QUIZ RECAP

Our second contest at Petoskey's may not have been as crowded as our big blowout inauguration, but the competition was just as fierce as our teams battled for the glory of taking pictures with my beautiful Hulk Trophies. People seemed more interested in our 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Place Prize Gift Certificates, but I'm sure that was just a coincidence.

The five teams battling for supremacy this week were The North Stars, Aprick, Bingo Wing Superstars, Team Average, and Bangs + Prauns. Bangs + Prauns were only able to join us towards the end of our night's contest in Round 5, but based on some rough napkin math I predicted they would have ended the night's competition with a respectable 26 points based on their average accuracy. But what of our other brain gladiators? Well, keep reading friends, and I'll give you the blow by blow recount.

Round 1 was our General Knowledge Round, but perhaps the questions were too average because we ended with all the teams tied at four points. Team Average may have technically been a belated entrant in Round 2, but they were welcomed with open arms as I comp'ed them four points to put them on equal standing with the rest of our teams given the lack of differentiation.

Round 2, our Picture Round, wasn't so narrowly equitable in terms of results, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how well most of the teams did in identifying the names of professional sportswomen based on their pictures. We had a median accuracy of nearly 75%, so well-done. In terms of standings our teams were positioned as follows: Team Average in 1st with 11 points, The North Stars in 2nd with 10 points, Bingo Wing Superstars in 3rd with 9 points, and Aprick in 4th with 6 points.

Round 3 was our Themed Round, but I think we can all agree there may have been a special geographical advantage tonight because the theme was Coffee. Our Seattleites crushed this round with an average accuracy of 80%! Unfortunately for Team Average though, they missed what would have otherwise been a successful Double or Nothing by accidentally mixing up the actor playing John Coffey in The Green Mile (we were looking for Michael Clark Duncan; Tom Hanks played the guard Paul Edgecomb).

This led us in to Round 4, our Guess Who? Round. Teams tried their darnedest to try to wrack their brains for the famous person in the first two clues, but they were pretty vague hints. Once we hit our 6-point clue though, I was bombarded with answer sheets as the teams almost instantaneously recognized Sonny Bono after the clue mentioned his fatal skiing accident. But as his tombstone optimistically states, "And The Beat Goes On".

Before we move into Round 5, a quick update on the scores at this stage of the night. The North Stars had taken the lead at 21 points, closely followed by the Bingo Wing Superstars at 20 points, Team Average at 17 points, and Aprick at 10 points.

Our Find the Connection round answers were all tied together by Soda Brands, but unfortunately there weren't any brand names visible from the bar for clever players to benefit from. It didn't stop our teams from logically back-filling their answers though, as we had another superb round with 82% average accuracy! This is also where our late entrant Bangs and Prauns joined us for the rest of the night's contest. They might have even potentially placed after a gutsy Double or Nothing, but unfortunately they missed the name of the Toy Story character with an engine, the not-so creatively named, RC. We also had a fun diversion identifying all the different ways that people might refer to the game Heads Up, Seven Up!.

The final two rounds tested obscure Pop Culture knowledge much to the dismay of our players who saw their average accuracy percentages fall out of orbit down under sub-50% before finally hitting a dismal 20% average in Round 7. Don't feel too bad though, your host scored just as poorly when I did my practice session with these questions too! Round 6, our Handout Round, asked players to match actors from the Harry Potter Movies to their other major film or TV franchises. This was a very tough round, but funnily enough, so many teams identified Gary Oldman as having been in the Die Hard movies that even your host started second-guessing whether there was a mistake in the answer sheet (I ended up double-checking IMDB just to be sure, he can disappear into a role after all).

With the teams still nipping at each other's tails going into our Final Round, The North Stars with 34, Bingo Wing Superstars with 32, Team Average with 29, Aprick with 21, and Bangs + Prauns with 5, the top 3 was still up for grabs. Unfortunately, Round 7 was an absolutely brutal question, as it asked players to come up with:

10 of the 13 original members from the group of D.C. super-villains 'The Legion of Doom'

For those wondering, this was a league of comicbook from a 1978 cartoon series titled "Challenge of the Super Friends". And although just about everyone managed to identify Lex Luthor, that's where the fun mostly stopped as our high score this round was only 3 correct answers (The North Stars). But a special shout-out to Aprick who guessed the most obscure villain out of all the teams, Brainiac. With the scores not changing much at all from Round 6, we ended the night's competition on a bittersweet note.

But with the spirit of friendship and competition still beating in our hearts, we rallied together to enthusiastically celebrate the final tallies and hand out the night's prizes to our top 3 finishers.

1. The North Stars (37 Points)
2. Bingo Wing Superstars (34 Points)
3. Team Average (29 Points)
4. Aprick (23 Points)
5. Bangs + Prauns (6 Points)

Be sure to come join us next Tuesday, my Hulk trophies will still be here waiting for you to fight for the privilege of a glorious group picture!