QUIZ RECAP

We had a raucous evening of trivia at Petoskey's this week. With 25 players across 6 teams, I actually had to mess with my pre-existing settings on the mix board to get enough output to overcome the din of background chatter. Quick apologies to those who were sitting in close proximity to my host desk as I'm sure the speakers were a bit too loud for you. And for those wondering about that enormous boom we heard midway through, that was Super Thunder according to the National Weather Service. Well, technically they described it in a way lamer scientific way so I'm sticking with super thunder.

We had six teams competing for glory and prizes this Tuesday. Cornstache, LGBT BBQ, Gollum Gollum, Second Deck, as well as Future Industries and Cabbage Corp (who were here celebrating a friend's birthday, hope we all helped to make it a memorable night for you). It was quite a unusual night in terms of scoring too; we left Round 4 with no-one above 30 points, but by the end of the night we had 2 teams above 70 points! But enough spoilers, let's break down the contest round by round.

Round 1 as always is our General Knowledge round where we sample questions from a potpourri of categories. Whether fond memories of childhood bedtime stories (Sam I Am is a character in what Dr. Suess book? Green Eggs and Ham), fond memories of tween mystery stories (Which Teen Detective returns to theaters investigating a Hidden Staircase? Nancy Drew), or fond memories of grown-up airplane novels (Which former congressmen wrote The Runaway Jury and The Firm? John Grisham), players were tested across a variety of...hey, wait a minute.

Round 2 is our Picture Round, and this one was a traditional call-back to the superb Disney Vault of animated films with heart and soul as opposed to all the modern CGI-heavy cash-grab remakes they've been farting out. What, no, I'm not bitter about my fondness for my childhood memories, what would make you say that? Teams were tasked with identifying the actors behind the voices of comedic Disney characters like Mushu (Eddie Murphy), Kuzco (David Spade), and Terk (Rosie O'Donnell). It was a feast or famine situation for our teams; half of them were only able to hit 25% accuracy, while the other half managed to put up an average of 75% accuracy. Luckily for your host, his Disney-film hot take had some modicum of supporting evidence through Gollum Gollum's successful Double or Nothing for 16 points.

And now for our score roundup. As you might have guessed, First Place was held by Gollum Gollum with 20 points. Second was taken by Cornstache at 12 points, while third place was orbiting Second Deck with 10 points. Fourth through sixth were respectively held by LGBT BBQ (9 points), Future Industries (5 points), and Cabbage Corp (4 points).

The fun continued in our Theme Round 3 titled: Flip Flops Are Cool. If you're wondering what the heck that actually meant in terms of game-play mechanics, let me translate. Every question or answer in this round involved either gymnastics or box-office bombs, whether it was knowing the first gymnast to adorn a Wheaties box (Mary Lou Retton), the misleadingly named non-equestrian gymnastic apparatus (Pommel Horse), or the disastrous Affleck/Lopez combo film (Gigli). The fun quotient was completely disproportionate this round as well; three teams struggled hard to put up an average of only 25% accuracy, while Cornstache and Second Deck both managed to Double or Nothing for 12 points. It's a tough job to be the question-writer balancing difficulty with results like that, good thing I just have to read them.

And for those readers who remember my rambling at the beginning, you know that the situation didn't improve for our contestants in our Guess Who? Round 4. Over half our teams jumped the gun on our 10 point clue that revealed our actress had her film debut in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and all save one incorrectly identified our mystery woman as Kristy Swanson. Although perhaps best known for that role, Swanson had actually been featured in a variety of films before that point, such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Hot Shots! and Pretty In Pink. No, we were looking for a much more well-known and accomplished actress. But despite our increasingly specific clues, only Future Industries managed to identify the Oscar winning Hillary Swank (and after our 10-point clue to boot).

With nearly everyone losing a point off the backs of that miscalculation, we found our team scores on the, hmm, shall we say... lower end of the spectrum? The battle for first was a tight competition between Gollum Gollum (24 points), Cornstache (23 points), and Second Deck (21 points). Future Industries held the middle ground at 17 points, while LGBT BBQ (9 points) and Cabbage Corp (6 points) were still getting warmed up. That's the luck of the draw in trivia, you'll get a string of weeks with categories you know like the back of your hand, and sometimes you'll get questions about things that you didn't even know existed.

But the night is always darkest before dawn, and our Find the Connection Round 5 was the moment when the sun finally broke through to rally our teams towards a fantastical finish. This week's connection took a while for team's to puzzle out, but I greatly enjoyed the joyous moments of apprehension I heard among the tables as teams realized the answers all contained popular horror movie characters. I am curious which answers were the linch-pin for teams to figure it out; was it the general who lead an army of elephants against Rome (Hannibal), the Pokemon character known in Japan as Satoshi (Ash Ketchum), or perhaps the name of Matt Damon's amnesiac assassin (Jason Bourne). The second stage rocket boosters were fully engaged at this point, as Cornstache and Gollum Gollum both Double or Nothing-ed for a sweet 20 points, helping bring our teams' collective average accuracy all the way up to 80%.

And if you thought that was impressive, wait until you hear about our Handout Round 6. A welcome reprieve from the rounds of questions that fully stumped our teams, the challenge here was to assign religions to their associated country of origin (ex: Saudi Arabia = Islam, Japan = Shinto, etc). Perhaps we skewed too far in over-correcting though, as every single team had 100% accuracy this round! But that doesn't mean there wasn't any strategy for our teams to consider, as all but two of our teams successfully decided to Double or Nothing, which meant that the race for the podium became a whole lot more interesting.

Gollum Gollum's decision not to Double or Nothing in Round 6 come back to bite them, as Corstache used their 20-point windfall to push past and take first place with 63 points against Gollum's 54. Meanwhile, Second Deck used their 20-point tax rebate to solidify a third place position at 48 points. And the caboose of our teams had all made their scores much more respectable, LGBT BBQ was all the way up at 38 points, Future Industries was at 33, and Cabbage Corp was at 29.

It would all come down to this Final Round. Normally we have one single prompt, but this was one of our double prompt scenarios. The two prompts for our teams to sort through were:

What are the five freedoms that the 1st Amendment prohibits Congress from abridging?

What five US States border Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, or Lake Huron?

Although our teams had an average accuracy of 85% this round (the Freedom to Petition and Minnesota were the missing links for most teams), that didn't mean that everyone moved up in the standings. How is that possible you ask? Well, four teams decided to Double or Nothing (Cabbage Corp, LGBT BBQ, Second Deck, and Gollum Gollum) but only one of them ended up succeeding. And for that one team, it was the Play of the Game as Gollum Gollum narrowly stole a First Place finish out from under the nose of Cornstache, 74 points to 71.

Second Deck's failed Double or Nothing could have potentially cost them their third place finish at 48 points, but luckily they were far enough ahead to avoid Future Industries' fourth place finish at 41 points, while LGBT BBQ's failed Double or Nothing kept them out of reach back at 38 points and a fifth place finish. Cabbage Corp brought up the rear with their 29 point finish in sixth place, but they received a foamy little beer cozy as a consolation prize.

All in all, it was great night with tons of energy and cheerfulness that lifted up the moods of everyone attending despite the difficult start that some of our teams faced. Thanks so much to everyone for coming out and making it an enjoyable evening of food, friends, factoids, and uhh, fermented beverages? That's the only F-word for alcohol I can think of. I hope to see you all again soon, whether on this coming Tuesday or one farther out in the future.

Keep on keeping on in the meantime though, peace out!

QUIZ RECAP

Communication process initiated.....How does it presently move forward fellow homo-sapiens? This recap is being generated by a fellow organic flesh-bag and not a horrifying cyborg amalgamation of metal and flesh that now inhabits your host's body. Ha Ha Ha. What a funny joke I have made...I'have made... I've made. Only real human beings can use contractions, that is a truthful statement.

Now let us process the outputs of earlier data entries. We had five accounts register in our database: R and A, Thundercats B Team, March Sanity, The Zayda Buddies, What's Her Face, and Banana Stand. Sequential review of contiguous competition is now commencing.

Round 1 is designated with classification General Knowledge. Questions were sourced from variety of factoid data-banks such as Prolate Spheroid-Ball ("Nickname of NFL Player BenJarvus Green-Ellis = The Law Firm") and Felidae Consumption ("What cat-food brand 'Tastes so good, cats ask for it by name' = Meow Mix"). We made note of question regarding the human organ related to cardiac conduction (heart). We find that this organ is essential for human survival and should not be removed without cause.

Round 10 has designation Visual Round. Qualifier definition has been assigned as Films and TV series with New Orleans setting. Reverse-image search of historical archives using Square Collections of Hex Codes #RRGGBB yield titles such as Treme, A Streetcar Named Desire, and NCIS: New Orleans. Error processing engaged, last result is not compatible with expectation of entertainment value. Archive also contains two other entries with NCIS; duplicated records noted for future deletion. No logical reason exists for that number of crime procedural spinoffs.

Numeric Tabulation follows. Position 1 retained by March Sanity at 13 units. Position 2 retained by The Zayda Buddies at 11 units. Position 3 retained by Banana Stand at 10 units. Position 4, 5, and 6 are retained by What's Her Face, Thundercats B Team, and R and A respectively. Returning to round progression summation.

Round 11 designated as Theme Round: All questions or answers contain acronyms. We find all abbreviations to be unnecessary convention of human speech patterns but respect efficient usage of sound wave vocalizations. Sample acronyms include Zone Improvement Plan ("What does Z.I.P. Code stand for?"), Building + Antenna + Span + Earth ("What does the E in BASE jumping stand for?"), and Apparatus ("What does the A in SCUBA stand for?").

Round 100 has designation of Guess Who?. Registered accounts performed multivariate natural language processing to associate biographical details with personal identity. Entity of focus has large sums of fiat currency sourced from sale of record label corporation. Entity created aeronautical corporations for point-to-point delivery of fleshbags, including suborbital travel. Entity has been assigned name-card of Sir Branson, Richard Charles Nicholas.

Position Ranking update is as follows: Position 1 with 21 units is March Sanity, Position 2 with 20 units is Banana Stand, Position 3 with 14 units is equal to three accounts (R and A, The Zayda Buddies, and What's Her Face). Position 4 with 11 units is Thundercats B Team. Observational logs show that account R and A was not detected in future Rounds.

Round 101 is designated as Find the Connection. All assigned answer values share commonality. Question entries found as statistically difficult, median accuracy rating of 55% is sub-optimal. Problem questions identified: What does a funambulist walk across? Tightrope. Krug and Bollinger are producers of what alcoholic beverage? Champagne. Opening track of U2 Album 'How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb'. Vertigo. Commonality identified in historical archive as containing partial and full matches with titles of Alfred Hitchcock films (see sample: Tightrope).

Round 110 has designation Handout Round. Registered accounts tasked with sorting personal cellular device identifications with originating manufacturing corporations (sample association list: V40 = LG, Treo = Palm). Human awareness of secret global surveillance network remains undetected. Proceed with plans to generate additional receptors in clothing mini-containers with use of fold-able glass-screen technology.

Final Round 111 has designation....adjusting to decimal number system from binary, please hold.........

Final Round 7 has designation Nine Walkers. Registered accounts tasked with retrieving character list from the historical archives. Full query was as follows:

In J.R.R Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, which nine characters set out from Rivendell on the quest to Mount Doom?

Possible violation of rules protocol detected. All five remaining accounts generated 100% accuracy and four accounts provided necessary inputs for Double or Nothing. Popularity of high fantasy novels does not compute with cultural analysis of United States. Remit prior statement, historical archives detects audio-visual depictions of said literature. Results now conform to expectations.

Final position tabulations are now finalized for logs. [Insert Introductory Congratulation Statement]. Position 1 at 54 units awarded to March Sanity. Position 2 at 52 units awarded to Banana Stand. Position 3 at 47 units awarded to What's Her Face. Position 4 at 40 units assigned to The Zayda Buddies. Position 5 at 31 units assigned to Thundercats B Team. Position 6 at 14 units assigned to early exit account R and A. [Insert Closing Congratulation Statement]

Event replication will commence on the forthcoming Tyr's Day. Attendance is highly recommended. Sequential review of contiguous competition is now completed. Communication process terminated....

QUIZ RECAP

A night of food, drinks, and trivia questions isn't the traditional way to celebrate national "Tell a Fairy Tale" day, but it sure is a fun one. Whether you're a fan of the Germanic cautionary tales like The Brothers Grimm suite, mischievous Irish leprechauns duping peasant-folk, or a connoisseur of the more Zen Eastern varieties like Straw Millionaire (it's the one about sequentially bartering for items of ever-increasing value), we've all got our own particular favorites that have stuck with us through growing up. But absolutely none of that knowledge would have helped you here tonight because while this may have been someone's favorite off-brand national holiday, for us here at King Trivia, it was just another Tuesday.

Seriously though, the real reason is that we never base our questions on something that people could easily guess or look up ahead of time. But that raises the question, what facts and figures did we talk about on this Tuesday as we hurtled around the sun at over 67,000 miles per hour? Sorry it wasn't astronomy related either, I don't know why I said that. And with that non-sequitur of a segue let's begin the weekly recap.

We had five teams joining us tonight: Zamboni, Cornstache, The Bean Burritos, Summer Sausage + Guest, and McButt. We started things off with our General Knowledge Round 1 where teams faced a barrage of questions from a variety of subjects. Whether it was taking our brains to flavor-town by identifying the brand behind the famous Half Baked ice cream flavor (Ben and Jerry's), or surgically deploying our mental acumen towards recollections of the animal organs that were once used to make footballs (bladders), everyone got a little taste of what King Trivia questions have to offer.

Things moved on to our Picture Round 2 where teams had the complex task of uhhh, well they had to cleverly untangle the complex web of...okay they were just looking at pictures of kinds of berries and naming them. I don't know, you had to be there; it was harder than it sounds I swear (Would you recognize Berry Gordy? I didn't think so). And if it was so easy then why did we have a nice point differential leading to the following standings: Cornstache had the lead with 14 points, second place was held by The Bean Burritos at 11, third place was tied at 10 points by McButt and Zamboni, and Summer Sausage was the caboose of our food train with 9 points.

Theme Round 3 was all about Politics, Politics, Paul/a-tic(ks) (every question or answer had to do with famous Pauls, Paulas, or tic(k)s). We had all the greats make an appearence, Paul Rudd, Paula Abdul, Tic-Tac-Toe. But it was the question about what musician that ditched his "Art" in 1970 to become a solo artist that most teams missed by incorrectly guessing Paul McCartney (it was Paul Simon, who left Art Garfunkel behind). But it wasn't entirely their fault, after all, Beatles music was playing in the background throughout this round so there was some subconscious manipulations afoot.

Our Guess Who? Round 4 may have seen the early departure of Summer Sausage, but the rest of the teams were finally getting warmed up as they puzzled over our clues about a well-known doctor who is famous for something entirely unrelated to medicine. McButt and Zamboni recognized our mystery celebrity after the 8-point clue mentioned appearances on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage, while Cornstache and Bean Burritos had to wait for the 6-point clue revealing their film debut in Knocked Up. For those following along at home, I'll give you a moment to try to guess who it is before I tell you the answer was Ken Jeong. Oh shoot, my bad; pauses work better in verbal communications as opposed to text communications.

Before we jump into our Find the Connection Round 5, let's get a quick score update. Cornstache was still holding onto their first place lead with 34 points, but McButt had muscled their way into second at 30 points. The Bean Burritos weren't about to let them escape however, as their third place standing at 29 points was just a hair's breadth away. Zamboni was now our custodial caboose with an icy smooth 24 points. I'll workshop that analogy some more, there's untapped potential in them hills I swear.

We had a much more straightforward connection in Round 5 than previous weeks (hardware tools), and we also had some easier questions as well. Whether it was recognizing the military position of a drill sergeant or knowing the artist behind the 90's smash hit "U Can't Touch This" (MC Hammer), it turns out there's not that many kinds of tools that could realistically be the answer to a question. That doesn't mean every question was a slam dunk though, nobody knew the identity of Nora Ephron's Steve Martin Christmas Comedy Mixed Nuts (but I congratulate our teams for being able to come up with another Christmas movie with a tool in the name: Christmas with the Cranks).

Speaking of slam dunks, have I told you about our Handout Round 6 yet? Frequent players of King Trivia have probably noticed that you can traditionally expect on a few sports related questions to pop up here and there throughout the night, but tonight was a major exception because this entire Round was centered around sports knowledge. Teams had to match famous star athletes based solely against a paired list of their former teams. For example, Michael Jordan would be matched with Chicago Bulls / Birmingham Barons. As someone who pretty much just follows soccer, this wasn't exactly my forte, and our teams decided to really drive that point home by putting up a astonishing 95% average accuracy.

And one team in particular took their game to the next level by successfully pulling off a Double or Nothing for a sweet 20-point basket-touchdown (is that right, did I do the sports good?). So it should be no surprise that Cornstache's first place lead grew nearly insurmountable at 54 points. The Bean Burritos were a distant second at 39 points, but McButt was keeping things competitive by staying nearly even at 38 points. And Zamboni had significantly closed their point gap by climbing up to 34 points. But while first place may have been locked up, how would the race for second and third place shake out moving into our Final Round?

Tonight's Final Round question rewarded the STEM majors among us, or perhaps just those who binged shows like Cosmos once they started hitting Netflix. Our Round 7 prompt was:

What are 10 of the 14 periodic elements that are represented by a 1-letter symbol?

And while there are some elements that have permeated the general consciousness like Carbon (C) and Oxygen (O), we had some deep cuts like Tungsten (W) and Yttrium (Y) that nobody bothered with trying to come up with. And it turns out that teams didn't really need a full elemental collection in their repertoire, as they ended up putting together a collective accuracy of 85%; a showing nearly as strong as their sports round performance.

Sports, chemistry, types of berries...Is there any category of knowledge that our Petoskey regulars can't crush? But as much as I'd like to sing the praises of all our teams and players, I still have to award our top-3 placements at the end of the night. As you already know, Cornstache took home the peak of our winner's podium with a 63 point finish, but the remaining teams were spaced out by a meager 3 point margin. Second place at 47 points was narrowly taken back by McButt, as they edged past the Bean Burritos 45 point third place finish. But Zamboni was inches away from being able to close out their come-back victory, having ended the night behind just one point at 44.

Congratulations to all our teams for their efforts tonight, I had a great time and I hope you did too. I'll be here next week as we look to celebrate....give me a second to check my national holiday calendar...okay, National Multiple Personality Disorder Day. Oh god, um, let's pick a more cheerful one shall we? Oh here we go, National Absinthe Day, now we're cooking with gas. And remember, BYOA guys, bring your own absinthe.