What? Me Worry About Monday Trivia?
We opened the final week of November with 84 teams playing across 11 venues:
FIRST ROUND:
Monday’s opening round topics included the “Twilight” book series, the work of classic sitcom actor Fred Gwynne, and the legacy of this Baseball Hall of Famer:
The first round also included a surprisingly difficult question in the category of Name That Year. We gave our teams a three-year window (wither way) to identify the year in which all three of these events occurred:
EVENT 1: The TV game show “Wheel of Fortune” premieres on NBC.
EVENT 2: The Egg McMuffin is added to McDonald’s national menu.
EVENT 3: Bill Gates and Paul Allen create Microsoft.
Less than half of our teams landed within the three-year window, while nearly every team responded with a year that was later than the correct answer of 1975. With just seven teams earning bonus points with an exact answer, we saw just one perfect score in the opening stanza: Hibernators (Il Forno).
SECOND ROUND:
Monday’s audio question featured three musical acts from the country of New Zealand, one of which was this comedic duo:
We followed with the most difficult bonus question of the night, as only six teams knew that Oscar-winning actor Eddie Redmayne penned the foreword to the book “Brief Answers to the Big Questions”, the final work of Stephen Hawking. Even after closing the first half with relatively easier questions regarding nicknames for U.S. currency and the films of M. Night Shyamalan, the second round did not yield any perfect scores.
HALFTIME:
Fictional geographic locations and the initials ‘D.K.’ were the focus of Monday’s halftime page, which yielded an average score of 16.7 points and 11 perfect scores. Here is Monday’s halftime leaderboard:
- Hibernators (Il Forno): 90
- Oliver’s Army (DRP): 86
- Spiritual Growth Hormones (Greene Turtle): 86
- SEVEN TEAMS TIED WITH 85 POINTS
THIRD ROUND:
The second half opened with a Three Clues question concerning the name Hanover, before moving on to topics such as the Tropic of Cancer, the rock band KISS, and this recent video game:
Though none of the three bonus questions were particularly diabolical, all three played to about a 20% success rate, which led to Killer Snails (Hershey’s) posting the only perfect score of the third stanza.
FOURTH ROUND:
After the 6-4-2 question dealt with Sir Anthony Hopkins, we discussed the franchise moves of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings, the nucleotide ATP, and the Olmec civilization. The most difficult bonus question of the round concerned this 1980s film:
Only eight of our Monday teams knew that former “Saturday Night Live” star Phil Hartman co-wrote this film (as well as co-created the character of Pee-wee Herman) along with Paul Reubens. As a result, Kitten Mittens (Cheesetique) notched the only perfect score of the final round. These were your highest scoring Monday teams heading into the final question:
- Kitten Mittens (Cheesetique): 159
- Hibernators (Il Forno): 157
- Killer Snails (Hershey’s): 156
- Chef Goldblum’s Raptor Bites (Hershey’s): 155
- Arrondissements of Ouagadougou (Greene Turtle): 153
MONDAY’S FINAL QUESTION (18.7% success rate):
–> A Germanic verb meaning ‘strangle’ or ‘throttle’ is the ultimate derivation of what common English verb, referring to either dogs gnawing or tearing at a bone or a sheep, or giving into anxiety?
About one-fifth of our teams responded correctly with ‘worry’. A rather difficult final question meant that none of our Monday teams scored a Perfect 21 with correct answers on all wagering questions. Here is your final overall leaderboard to begin the week:
- Power Vacuum (Bushwaller’s): 164
- Hibernators (Il Forno): 160
- We Always Come, But Never in First (DRP): 159
- Our Cup Size is Stanley (Il Forno): 159
- Oliver’s Army (DRP): 155
- Kitten Mittens (Cheesetique): 153
- Chef Goldblum’s Raptor Bites (Hershey’s): 152
- Ralf Fines (Flanagan’s): 152
- Irish Beer Mafia (Greene Turtle): 151
- Noisy Boys (DRP): 148
MONDAY’S WINNERS:
DRP in Alexandria, VA: We Always Come, But Never in First (Next week’s first category: “The Breakfast Club”)
Greene Turtle in Hagerstown, MD: Irish Beer Mafia (Next week’s first category: The Human Body)
Morgan Inn in Woodbine, MD: Morgan Station (Next week’s first category: Atlantic Records)
Hershey’s in Gaithersburg, MD: Chef Goldblum’s Raptor Bites (Next week’s first category: “The Jerk”)
Uno Pizzeria in Frederick, MD: Weasels (Next week’s first category: 1980s Karaoke Music – AUDIO)
Cheesetique in Arlington, VA: Kitten Mittens (Next week’s first category: Hanukkah)
Bushwaller’s in Frederick, MD: Power Vacuum (Next week’s first category: Stephen Hawking)
Rockwell Brewery in Frederick, MD: Magnificent Seven (Next week’s first category: “Dark Shadows”)
Bareburger in Atlanta, GA: Libra Season (Next week’s first category: Vintage Toys)
Flanagan’s Harp and Fiddle in Bethesda, MD: Ralf Fines (Next week’s first category: “The X-Files”)
Il Forno in Frederick, MD: Hibernators (Next week’s first category: Plants Named for People)