QUIZ RECAP

I hope everyone left a good tip this last Tuesday because unbeknownst to you it was National Waitstaff Day and we were all secretly judging you. We had four teams of trivia fiends duking it out among themselves: Cunning Stunts, NFC Ya Face, Ayo River, and The Diosuri, not Castor + Poilux, but Ashley + Mary Kate Olsen featuring Elizabeth in the role of the younger sister. I'm just going to abbreviate that last one to the Diosuri if you don't mind.

Round 1 had the teams battling over trivia from a variety of categories. Were they smarter than a fifth grader who can identify the scientific names of certain clouds (cumulus)? Or maybe this was the time for them to get over their Game of Thrones finale depression and remember which cast member married Joe Jonas (Sophie Turner).

Either way, we quickly moved into our Picture Round 2 as teams identified screenshots from critically acclaimed films that all won at the Cannes film festival. We had some mass-culture picks like the picture of Samuel Jackson in a suit holding a gun (Pulp Fiction), but many of the others were extremely difficult to guess and showed only the character's upper body and head. Do you really think you could recognize The Piano or Dancer in the Dark just from the actor's headshots?

Well some of our teams actually managed to pull that off which you'll see in this Score Recap. First place was The Diosuri with 11 points, second place was NFC Ya Face with 9 points, Ayo River had third with 8 points, and Cunning Stunts was in fourth with 6 points.

Round 3 is our Theme Round and this Tuesday the theme was 'Spring'. A bit straightforward yes, but that doesn't mean every question was easy to guess. For example, even with the 'spring' clue, could you tell me what town did Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman takes place in (Colorado Springs). Or perhaps you could have identified the Astro's MVP from the 2017 World Series (George Springer).

Guess Who? Round 4 saw our denizens guessing the identity of a famous writer. Our first clues were pretty vague, referencing their Minnesota birthplace and their first book, The Romantic Egotist. But later clues quickly gave up the plot, revealing their WWI era time period and his wife Zelda. Actual book readers rejoice, for yes it was F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Round 5 is our Find the Connection round which is always a fun round to play. Even if you never identify the connection you can still rack up 90% of the points from traditional trivia questions. So if you're just finishing up escrow (Quicken Loans is what kind of lending company? Mortgage) or have a weak spot for chocolate (What state is headquarters to Hershey? Pennsylvannia), or are simply a child of the 70s (Morgan Freeman regularly starred in what educational TV show? The Electric Company) you could have helped contribute to your team's own success. If you wanted to go that last tenth of a mile though, you would need to have recognized the Monopoly connection between all of these answers.

Round 6 is our handout round that gives your host a little brreathing room to catch up on note-taking and bookkeeping. Unfortunately for me though, you guys are so fast at answering the questions that you end up turning in the answers before I'm ready to hit the hosting track again. This week you powered through musical association, as you matched Jukebox Musicals with the artists associated with them. Think Escape to Margaritaville / Jimmy Buffett or Movin' Out / Billy Joel.

Before we head into the Final Round, let's get a score recap. The Diosuri had taken a very strong lead off the back of a Round 5 Double or Nothing with 49 points and first place. 2nd place was over ten points back at 37, belonging to Ayo River. NFC Ya Face was close behind at 35 points, and Cunning Stunts was our stalwart caboose at 21.

Still, anything can happen in a 10-point Final Round if you can pull off a Double or Nothing. And this week's final round prompt was:

What are 10 of the 12 NFL teams that reached the Superbowl in the time period of 1980-1989?

If you needed another reminder that King Trivia samples evenly from all categories, this was it. Those teams who remember to bring a sports person to complement their science person perform best. That's not to say a layperson couldn't get a good number of points here, but intuition would say the Packers would show up on this list but surprisingly, they weren't.

At the end of the day, the winners were as follows:

1. The Diosuri

2. Ayo River

3. NFC Ya Face

4. Cunning Stunts

Thanks to everybody for coming out and hopefully my allergies will have adjusted to our new pollen ridden atmosphere by next Tuesday.