Wednesday Trivia is Cleared for Takeoff!

We might be under another cold spell outside, but fourteen venues were heating up with 119 teams playing Pour House Trivia!

FIRST ROUND:

It took no time at all to get to the toughest wagering question in the first round:

• Made with banana ice cream, caramel, and fudge peace signs, the Ben & Jerry’s flavor One Love was created as a tribute to which musician that passed away in 1981?

Bob Marley was the late musician honored by that ice cream flavor, good for four-fifths of the field to earn wagering points. The most difficult bonus chance followed, as just 18% of Wednesday’s teams knew the name Atlas from the first two clues in our Three Clues question. The round ended with questions on pilot Amelia Earhart and the cooking competition show Chopped. Five teams came out of the first round with a perfect score.

SECOND ROUND:

We tasted the rainbow for the audio question and played songs by solo musicians with colors in their names. Even though we only asked for the color, getting all three right for bonus points was a toughest task of the first half. Just 14% of teams guessed Blu Cantrell, Rebecca Black, and Norman Greenbaum in all for those two big points. After questions on the jaguar, the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, and Walla Walla, Washington, teams encountered the most difficult wagering question of the first half:

• Which despised Hall of Famer was referenced in the film Field of Dreams when Shoeless Joe Jackson says that this player wanted to play with the others, but was told to stick it?

That would be the infamous Ty Cobb; about 55% of teams earned their wager for that correct answer. The only perfect second round score went to Stink Floyd (Belles’).

HALFTIME:

Maybe we got a little artsy for Wednesday’s halftime sheet, tasking teams with identifying famous painters by a famous work, then moving on to match TV shows with their respective spinoff series. A valiant effort by everyone saw an average score of 17.2 and perfect 20-point pages scored by 31 teams, more than a quarter of the field! After all that, we reached intermission with these teams on top:

• Stink Floyd (Belles’): 92
• Bad Rhino (Sully’s): 90
• Archived! (GearHouse): 90
• Sexual Chocolate (Memories): 90
• Drink NoVa (Sully’s): 88
• What the Fork (TGI Fridays): 88

THIRD ROUND:

We didn’t make it easy to start the second half of play, since the first question ended up the hardest of the entire game:

• Kurt Vonnegut borrowed a well-known advertising slogan as the title for which 1973 novel?

Vonnegut must’ve had his Wheaties, as that novel is titled Breakfast of Champions. A little more than one-fifth of the field named that for wagering points, and only nine teams tacked on two bonus points for knowing the Vonnegut museum is found in his home state of Indiana. The round kept going with topics like astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, a three-parter on recent birthday boy Al Pacino, and the phrase mind your Ps and Qs. Another tough bonus get came at the end of the round on a question about the song Tainted Love, covered by Soft Cell and sampled for Rihanna’s hit SOS. A majority of teams were able to name one of those tracks for their wager, but both songs were named by only 12% of the field for the bonus. One of those teams, Sexual Chocolate (Memories), navigated the minefield to secure the only perfect score of the third round!

FOURTH ROUND:

As usual, the 6-4-2 preceded the fourth round. This time, a triad of clues about gymnastics had 14 teams nail the dismount after only one clue for the full six points. Round four featured the two hardest bonus questions of the entire night, which was enough to knock our field down for the count. First, we turned to the Disney Channel:

• Helping to launch Shia LaBeouf’s career, which Disney Channel show focused on siblings named Louis, Ren, and Donnie?

While 65% of teams knew that show to be Even Stevens, only eight teams knew Louis’s girlfriend on the show was named Tawny to get two bonus points. The other bonus toughie came two questions later on a question about NHL MVPs Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, both of whom won their awards with the Edmonton Oilers. Only three teams got bonus points by knowing the Oilers’ most recent MVP before the aforementioned pair was 1989-90 winner Mark Messier. We then followed that up with the hardest wagering question of the night:

• Founded by Erling Persson, what retail chain was initially named Hennes, the Swedish word for hers, before acquiring the outdoor brand Mauritz Widforss?

Turns out H&M stands for Hennes & Mauritz, giving about a third of the field their wagers on that correct answer. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no teams were able to earn a perfect score in the fourth. Scores still looked good, though, heading into the final question:

• Sexual Chocolate (Memories): 166
• Archived! (GearHouse): 164
• Stink Floyd (Belles’): 159
• Drink NoVa (Sully’s): 157
• Tokyo Sex Whale (Belles’): 157

FINAL QUESTION (32.8% success rate):

• One of the responsibilities of the U.S. Marshals Service is managing JPATS, or the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System.  This service is usually referred to by which nickname?

All the Nicolas Cage fans in the crowd might’ve figured out that nickname is Con Air., correctly named by almost a third of Wednesday’s field. The only Perfect 21 on Wednesday was locked down by Archived! (GearHouse), who provided their own exclamation point for the feat. Wednesday’s final leaderboard shook out like this:

• Sexual Chocolate (Memories): 178
• Archived! (GearHouse): 175
• Stink Floyd (Belles’): 170
• Scott Looks Different (Memories): 166
• I Don’t Know (Moe’s): 155
• That’s What She Said (Moe’s ): 155
• Bad Rhino (Sully’s): 164
• H.R. Puff ‘n’ Stuff (Hops N Shine): 161
• Titanic Was An Inside Job (Hops N Shine): 160
• Stinkfist (Idiom): 159

WEDNESDAY’S WINNERS:

Moe’s Peyton Place in Springfield, VA: I Don’t Know  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Kingdom of Pontus)

Valley Sports Grill in Middletown, MD: We Showed Up  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Shia LaBeouf Films)

Belles’ Sports Bar in Frederick, MD: Stink Floyd  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Yesterday (film))

Memories Charcoal House in Mount Airy, MD: Sexual Chocolate  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Roguelike Video Games)

GearHouse Brewing in Chambersburg, PA: Archived! (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Star Trek: The Next Generation)

TGI Fridays in Hagerstown, MD: What the Fork  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Baseball Films)

Idiom Brewing in Frederick, MD: Stinkfist (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Nicolas Cage Films)

Axes and O’s in Sterling, VA: The Legend of Taylor Heinicke  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Friends)

Hops N Shine in Alexandria, VA: H.R. Puff ‘n’ Stuff (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Station Eleven)

Sully’s Pour House in Herndon, VA: Bad Rhino  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: U.S. Rivers)

Falling Branch Brewery in Street, MD: Nerd Immunity  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Con Air)

T. J. Stone’s in Alexandria, VA: Not Rocket Surgeons  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Cat Breeds)

Craftworx Taproom in Gainesville, VA: Pier’s Robes  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Lord of the Rings)

Cellar Door in Frederick, MD: NO GAME THIS WEEK  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Famous Rabbits)

Barstool Sportsbook in Charles Town, WV: De-Whites  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Seinfeld)

Bar Louie in Gainesville, VA: Papa and the Smurf  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Early 2000s Rap)

Mark’s Pub in Falls Church, VA: Fresh Off the U-Haul  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Burnt Ends BBQ)