QUIZ RECAP

Guess who's back, back again...your host is back, tell a friend.

Yes, it's true folks, your esteemed host has finally unburdened himself from the volumes of snow that proliferated my alpine neighborhood and my compact Mazda is now free to roam far and wide. And this Tuesday, it took me back to one of my favorite trivia hangs, Petoskey's. But first a quick shout-out and thank you to our excellent substitute host Val who filled in for me last week; I hope you all gave them a nice reception. And now on to the main event, this week's blessedly snow-free recap.

We had five teams join us for this Post-President's Day Celebration: Curds and Cans, Cornstache, Two Col. Mustards, Hamms Handed, and Probably Fourth Place. Things got started off simply enough in our General Knowledge Round 1 where we give every discipline of knowledge a good chance to shine. Whether you're a wrestling devotee identifying the protagonist of Fighting with My Family (Paige), a sports nut flexing off your impressive knowledge of acronyms (PPR = Points per Reception), or a pop-culture superstar who still enjoys cracking a book open every now and then (Which Rush Hour star released a memoir titled Never Grow Up? Jackie Chan), everyone had a chance to realize they know a lot more than they give themselves credit for.

But alas, the smorgasbord questions can only last so long, and we headed into our Picture Round 2 by asking our contestants to identify the films associated with visuals of famous dragons. We had some old classics (Sleeping Beauty) as well as some fresh kicks (How to Train Your Dragon). Luckily for our contestants, nobody had to remember the names of these dragons, just their associated franchises. After all, who among us would be enough of an insane Shrek-fanatic to remember that Donkey's wife-dragon is named Fergie. *Cough*

In the aftermath of Round 2 I could see that we were going to have ourselves a pretty competitive battle of the brains. Probably Fourth Place decided to eschew any attempt at clairvoyance by taking the first place lead with 13 points. But the margins were narrow indeed as Cornstache followed close behind at 12 points. A two-way tie for third at 9 points was held by Two Col. Mustards and Hamms Handed, and the caboose of our caravan of facts was held by Curds and Cans at 6 points.

Round 3 is King Trivia's Theme Round and the theme for this night was 'Cheers to the Governor!'. And although there were some gimmies scattered amongst the questions ("What is the American term for the British 'prison governor'? Warden"), we snuck in a few cleverly worded ones as well to throw people off their game. And that manged to catch a few teams sleeping as they incorrectly identified our actor-governor of California as Arnold Schwarzenegger after hearing the first part of the question. But the patient ones among them who listened to the end knew that it was actually Ronald Reagan, as he was the star of The Killers remake.

Our Guess Who Round 4 can sometimes be an intermission of sorts as teams struggle to guess the identity of famous individuals based on increasingly specific clues. Not quite the case in this contest, as every single team correctly identified Drake as our famous celebrity after the very first clue (with the exception of Cornstache who wrote down the answer in the first 10 seconds but wasn't confident enough to submit it). Now, was that because we've got some folks who spend their Sundays carefully trawling the early childhood sections of rappers on Wikipedia or because our clues weren't particularly well-written? I'll leave that unanswered as an exercise for the reader.

Before we get the 'deets on our Find the Connection Round 5, let's get a quick score update. Probably Fourth Place was still failing to read their tea leaves properly, because gosh darn it they still found themselves in first place courtesy of 27 points. And we still had a tie as well, but this time it was for second place, as Two Col. Mustards and Hamms Handed daggered each other's eyes at 23 points. Cornstache wasn't too far removed in third at 20 points, and our friendly caboose of Curds and Cans had 10 points.

It was quite a tough Round 5 for our competitors, as nobody put up better numbers than 60% accuracy and not a single team was able to guess the connection (all answers contain something 'blue'). But don't be too quick to blame our teams, we had some real headscratchers in the mix and I doubt the ability of most people to correctly identify the TV show that takes place on the ship named Steve Irwin (Whale Wars - Blue Whale) or the character who has been voiced by Katy Perry, Lucille Bliss, and Demi Lovato (Smurfette - Is blue). Although Curds and Cans did randomly guess Mama Smurf, so kudos for being lucky, or maybe not so lucky; hmm, is this a half-full or half-empty scenario?

Handout Round 6 ended up proving your host extremely, unbelievably wrong as I had previously needled our teams for repeatedly missing historical questions. But much to my surprise we ended up with two successful Double or Nothings in this round which demanded our teams match famous historical figures with their Empires (ex: Alexander the Great --- Macedonian Empire). Courtesy of their impressive 20-point hauls from their DBOs, Probably Fourth Place and Cornstache took a big lead heading into our final round at 53 and 46 points respectively. Two Col. Mustards held strong on third place with 37 points, while Hamms Handed strategically drifted in their tailwind at 33 points. Curds and Cans had also done a great job closing the gap, as our caboose had made it all the way up to 27 points.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for, it's time for the big reveal of the night's Final Round question. And this was quite a shocker for one team in particular, who I must stress had no pre-knowledge whatsoever (for those teams who felt the sting of fate perhaps a bit unbelievable). Round 7's final question prompt was:

What 9 rooms are possible murder locations on a classic Clue board game?

Oh my goodness, when the stars decide to align, oh boy do they shine. Two Col. Mustards couldn't believe their good fortune as they practically submitted a successful Double or Nothing for 18 points before I could even sit down in my chair. The rest of the teams weren't quite so lucky, as we had two failed DBOs by our trailing teams (Curds and Cans and Hamms Handed) in a valiant attempt to land a top-3 finish.

Third Place ended up being taken by Cornstache at 53 points, as they could only curse the cruel whims of chance that allowed Two Col. Mustards to squeak past them and nab second place with 55 points. But even that wasn't enough to catch the night's top finisher, Probably Fourth Place was probably no more, as they won the night's competition with a clean 59 points.

Thanks to everybody for coming out for February festivities, as well as putting up with me as I shook off some of the accumulated rust and dust from my 2-week hiatus. I think I got back into the funky groove of trivia by the night's end and am raring to come out swinging next time. I hope to see you all again soon, whether it's the coming Tuesday or one far beyond. Stay safe, stay warm, and stay fun!

QUIZ RECAP

It was a dark and slushy night, so only the bravest trivia-goers came out to play. We started the evening with 5 teams in Round 1, the General Knowledge. Then with each team on the board, we had one bow out, and another took a dinner break.

Round 2, the Picture Round had three of the teams racking their brains to remember which Shakespeare movie adaptation the pictured scenes were from.

Round 3 brought us a theme of Rock, Paper, Scissors, which was more difficult than just playing a game of Ro-Sham-Bo to get out of doing the dishes.

GNL came back in for Round 4, Guess Who? This character was guessed correctly by most of the teams, with the exception of one team, who was at a disadvantage by not watching the show it referenced.

In Round 5, we had one team get all 10 answers correct, including finding the Connection between all the previous answers!

Round 6, the matching round handout, had all the teams matching up cities with their countries correctly - and one team even marked the Double or Nothing to earn double the points!

Finally Round 7, with 2 teams remaining at the bar, where each team luckily included one member who was from Texas, for the round titled, Don't Mess with Texas.

Then it all came down to the final score, we had Baloney & Mayo coming in 1st place, followed by LGBT BBQ in 2nd, and Rams came in 3rd place!

Great job everyone! Hope to see you at the next one 🙂

QUIZ RECAP

Another Tuesday, another night of Wikipedia detours into the history of random factoids. We had four teams competing in this quirky fifth Tuesday of January: Vortex Schmortex, Bipolar Vortex, LGBTBBQ, and Cunning Stunts. But would our contestant's brains prove to be as sharp as the temperature was cold? Well throw on a blanket, curl up by the fire, and crack open this nice Recap to see how Trivia at Petoskey's went down.

Although I normally describe our General Knowledge Round 1 as a warm-up, you needn't worry; no one was being asked to run laps or do push-ups to get themselves loose. It just means that the questions are usually a little easier than the rest of the Rounds, for example, could you have identified the New England Patriots and the Los Angeles Rams as the two teams going to the Superbowl? But just because the questions are straightforward doesn't mean that there's no strategy. Cunning Stunts wisely chose to Double or Nothing in this Round, while the rest of the teams may have overthought the potential for wrong answers and chose to play it safe. This led to an early lead for Cunning Stunts at 12 points, followed by LGBTBBQ in second at 8 points, Vortex Shmortex in third at 6 points, and Bipolar Vortex in last place at 4 points.

In our Picture Round 2, we had teams trying to identify famous rappers based purely on pictures of things relating to their names. For example, a picture of a ostentatiously colored duck meant the associated rapper was Drake (as a male duck is called a "drake", and ducks have sexual dimorphism where males have more brightly colored and ornate plumage). If you're thinking "hey, that's too complicated", well, you could have scored a minimum of 3 easy points by simply writing down the literal objects being shown: A picture of two chains was 2 Chainz, a picture of Q-Tips was Q-Tips, and a picture of five dimes was 50 Cent.

In our Themed Round 3 involving 'silent letters' (example: pterodactyl), teams began to learn the importance of having a balanced composition of subject matter expertise. You'll need to have a bit of sports, literature, and pop culture knowledge if you want to crush every round you go up against it. We had questions regarding a Kenny Rogers duet named for a Hemingway novel (Islands in the Stream) and the NBA franchise that Dave DeBusschere and Willis Reed belonged to (New York Knicks).

Going into Round 4 our overall standings were the same but the point differentials had gone down to a mere 2 points. Cunning Stunts was still in first with 22 points, but LGBTBBQ was inches away at 20 points, who were themselves inches away from Vortex Shmortex at 18 points. Bipolar Vortex were having a more difficult night, stuck back at 9 points. In our Guess Who? Round the teams were tasked with guessing the identity of a famous fictional character. After two extremely vague clues concerning the character's personality and traits ("able to imitate voices....some violent tendencies...raised himself"), the 6-point clue that revealed his favorite pasttime of battling pirates allowed our teams to zero in on Never Land's famous Peter Pan. Bipolar Vortex ended up taking off for the night and we wished them a fond farewell. Our remaining three teams then turned their attention towards the battle for the more elevated position on the winners' podium.

Our classic Find the Connection Round 5 had teams working to figure out the connective tissue between answers like Michael Jordan, Marmaduke, and Charlotte Bronte. And although your host is more of an Emily fanboy (Wuthering Heights anyone?), my distracting literature references didn't stop our teams from correctly identifying the Carolinas as the Connection between the answers. With 10 points worth of questions it's no surprise that the standings had shifted a bit; Cunning Stunts had reopened their first place lead at 36 points, while Vortex Shmortex and LGBTBBQ followed in second and third respectively at 32 and 31 points.

But unfortunately for those teams who were hoping the night's tests of book-learning had come to an end, the literature train still had one major stop left in Handout Round 6. Our contestants were asked to match missing prepositions with their associated book titles in a contest of grammar and culture ("____ a Painted Sky --> "Under a Painted Sky"). And while I commend Vortex Shmortex for their daring Double or Nothing, they tragically missed their come-from-behind victory by just one answer ("it was Between Shades of Gray not Without").

The night's festivities ended with our Final Round where there's only one question but 10 different answers. Tuesday's question was:

What are 10 of the licensed properties (movies, books, TV shows) that Lego has made into video games?

Although there were a few technical squabbles here and there, any disputes about whether the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit were separate franchises were moot as the point-differences between the teams were too large for those rulings to make a difference. That said, our participants did provide a answer that my rule-book failed to capture! Our list of 10 licensed properties was crucially missing the Pirates of the Carribean franchise, which was indeed made into a Lego game back in the 2000s.

In the end, Cunning Stunts held onto their lead and a first place finish by making it to the notable 50 point margin. LGBTBBQ kept it close all the way through, ending up just behind them in second place and 47 points. Vortex Shmortex could only curse their misfortune over their failed Double or Nothing, as they ended the night in third place at 39 points. Had they captured 9 points in the previous round, they would have taken second at 48 points.

Hopefully we'll see them again in a future week where they can bring to bear their new experience. Thanks to everyone for coming out and I'll see you all next month as we celebrate love, presidents, and groundhogs.