the NBA Finals, we once again did not see any perfect scores in the third round.

6-4-2:

Our six-point question was short and to the point on Wednesday:

–> Which common object includes parts known as the frontispiece, gutter, flyleaf, and headband?

Hey… remember BOOKS?  Exactly one dozen teams did, as that was the correct answer.

ROUND 4:

The final round also included a rather difficult bonus question in the realm of geography.  We offered a crossword-style hint on this question, but also gave a bonus for those teams who answered correctly beforehand:

–> The city of Rey was the predecessor of which current national capital city located about 60 miles from the southern shore of the Caspian Sea?

Only six teams knew the exact location of the Iranian capital of Tehran.  After touching on the subjects of Legal Lingo and Chemical Compounds, we concluded the final round with a question on Classic TV Theme Songs, as most of our teams knew that these two characters were originally omitted from the lyrics to the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song:

It took all four rounds, but Shadynasty (Bennigan’s – Clarksburg) finally turned in the first (and only) perfect round of the night!  Here are your top scores after the fourth round on Wednesday:

• Stephen Hawking’s Karaoke Machine (Memories):  158
• [Vacant] School of Management (Bennigan’s – Clarksburg):  154
• Plugging the A Gap (Barefoot Bernie’s):  154
• Lone Pine Mall Rats (Barefoot Bernie’s):  150
• Stupid Sexy Flanders (Valley Grill):  149

FINAL QUESTION (13.9% success rate):

–> Originally an American slang term referring to the dishonest regulation of a gambling game, this seven-letter word can also mean an item used in a conjuring trick, a professional wrestler’s in-ring persona, or a showy device used to attract attention or publicity.  What is this seven-letter word.

The correct answer we were looking for gimmick.  Another difficult final meant that no teams earned the Perfect 21 tonight by answering all wagering questions correctly.  These were your top overall scores from Wednesday:

• Stephen Hawking’s Karaoke Machine (Memories):  168
• Stupid Sexy Flanders (Valley Grill):  157
• Aaahh!!  Real Munsters (Furnace Bar):  156
• Witiots (Nido’s):  156
• [Vacant] School of Management (Bennigan’s – Clarksburg):  154
• Lone Pine Mall Rats (Barefoot Bernie’s):  154
• Shadynasty (Bennigan’s – Clarksburg):  153
• We Guess So Hard (Clover Theater):  152
• Tokyo Sex Robot (Belles’ Sports Bar):  152
• Matt Shearer is Our Dad (Valley Grill):  152

TONIGHT’S WINNERS:

Valley Grill in Middletown, MD:  Stupid Sexy Flanders  (Next week’s first category: Ultimate Warrior Quotes)