QUIZ RECAP

We had a wild night here at Petoskey's but nobody took the bait of commenting on my sandals and bright red cereal "I can't adult today" sock combo. That's okay, I'll see if I can pull something more outlandish out next week. We had five teams competing for glory: Any way you want it, Who do you think you are, Finley's Friends, NFC Ya Face, and If we lose it's homophobic.

General Knowledge Round 1 saw Finley's Friends take an early lead off the back of their successful Double or Nothing. It was a pretty straightforward warmup round though, so it wasn't necessarily commendation worthy. Although I enjoyed seeing multiple scribbled out wrong answers on answer sheets as people worked out the math by hand to solve the square root of 225 (15).

Picture Round 2 was about identifying films solely by a picture of a notable wrestler who was featured in it. So if you saw a picture of Andre the Giant holding a rock, you'd know it was The Princess Bride. To my surprise we didn't have very many teams identify The Predator (Jesse Ventura) or Rocky III (Mr. T) correctly, but recency bias makes it easier to identify X-Men (Tyler Mane) I guess.

Themed Round 3 was all about dragons. Some of them were real like a dragonfly (What insect is admired in poetry of Lord Tennyson?) but others were fictional friends of ours like Puff (What magic dragon is the focus of a Peter, Paul, and Mary song?). Unfortunately for one team they took a gamble on my initial error in saying Kimono instead of Komodo as meaning the answer was Japan instead of Indonesia and lost their Double or Nothing as a result. In their defense I did say it was a Freudian slip but I couldn't remember the technical term for that kind of letter-swap mispronunciation if there is one.

So let's check the scores at this point in the evening. First place was held by Finley's Friends at 20 points, closely followed by If we lose it's homophobic at 18 points. Third place was Any way you want it at 15 points, then NFC Ya Face in fourth with 14 points. Our caboose was Who do you think you are? with 7 points following that failed DBO.

Our Guess Who? Round 4 was supposed to be a sneaky trick, but I utterly failed to swindle our teams as they saw through the ruse immediately on the 8 point clue. I guess too many people saw the The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride, as they immediately recognized the names Kovu and Kiara as belonging to the next generation of animated lions and not real people. I guess those direct-to-video sequels did pretty well for Disney after all if they stuck in the collective synaptic memory.

Unfortunately we bounced off a great Round 4 into an atrocious Find the Connection Round 5. Despite 10 questions not a single team was able to score more than 3 correct answers. But it wasn't the fault of our teams in my opinion, we've got a good and capable crowd so I'll lay the blame on the questions. After all, I'd argue you should lose a point if you actually knew YouTuber and all-around awful human being Logan Paul's debut single Help Me Help You.

Things turned right around in Handout Round 6 as every team got 8 or more questions correct. Since the questions were all about matching famous castles with their countries of origin, obviously we're all highly cultured world travelers who know their Chateau Gaillard's (France) from their Krak des Chevaliers (Syria).

So, what were the scores before we headed into our Final Round? Finley's Friends continued to hold onto their narrow first place lead with 39 points, but If we lose it's homophobic was still nipping at their tails with 38 points. Third place was Any way you want it at 33 points, closely followed by NFC Ya Face at 32. Who do you think you are had slowly fought their way back within shooting distance with 27 points.

So without further ado, the Final Round prompt this Tuesday was:

What are the 9 US State Capitals with multiple-word names?

This was a middle-America based questions so converts to the Best Coast were in an advantaged position to crank out answers like Des Moines, Saint Paul, or Jefferson City. When all else failed though, guessing a multiple word city was better than nothing though, as every single point in this game ended up being a difference maker.

With two successful Double or Nothings we had a major final second photo finish. Last place ended up being Any way you want it with 38 points while fourth place was taken by If we lose it's homophobic at 44 points (I swear it's not true though XD). Yes that means that Who do you think you are? managed to comeback all the way to third place with 45 points after their DBO, just a point away from matching Finley's Friends second place finish with 46 points. And so it was that NFC Ya Face ended up on top after their DBO, securing a first place finish with 50 points.

Congratulations to all our teams for a great night of competition despite the ping-ponging of perceived question quality. We kept it close, we kept it tight, but most of all, we kept it fun. Hope to see you all back again soon, next Tuesday will be here before you know it.