Sometimes, the trivia gods are just not on your side.  We saw two examples of this concept on Tuesday night, as a round three question on diseases led virtually every team to respond with one of two specific answers (Zika or Ebola), yet only 25% of our teams came up with the correct response.  Likewise, a round four question forced teams to choose between one of three west coast U.S. state capitals, yet only 15% of our teams knew that Salem was the westernmost state capital in the Lower 48.  Those two questions turned last night’s game upside-down!  On to the nightly recap:

–> Congratulations to Keith from Power Vacuum (playing as Newton’s Minion), who became just the ninth person to win a Pour House Trivia game as a solo player.

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Buckeye + Bear in Washington, DC

Pour House Trivia hosted its grand re-opening at Buckeye + Bear in Washington, and it brought with it a bit of a 1990’s inspiration!  Ugly Naked Guy faced Chandler, Joey, Rachel, and the much, much lesser-known character… Bootylicious.  So, young beautiful trivia players may not all know the difference between a lunar and a solar eclipse, and Johnny Carson’s face isn’t as timeless as I thought it was, but a good time was had by all.

Some of the Friends gang had to vamoose halfway through the game, ending with:

First Place:  Bootylicious

Second Place: Joey

Third Place:  Rachel

Next week’s first category:  Film Directors

Until we quiz again,

~ Jenn

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On yet another frigid night, Northern Virginia’s finest trivia buffs packed into Capitol City Brewing Company in Shirlington to warm up – and were met with a white-hot crucible of some tough questions!  Seriously, this was no walk in the park.  Seemingly innocuous questions on U.S. state capitals and recent epidemics tripped up a lot of good players – fully six out of ten teams missed their 5-point bonuses in Round 3, and plenty of teams watched their higher wager values disappear like tears in rain.

This trivia life is a tough mistress sometimes, but two squads kept their heads above water long enough to maintain a shot at first place: upstarts “Three Million People” and stalwarts “Capital Hillbillies”, who were playing for a potential fourth-straight win.  That tricky Final on Latin Legal Lingo tripped up the Hillbillies, who landed in second place, but the Three Million came up with the right answer and took home the gold!  Honorable mention to “Hillary Did Harambe”, who had a rough night and mostly languished in the basement – but was the only other team to get the Final right, which vaulted them up to third place!  Harambe and “Show Me on the Doll” have one more week to determine which of the two of them will be crowned House Champs of Cap City and earn a direct ticket to the World Series.  You’ll want to be there for this climactic showdown!

Next week’s first category:  Florida Gators Football

~Austin

Ladies and gentlemen… it finally happened.  It’s been a long time coming, with many close calls and so many shoulda, woulda, couldas, but tonight was the night!  Keith took Champions tonight as a solo player!  Newton’s Minion rose supreme and placed first amidst a very nice round of applause from the 13 teams he beat back tonight. It’s nice to be reminded that even with all the competition, we are really all in it together and there’s support there. Right up until World Series 😉   Look for Keith to be putting it all on the table there with his full team of Power Vacuum.

First place may have been a big story tonight, but third place also had its own drama as Charlie and the Vodka Factory had a tiebreaker throw down with And We’re All Out of Bubblegum.  Bubblegum was just too stuck on to that podium and held on to third place, while The Other Sarah took second.  Next week we will start with the film “Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice”.  Make it a good one, he’s been waiting for this category for some time now! See you all next week!

~ Sam

Tonight’s the night for playoff invitations here at Cugini’s in Poolesville.  I do wish you all the best and hope you can make it to our post-season events on Saturday, January 21!  Nine teams battled it out tonight for the prizes, and it was nice to see a number of new faces in the game as well.  Our game covered multiple subjects such as Maryland, Old West slang, viral outbreaks, and 1970’s TV to name just a few.  Here are the results:

First Place:  Five Must Get Beers

Second Place:  MoMo

Third Place:  No Clue

Next week’s first category:  “Harry Potter” Books

~ Ronnie

Tonight’s game started out with a small technical glitch, but thanks to the heroics of none other than Mr. Denny Grizzle we got things rolling just fine.  We had a packed house today too, as teams were hunting for seats up until the game start.  We started with an audio question about 1990’s Disney songs, where we asked teams to identify different Disney films based on song clips.  Teams did very well with ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘The Lion King’, but the song from ‘Hercules’ was a bit tougher to recognize.

Halftime asked teams to identify a bunch of celebrities who shared a hidden theme, with the theme being that they all shared a surname with a 2016 Presidential Candidate.  In the second half we had a tough question about epidemics, where teams ended up split between Ebola and ZIKA, but the answer was ZIKA.  The final question was about courtroom lingo and ended up being a tough one, as only one team managed to get it right.  This led to third place going to Black Steel with a 0 wager, second going to Mouse Rat who were the only ones to get the final, and the win went to We’ve Embraced Our Mediocrity who built a big enough lead to be safe.  Congrats!  I’ll see you next week!!

Until next time,

~ Chad

Next week’s first category:  Wachowski Films

We had a fun game here at The Tilted Kilt in Frederick this week, with teams getting into the spirit and putting up some good scores against a tough selection of questions.  I still can’t get over “Slappin’ Bears”, a George Clooney movie from 2009.  That has to be the worst answer of all time, and also the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time.

With our top three teams separated by just a few points after Round 4, correct answers on the final question decided the game.  Here are your winners:

First Place: Hookers and Blackjack

Second Place: Poovey Farms

Third Place: Book Club Babes

Next week’s first category (as requested by Hookers and Blackjack) was supposed to be “Slappin’ Bears”, but since that’s not a real thing, they reconsidered and selected “Famous Bears” as next week’s first category.  A wise decision…  See you next week!

~ Nick

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Senor Tequila’s in Germantown, MD

It’s shaping up to be a tight race to the finish for the Pour House Trivia Season XIV House Championship here at Senor Tequila’s, as tonight’s game ran a treacherous gambit of tricky questions and downright hard ones.

Highlights of the Night:

In “How?!-Just-How?!”: When I saw the operatic cycle part of the from Stage to Screen question, I thought for sure no one would have any idea what that was. So when a team with a, shall we say, tumultuous track record was the only team to pull the answer on that, I had to stop everything to ask about it.  Apparently one of them is a huge theatre buff??  Like seriously, how?!

In “Don’t-Give-Me-That”: Listen, I get that missing the theme on a puzzle page with one is frustrating, but don’t try to stand there and tell me that with Sanders, Rubio, Cruz, and Carson all on there, that it was “too hard” to figure out the theme.  We weren’t gonna give you Clinton, come on now.

In “Once-More-With-Feeling”: I’m not sure what was causing so much confusion on the Triple 50-50 question, but I had to read it like 5 times before some teams were comfortable, and even then some didn’t get all of the questions right.  I don’t know what more I can do there!

After a tough final, our standings were set.

In third place tonight, Quiz in My Pants!

In second place tonight, the Fan Club!

In first place tonight, Axl’s Doghouse!

Great game everyone!  Next week we’ll kick things off with a Southwest Airlines category!  Study up, and we’ll see you next time!

Until then,

~ Ian

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Perennial champs and general pains-in-the-butt Milwaukee Beers made their reappearance here at FireFlies in Alexandria, but it was tenuous.  Through the first two rounds and the halftime puzzle, they found themselves behind unexpected competition.  But oh, did they rock the final rounds, and smart betting on the Final Question secured their position as weekly winners.

Surprisingly, there were some age-specific questions that both the new kids and the more distinguished guests both answered correctly.  Apparently, Fireflies has a LOT of Charlie’s Angels fans.  That being said, age held no advantage in identifying the Lemonheads during the audio question leading off the second round.  Almost no one knew it, which is kind of a shame, given they’re so influential.

Also!  Kenny freakin’ Rogers!  Come on, people!  Didn’t your mom play him on repeat on the sweet vinyl record player?  Oh.  Maybe it was just me…   As we move into the Playoffs and the World Series, teams are getting more intently studious, bringing a menagerie of players to round-out their teams.  (Special shame to Barflies for having a lawyer on team who didn’t know “alibi” meant “absent”)

Here are your placers for the week:

First Place:  Milwaukee Beers

Second Place:  Eric Who?

Third Place:  Barflies (surprise performance augmented by Mrs. Chief!)

Next week’s first category:  “Major League” (I love it!)

Let’s go.  Fair winds, shipmates!

~ Chief

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Trivia was alive and well at Quincy’s Bethesda tonight!  The audio clues took me back to my old Jock Jams tapes from the 1990s, when “Home Improvement” ruled the airwaves and Leonardo DiCaprio was a great actor before he was a sex symbol, then back to being a great actor.

Catching Planes took our top spot tonight with Q’s coming in a close second.  Next week’s Winner’s Choice category is Ryan Gosling – time to watch “The Notebook” twelve times in a row (like you weren’t gonna spend your week doing that anyway 😛 ).  If you really want to respect Ryan Gosling as an actor, I HIGHLY recommend “The Believer.”

See you next week!

~ Eric 🙂

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Tuesday was a very interesting night night of trivia for the six teams who turned up at the Blue Parrott in St. Petersburg.  The first half started rather harmlessly, with most teams posting very high scores.  The halftime page tripped up a few of our teams, as only one team correctly realized that all of the famous people shared their last names with 2016 U.S. presidential candidates.  In the second half, several teams struggled with questions about viruses, the Bible, and George Clooney films.  The array of questions kept the scores very close as we reached the close of Round 4.

Many hoped a big wager on the final question would help improve their rankings, but only two teams knew that the Latin word “alibi” means ‘elsewhere’.  Congrats to all who came out and played!  We look forward to seeing you next week!

First Place:  The Quizknows

Second Place:  Parrotheads

Third Place:  GTS

Next week’s first category: 1970s TV Theme Songs

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Monkey La La in Frederick, MD

In what looked like a runaway victory early for 3rd Quarter Nose Dive, our defending champions Sad and Demented but Social clawed back into a tie for first going into the final – and were one of the three teams to come up with a correct response!  The final results left Sad and Demented atop the leaderboard, followed by Stink Floyd, and 3QND ended up with bronze.  The turning point of the night was our Epidemic question – where hatred for me went viral.  I’m pretty sure most teams hope I contract ebola – the answer I read – ZIKA – was not the answer they wanted to hear!  Next week’s winner’s choice category – as chosen by S+DbS – is the winningest film in Academy Award history: Boondock Saints.

See you then!

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We’ve seen two in a row taken by Wingardium Triviosa going into tonight; they are looking like a serious trivia squad, a definite force to be reckoned with! Among a field with some already strong teams in Uncle Jack, Sofa King Smart, and Screaming Death Monkey, it was nice to see another team squeeze themselves into elite status!  Tonight’s game appeared to be unexpectedly dominated by It’s Gonna Be.  This team has been with us for most of the winter season but tonight was the first time they really shined.  Even to themselves it seems unlikely that they’d be ahead but It’s Gonna Be had the lead after the 3rd round and would just need to keep the consistency up during the 4th to have a shot to win this game!

Round 4 had a U.S. Geography question that absolutely DESTROYED some teams!  The westernmost state capital within the contiguous 48 states is Salem, Oregon.  Lots of high bets on Olympia, WA;  I had a few Sacramento, all good guesses, though a high bet was rather risky seeing as it was not the correct answer.  Unfortunately, the most common wrong answer was Portland, meaning teams got to Oregon and just didn’t know the capital.

Going into the final, It’s Gonna Be was able to hang on to their lead, up by 1 with a single question to go! Wingardium Triviosa moved into 2nd, down by 1, needing a miss by the leader to have a shot. WT answered almost immediately on the final question, got it correct, and were just waiting the 2 minutes to see if they’d pulled it off. It’s Gonna Be MISSES the final, giving a 3rd in a row to Wingardium Triviosa! Grats! 2nd place went to Sofa King Smart who won in a tiebreaker over Screaming Death Monkey, our 3rd place finishers! That’s a wrap guys! Back next week!

Next week’s first category:  “Newsies”