QUIZ RECAP

What a boisterous night we had this last Tuesday; 7 teams and 24 players, my goodness. Our seven mental magicians were Looky Lous, Westertoast, I can't pronounce this, Cornstache, NFC Ya Face, The bells are ringing!, and Sucks to Suck. That was a far cry from last week's two-team duel. And all of that just to recognize the plainest of holidays: National Buttermilk Biscuit Day. Well, grab yourself a cup of tea and crumpets and read on to see how things shaked out.

Round 1 had our teams facing a bevy of questions from a variety of categories like cooking (What organ is beef pate made from? Liver) and pop culture (Nicholas Holt plays what author in this 2019 biopic? JRR Tolkien). But it was the question about the first leader of the Soviet Union that left your host the most disappointed. You see, Petoskey's is located in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, which is famous for two things: A huge troll sculpture under a bridge, and an imported USSR-era statue of Vladimir Lenin. I mean come on people, it's literally down the street.

Round 2 is our picture round and this one was for the STEM majors as we asked teams to identify and name various pieces of chemistry equipment; think Erlenmeyer Flasks and Graduated Cylinders. But based on our team's collective accuracy of 40%, I can safely say that we have the honor of representing old Seattle and the traditional liberal arts.

Round 3 was our theme round and this one was quite difficult: Greek Mythology (or the initials IL; don't ask, it's a whole thing). Even if you didn't know the abyss where Zeus imprisoned the titans (Tartarus) or the name of the centaur who trained Achilles (Chiron), maybe you could have identified I Love Rock and Roll as the 1982 hit by Joan Jett that was originally released by The Arrows.

Alright time for a score recap. This was a low scoring night due to the increased difficulty of the questions, which is something I tend to enjoy as the host because it makes me look way smarter than you. First place was held by Westertoast with 16 points, second place was Cornstache with 13 points, third place was NFC Ya Face with 12 points, and fourth place was I can't pronounce this with 11. Fifth was tied between The bells are ringing! and Sucks to Suck at 10 points, and sixth was held by Looky Lous at 8.

Round 4 was a Guess Where? round. Teams had to strategically decide when they had enough information from clues to submit a guess, or whether they needed to wait out for another hit of associated factoids. This was a 'groaning' answer, as teams looked amongst themselves with bewilderment over what city's name could possibly mean 'safe place for goats'. Hearing it was associated with organized crime didn't help, nor its placement on an archipelago. But once they heard some of its notable professors like Barbara Gordon and Jonathan Crane, every team quickly realized they weren't dealing with a real city, but a fictional one. With the Batman as its most famous denizen, we were talking about Gotham City.

Round 5 is our Find the Connection Round. Teams get to sort through a bunch of unrelated questions whose answers have something in common with one another. Some asked for holidays (what is celebrated on February 2nd? Groundhog Day), some asked for aliases (what super-villain name does Wilson Fisk go by? Kingpin), and some asked for music ("To the window! To the wall!" is a lyric in what Lil Jon song? Get Low). Teams that recognized movie titles in these answers were only halfway correct, because these are not just movies, they're all Bill Murray movies.

Round 6 is our handout round that allows your host some breathing room to catch up on bookkeeping and water intake. Unlike Round 2 where teams struggled to identify chemistry equipment, teams didn't have a problem matching colors with their associated video game titles as they put up an impressive collective accuracy of 70%. I guess we know why you all failed chemistry now. Whether Red Dead Redemption or Call of Duty: Black Ops, our teams had no problems dispatching our attempts to confuse and confuddle.

One last score recap before the end. Looky Lous decided to end the night early and finished last with 15 points. Sixth place was held by Sucks to Suck with 26 points, while fifth and fourth were taken by I can't pronounce this and NFC Ya Face at 28 and 30 points. Third place was held by Cornstache at 31 points, while second place belonged to The bells are ringing! at 33 points. But first place still belonged to Westertoast at 36 points.

Our Final Round had a slightly different spin. Normally we have one prompt and 10 answers, but this week we had two prompts. They were:

What were the Final Four men's basketball teams?

What are the five parts of the human spine?

Basically you get an easy mode question and then we jump straight to super-expert. Anyone without passing sports knowledge probably cursed their misfortune at nearly being able to make it through a complete game without any questions in the category, which is a reminder to recruit someone to your gang who can help you out. Unsurprisingly though, while the Final Four was well-known, almost no one could name any spinal body part other than the lumbar (like the sacrum or thoracic).

So, after this big final round showdown who came out on top and who fell just short of glory? Sixth place was taken by Sucks to Suck with 30 points, and fifth place belonged to I can't pronounce this with 32 points. A podium finish was just narrowly missed by NFC Ya Face with 35 points and fourth place.

That means our top three finishers were as follows. Third place was taken by The bells are ringing! at 38 points. Second place was Cornstache at 41 points. And Westertoast kept the heat on the whole night finishing first with 43 points.

It was a very tough night of questions no doubt, so don't worry about the lower point totals you may have accrued, everyone was keeping it quite competitive in terms of the general scoring range of all our teams being within 13 points of one another. That means that next week just might be your week, no one is untouchable. Come on down and let's duke it out together!

QUIZ RECAP

Shame on you! You heard me right, shame on you! You still have the audacity to think you can show your face around here? You've got some nerve to spit directly into the face of National Tourism Day by going to the same bar for the same same trivia competition with the same host. I mean seriously, does nobody read our E-Newsletter anymore, I thought I told everybody to instruct their regulars to swap bars tonight. Wait, hold the phone, what do you mean we stopped sending those out... so what if they were clogging up people's spams filters? Well, then why the hell have I been designing five pages of click-bait articles every week....ugh, what a waste of an Adobe Illustrator subscription.

We had 2 teams of Dr. Strange loyalists eschewing physical tourism in favor of exploring the mental landscape of factoids. Oh wait a minute, that's all that came? I guess all the regulars did get the memo and visited someone else. Hmm, how to reverse this situation so I'm not to blame...aha! Shame on you for listening to me and making me feel lonely, you know I'm a tsundere! Long story short, we had Not My Night King and Second Deck.

Round 1 is our warmup General Knowledge Round. If you can't get any questions correct in this round, well, I'd recommend you order another round of drinks cause it's going to get rough. Luckily our teams didn't have that problem as they easily came up with answers like the bottom of the food pyramid (grains) or the home country of the Maori people (New Zealand).

Round 2 is the Handout Round and we challenged our teams to visually identify some things that I can guarantee you see every single day. That's right, this was a tech icon round, and although we did have a few social media icons like Instagram, most of our ensemble were more difficult to decipher (such as the icons for Xerox and Bing).

Score-wise our two teams were keeping it pretty close moving into Round 3. Not My Night King was in 1st place with 21 points, but Second Deck was channeling their inner Arya by sneaking close with 19 points.

Round 3 is our Theme Round and last Tuesday it was T.N.T (all answers begin and end with the letter 't'). Nobody else was courageous enough to sing the AC/DC song with me though, so thanks a lot for making me look like a crazy person to all the pedestrians walking by. They saved their energy for coming up with answers like Trident (Gum brand sharing a name with a weapon) and The Tempest (Prospero is a character from this play).

Round 4 is our Guess Who? Round. This was a tricky one too, as both our teams initially thought we were looking for a historical French architect after the 8 point clue revealed their building of the Palais Garner in Paris. But once they heard the clue a bout the person being played by multiple actors like Gerard Butler and Charles Dance they immediately turned in the answer: The Phantom of the Opera.

Score-wise things had started to pull apart. Not My Night King extended their first place with an impressive 39 points, while Second Deck trailed behind at 29.

Round 5 is our fan favorite Find the Connection round. With 10 questions there's plenty of opportunities for players to be able to utilize various domains of knowledge. Whether you're a biologist (Carotid artery is located where? Neck), a new parent ("Goodnight Moon" bids goodnight to a bowl of what? Mush) or even an adult kids cereal eater ala Jerry Seinfeld (Dig'em the Frog is a mascot of what brand? Honey Smacks), everyone has a chance to help contribute on the way to identifying the Kissing connection.

Round 6 is our Handout Round, and we asked the teams to match together famous TV Bosses with their associated TV shows. We had a mix of the old gods and the new, so you had to be hip with Lou Grant (The Mary Tyler Moore Show), J. Peterman (Seinfeld), and Selina Meyer (Veep).

Heading into the final round things hadn't changed much. Second Deck had only closed their deficit by one point, so they still trailed Not My Night King by a considerable margin (52 points to 43 points).

Our final round prompt was a pop-culture bonanza at the box office:

Who are any 10 of the 13 actors/actresses with the highest domestic grossing filmography?

Our teams decided to play it straight and actually come up with some balanced lists of represntation from multiple genres and generations. Unfortunately they would have been better off just listing off the cast of the Marvel Cinematic Universe because they held 8 out of the top 13 spots. Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, and Tom Cruise all snuck on the list too, but the true dark horse was Anthony Daniels (best known for playing C-3PO in the Star Wars franchise).

Victory went to Not My Night King with 55 points, while Second Deck finished last with 48 points (cause if you ain't first, you're last). They both beat the host's score of 41 points though, but only because they both pulled off some Double or Nothings early on in the game, but I'm not bitter.

I know we've got some beautiful and amazing weather now in Seattle, but once you've got your annual Vitamin D absorbed and are ready to hibernate again, come on down to Petoskey's for some Vitamin F(un). I promise I won't make terrible jokes like that.

QUIZ RECAP

It's the end of April Trivia Sale and everything must go! We've got handouts, we've got pictures, hell we've even got Haikus. And I'm pleased to announce that we've got a special 90% clearance on our "Guess Where?" items, any takers? What's that? No, I'm sorry ma'am, we're all sold out of "Guess Who?". C'mon folks, these discounts are insane, we're literally giving these answers away.

Ba dum tish.

And yes, I know it was National Honesty Day but keep your groans about my jokes to yourselves thank you very much. We had 3 teams of competitors giving April a fond farewell celebration: Starks in 4, No Girls Allowed (ironically lamenting the absence of some of their team-member), and 3 Vaginas.

Things got kicked off as they always do with our General Knowledge Round 1. We had a smattering of questions from a variety of categories like astronomy (How many stars in Orion's Belt? Three) and geography (What is the only country to border Lesotho? South Africa). But my favorite question was the one that rewarded the old-schoolers who still carry cash: What animal is on the back of a $1 bill (Eagle)?

There was no help for the forsaken in our Picture Round 2. This one was purposefully designed to annihilate any teams who refuse to recruit a member to handle the ever-so-common category of sports. Not only did we ask teams to identify the sports associated with famous athletes, we made them do so with nothing more than their face to go off of. A trivial task for the sportswomen and men among us, but for those more bookish minded teams, well....you'll see in the score recap.

At this point in the night the standings were as follows. In first place was No Girls Allowed, with a strong 13 point showing. Second place wasn't too far behind, as Starks in 4 came a calling with 12 points. And finally our third place team was 3 Vaginas with a 4 point showing after getting a bad hand from the dealer.

The night's Theme Round 3 was particularly clever, so a little shout out to our King Trivia question writers for coming up with these Haiku-based Crime Show questions/prompts. Here's just a little taste to pique your interest:

Drugs in Baltimore.

Singing "Way Down in the Hole".

Zero Emmys won. (The Wire)

If you want more of where that's coming from, make sure to find a King Trivia location near you and come join in the fun. Don't worry, we don't bite....much.

Moving into Round 4 I was sad to announce that we had another "Guess Where?" on tap instead of "Guess Who?". And although our crowd may not find them as fun, they are more difficult, so they help shake out the standings and clear the field. Cause unless you happen to have an encyclopedic knowledge of natural wonders established in the 19th century you'd be just as out of luck as the rest of us. Or maybe you're a big magma fan and this would have been a layup for you after hearing about the rhyolite passageway. Yeah, didn't think so. (It was Old Faithful).

And just like our predictable geyser, it's time to shoot off another score recap for you. Moving into Round 5 the first and second place standings had pulled a switcharoo. Starks in 4 were in first with 33 points while No Girls Allowed trailed behind with 32 points. Our 3 Vaginas caboose kept on chugging along with 14 points.

Find the Connection Round 5 had our teams squaring off to identify the connection using questions that all had one-word answers. This made it a lot easier to identify our connection, as multi-word answers entail the possibility of only limited portions of words or phrases being related to the overarching connection. So even if I only gave you three answers, let's say Xanax (What is the trade name of Pfizer's panic disorder drug?), Radar (What is nickname of Walter O'Reilly's character on M*A*S*H?), and TNT (The Closer and Major Crimes aired on what channel?), I think you might be smart enough to recognize that they were all palindromes (spelled the same forwards and backwards).

Our Handout Round 6 was a blessed arrival for one of our teams, as Starks in 4 celebrated the inevitable arrival of a Musical themed round. Teams had to match a list of famous musicals with their associated primary international setting. So if I gave you The King and I, you would match that up in our answer box with Siam (Thailand). Don't worry, we had some more modern and pop-culture friendly musicals in the mix like The Book of Mormon (Uganda), so even if you weren't a theater nut you could have still had a fighting chance.

Before we hit up our Final Round prompt, let's hear the scores one more time. Starks in 4 remained in first with 41 points, while No Girls Allowed had slowly fell behind at 35 points. And even 3 Vaginas were technically within striking distance if they could pull off a 20 point Double or Nothing, having racked up 21 points heading into our conclusion.

Our Final Round prompt for the night was:

According to the New Testament, who were 10 of any of the 12 apostles of Jesus?

I guess all our teams skipped Sunday school because no one was able to get above 50% accuracy. Although I was surprised that no one was able to remember the famous colloquial referencing a 'Doubting Thomas'. We had plenty of teams put down all the Evangelists too, but only two of them (Matthew/John) were actual apostles. And while everybody got Judas, alas there was no apostle from the Wild West named Jebediah.

So how did things end up for our cozy group of three teams? The final score standings were as follows:

1. Starks in 4 (46 points).

2. No Girls Allowed (39 points).

3 Vaginas (26 points).

Although we had an intimate night together, I think we'll have a bigger turnout this coming Tuesday, so come on down to join us for our first ever May Trivia Night at Petoskey's. It's sure to be another good one!