Weekend Trivia Was the Apple of My Eye!

April showers may have extended into May downpours, but that didn’t deter 62 teams from coming in for a weekend edition of Pour House Trivia across seven locations!

FIRST ROUND:

For the Friday game, we started with a Three Clues question about the word real before getting to the most difficult wagering question of the first half:

• Over the last 95 years, only three men have held the MLB record for career regular season home runs. Name two of those three players.

About three-fifths of the field named two of Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, and current record-holder Barry Bonds for wagering points. Saturday’s hardest wagering question regarded the Tagalog language and its basis in the Philippines. A couple of Saturday bonuses on the aforementioned nation’s largest island of Luzon and actor Robert Preston, who originally played Harold Hill in The Music Man played tough with the evening’s players. Other first-round topics over the weekend included Peter Piper’s pickled peppers and the use of the word skunk in a sporting sense to describe a particularly dominant victory. Speaking of dominance, Sexual Chocolate (P. B. Dye) and PB & J (Belles’) enjoyed perfect scores in the opening round.

SECOND ROUND:

Friday’s audio question was a three-parter on the Roy Orbison song Oh, Pretty Woman, while Saturday’s players were given three pop culture clips from the far-flung past of 2003! Friday teams also enjoyed a reuben sandwich, an episode of 70s comedy Alice, and an exobiology trip to outer space. For Saturday, we discussed the slot machine beginnings of video game maker Sega, took a quick visit to Norfolk, Virginia, and repeated things ad nauseam. The hardest question of this first half came at the end of the second round on Saturday:

• The cover of the Time magazine issue dated May 20, 2011 is the most recent of four issues over the last 80 years to simply feature a person’s face obscured by this symbol.  For your wager, you can either name that symbol, or tell me whose face appeared on the May 20, 2011 issue of Time.

Simply put, that 2011 issue featured Osama bin Laden‘s face covered by a giant red X, which more recently was plastered not on someone’s face, but over a giant 2020 on a Time cover. One-third of Saturday’s teams earned wagering points on that question, while three teams got their bonus points by naming both answers. Across the weekend games, five teams were able to play the second round perfectly.

HALFTIME:

On Friday, teams overcame some coulrophobia to identify clowns from TV and film, while Saturday’s halftime page showcased vintage travel posters from various foreign countries. Our teams averaged a 16.1 over the weekend at halftime, with perfect scores reached by a total of 14 squads. A closely-packed bunch headed up the crowd at intermission:

• Sexual Chocolate (P. B. Dye): 88
• Beer Pressure (P. B. Dye): 88
• Shipwrecked (Springfield Manor): 87
• PB & J (Belles’): 87
• No MSG (Flying Ace): 87
• Quality Guesswork (Pretzel and Pizza): 87

THIRD ROUND:

The second half began on Friday with queries on Lake Nicaragua, the largest lake in Central America, Jeopardy champ James Holzauer’s record $25,000 Daily Double wager, and the shootings of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. in Las Vegas and Los Angeles respectively. However, the hardest question of the night came afterward in the science lab:

• Often expressed as PV = nRT, this gas law is considered by some to be a theoretical formula. This law was created as combination of Boyle’s law, Charles’ law and Avogadro’s Law. Which adjective is used in the name of this gas law?

About 13% of teams knew that was the ideal gas law. Saturday’s third round questions concerned the U.S. Navy’s Nimitz aircraft carriers, the Bedazzler infomercial product, and their own science question on the term torque. The most difficult question on Saturday here was on the Soggy Bottom Boys of the film O Brother Where Art Thou, with half the field earning wagering points. A half-dozen weekend teams put up perfect scores in the third.

FOURTH ROUND:

After weekend 6-4-2 questions on the game Twister and the animated duo Chip & Dale, we entered the fourth round. An Over/Under played toughest for Friday’s teams, but they motored on through questions on the impeachment case against Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, the chardonnay wine grape, and Wrestlemania I teammates Hulk Hogan and Mr. T’s roles in Rocky III. Bonus points were few and far between on Saturday, however, with only one team getting two extra points for knowing Sherlock Holmes first appeared in the story A Study in Scarlet. The hardest question all weekend also came on Saturday:

• An NFL Hall of Fame inductee in 2014, this defensive back played the majority of his career with the Arizona Cardinals before retiring with the St. Louis Rams in 2004.  This player shares his first name with what epic Trojan war hero?

While you may think of players named Troy, that Hall of Famer is actually Aeneas Williams. The only teams to score a perfect 36 points in the round were Sexual Chocolate and Killer Snails, both doing so at P. B. Dye. As for a pre-final leaderboard, these were the top-ranked teams:

• Sexual Chocolate (P. B. Dye): 165
• Shipwrecked (Springfield Manor): 162
• Now on the Tee (P. B. Dye): 160
• Squircle Jerks (Flying Ace): 160
• PB & J (Belles’): 157

FRIDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (18.4% success rate):

• For a period of several years in the 1980s, which man simultaneously hosted three regularly scheduled TV programs which aired respectively on each of the three major American networks?

SATURDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (55.6% success rate):

• Coined by the band’s guitarist in 1970 in a namesake song recorded after he started his solo career, the nickname Apple Scruffs was the name given to a group of hardcore fans of what band?

Arguably the king of network television in the 1980s was host Dick Clark, who simultaneously hosted American Bandstand on ABC, the variously-moneyed Pyramid game shows on CBS, and TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes on NBC! As for the name Apple Scruffs, it comes from a track on Side Three of All Things Must Pass by George Harrison, former member of Saturday’s final answer, The Beatles. Only one Perfect 21 was reached over the weekend: Sexual Chocolate (P. B. Dye) answered every wagering question correctly on Friday. With everything said and done, these were the best weekend teams:

• Sexual Chocolate (P. B. Dye): 177
• Shipwrecked (Springfield Manor): 167
• Killer Snails (P. B. Dye): 164
• DJ2 (Springfield Manor): 163
• Cultured Heathens (Pretzel and Pizza): 163
• Elderly Leather (Pretzel and Pizza): 162
• Now on the Tee (P. B. Dye): 152
• Squircle Jerks (Flying Ace): 152
• Slightly Agitated (Belles’): 149
• PB & J (Belles’): 148

WEEKEND WINNERS:

Springfield Manor Winery in Thurmont, MD: Shipwrecked  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Hannah Montana: The Movie)

P. B. Dye Golf Course in Ijamsville, MD: Sexual Chocolate (FIRST CATEGORY AFTER HIATUS: Cryptozoology)

P. B. DYE WILL BEGIN AN IMMEDIATE HIATUS OF AT LEAST TWO MONTHS

Dragon Distillery in Frederick, MD: Little Reds  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: NCAA Basketball)

Doc Waters Cidery in Germantown. MD: NO GAME  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Songs from Animaniacs)

Flying Ace Farm in Lovettsville, VA: Squircle Jerks  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Stanley Cup Champions)

Belles’ Sports Bar in Frederick, MD: Slightly Agitated  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Better Off Dead)

Pretzel and Pizza Creations in Hagerstown, MD: Cultured Heathens  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Robocop — original film)

Mason Social in Alexandria, VA: Crosby’s Fan Club  (NEXT WEEK’S FIRST CATEGORY: Jim Carrey)