QUIZ RECAP

We had our most competitive night of trivia yet at Petoskey's this Tuesday with a lead change occurring every round of play except one! We had four teams of semi-pro mental athletes: Team Penguins, Team 3 Wise Men, Team Tree Well, and Team Ethan Loves Boobs (a cute little reference to their recently born, but incredibly thirsty, baby). And it all culminated with a nerve-wracking tiebreaker to settle the 1st and 2nd Place finishers.

Our teams soldiered through a schizophrenic Round 1 in which half the questions were Holiday themed ("What are the colors of Kwanzaa") and the other half were very much not ("Miller Park is home to what MLB team?"). Our Facebook Question of the Day was as much for fans of The Great British Bake-Off as it was for our social media followers, with our Netflix binging teams correctly identifying Croquembouche as the eponymous French pastry tower bringing the 'crunch in the mouth'. 3 Wise Men took the first lead of the night with 5 Points, but this would be traded back and forth as we got deeper into the night's contest.

Our Picture Round 2 had teams guessing the names of celebrities who were all born on Christmas. Unfortunately for 3 Wise Men though, Mr. Twilight Zone wasn't specific enough to earn them a point (we were looking for Rod Serling), which allowed Team Penguins to take 1st with 9 Points against the Wise Men's 8. Team Tree Well and Ethan Loves Boobs were tied for third at 7 Points.

Moving into our Round 3 ("Guys and Dolls" Theme), all our teams were able to hit the layups: "Who wrote the music and lyrics to 9 to 5: the Musical: Dolly Parton" and "What brand of dolls come with books telling a story about the doll's character: American Girl Dolls". Unfortunately most just missed closing out 'either/or' answer debates correctly: "Famous redhead children's book character of Jonny Gruelle: Raggedy Ann, not Pippi Longstocking" and "Love interest of Woody in Toy Story: Bo Peep, not Jessie". At the end of it, 3 Wise Men had taken the lead back from Penguins, but only by one point, 13 to 12.

Our Guess Who? Round 4 had teams initially struggle to realize they were dealing with a fictional character, but once I name dropped their MetLife Insurance sponsorship, it was a quick snap of pens as Snoopy was quickly scrawled down for submission. But it was Penguins who took the risk of guessing after the 8 Point clue, a daring maneuver that gave them the lead back at 20 points. This left 3 Wise Men and Ethan tied for second at 19 points, and Team Tree Well in third at 11 points.

It was in our Find the Connection Round 5 that we finally failed to have a lead change, but that was only because every single team scored 8 points out of 10 as they all recognized The Nutcracker as the connecting tissue of these factoids. Unfortunately our Handout Round 6 fell on the other side of the difficulty spectrum with an average accuracy of answers of only 35% ("Match the foreign language names for Santa with their country of origin"). The Standings moving into our Final Round were as follows: 3 Wise Men had taken back the lead with 33 points through the expertise of their foreign language superstar (who graciously helped provide your host with the correct pronunciations of all the Nordic vowels (or lack thereof). Tied for 2nd was Penguins and Ethan Loves Boobs at 31 points, and Team Tree Well was back at 19 points having failed to succeed at their Double or Nothing attempt to get back into the game.

Our Final Round was a set of two questions with 5 answers each:

What 5 Indiana State colleges have been to an NCAA basketball Final Four?

What 5 US States have hosted an Olympic Games?

And although no team correctly identified Missouri as the 5th US state (having hosted the world's 3rd Olympic Games back in 1904), Ethan Loves Boobs correctly identified all 5 Indiana State Colleges which earned them just enough points to get past Penguins (39 Points) to tie with 3 Wise Men (at 40 points). Meanwhile, Team Tree Well closed out the night with 25 points.

With Petoskey's first ever tie-score, I had to dip into the backup questions in order to further test out our top-two teams knowledge. With themselves evenly matched on Christmas trivia, it was the sports related question ("First Pure Punter drafted in first round of NFL Draft? Ray Guy") that finally proved one team was a cut above the rest.

So a big congratulations to Team Ethan Loves Boobs on their incredible comeback to win the tiebreaker and the game. Although they never were able to grab the lead during the rest of the game, they were always right behind Penguins and 3 Wise Men, and they turned up the heat when it really mattered. It was a tough break for 3 Wise Men, but I hope you'll come back and try your luck again.

A reminder that Petoskey's will not be hosting Trivia on Christmas or New Year's, so you'll have to wait until January 8th to enjoy my company again. Hope to see you there!

QUIZ RECAP

We had an explosive Tuesday of Trivia here at Petoskey's where we ended the night with a grand total of 5 successful Double or Nothings for a collective earnings of 84 points! It should be no surprise that the final Team Scores for the night were equally high; four teams surpassed 40 points, and two managed to hit the 60-point barrier. But who ended up as the big dog, well keep on reading for a recap of the night's contest and the reveal of our winners.

We had six teams competing for glory: "But there's wings, right?", "I'm Confused", "Ha ha, I made you say poop", "Froot Loops", "Somebody stop Melvin!", and "G Pickles". Things got off to a mixed-start in Round 1 as players jockeyed for the initial position of front-runner, but after the dust settled it was Froot Loops with the night's first lead at 4 points. And we even learned some new vocabulary courtesy of both our Facebook question of the day ("When someone is born with adermatoglyphia they lack: Fingerprints") and our board game question ("Groutier and Zonular were the winning words in the 2018 championships of what board game: Scrabble"). Good luck using Zonular in a real sentence though, it refers to the suspensory ligaments of the lens of the eyes. The more you know...

Our "Passion for Fashion" Picture Round had our teams working to identify the names of famous fashion designers, and all our teams did better than your host's piddly score of zero. But ultimately it was There's Wings that managed to rocket their way into 1st place by correctly guessing all eight answers and ending up with 11 points. G Pickles (8 points) and Froot Loops (7 Points) trailed behind, with Haha...poop and Somebody Stop Melvin right behind at 6 points each. I'm Confused brought up the rear with 3 points.

Our Theme Round ("roads") was where the night really started to gear up with two successful Double or Nothings by both There's Wings and Somebody Stop Melvin. Our Beat-Generation novel in Question 5 also managed to trick several of our teams, as we were looking for "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac, not "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy.

We had a bit of a twist in our Guess Who Round this week, as it had been transformed into a Guess Where Round. Once teams heard our 6-point clue about President Teddy Roosevelt pushing the project towards completion, I was overwhelmed with turn-ins from teams correctly identifying the Panama Canal. A special kudos to Haha...poop who managed to guess it right on the 10-point clue but wasn't confident enough in their answer to turn in until later on.

Heading into our Find the Connection ("all answers contained the word art") Round 5 , the relative positions between the teams hadn't changed much; There's wings and Somebody Stop Melvin were still in the number one and two slots. And unfortunately for those trying to catch up to them, this round was feast or famine as three teams successfully pulled off Double or Nothings (There's wings, Somebody stop Melvin, and G Pickles) and earned all-too-sweet 20-point reward. This left us with some bifurcated standings heading into the last two rounds, as these teams had 11 to 24 point leads over the remaining competitors.

Handout Round 6 had folks working to match fictional companies with their corresponding TV shows. And although Massive Dynamic certainly sounds like something sourced from Better off Ted's "Money before people" corporate creed, it actually belonged to the Fringe series. An equally tricky decision that vexed several teams was whether to assign Fangtasia to True Blood or Angel (it was True Blood). But with most of the teams still scoring relatively evenly, it all came down to their performances in the final round.

The question for our Final Round was:

List 10 of the 12 most populous cities in the United States at the turn of the 20th century (1900).

And although we had plenty of teams opting for hometown pride in putting forward Seattle as an answer, I'm sorry to have to report that our fair city was still just a toddler at about 80,000 people. The 12th city on our list, New Orleans, had over three times as many people at 280,000+.

With everyone scoring above 50% accuracy, the final figures ended up separated by the narrowest of margins at both the top and the bottom of our standings; fifth and sixth and first and second were separated by just two points each. In the end though, There's wings managed to hold their lead right down to end with their 1st-place finish at 62 points. Somebody stop Melvin was just inches away in 2nd at 60 points (and they wisely decided not to Double or Nothing because they ended up missing just one city).

Third place was taken by G Pickles at 46 points, and Froot Loops followed in fourth at 40 points. This left our final two teams battling to avoid being the caboose, but it was Haha...poop that squeaked out of being last at 20 points, and I'm Confused was sixth at 18 points.

Congratulations to all our competitors on a high-scoring game filled with Double or Nothings. Come back next week for another chance to earn some of those sweet Petoskey's gift certificates and see if you have what it takes to be the "King of Trivia".

QUIZ RECAP

Our second contest at Petoskey's may not have been as crowded as our big blowout inauguration, but the competition was just as fierce as our teams battled for the glory of taking pictures with my beautiful Hulk Trophies. People seemed more interested in our 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Place Prize Gift Certificates, but I'm sure that was just a coincidence.

The five teams battling for supremacy this week were The North Stars, Aprick, Bingo Wing Superstars, Team Average, and Bangs + Prauns. Bangs + Prauns were only able to join us towards the end of our night's contest in Round 5, but based on some rough napkin math I predicted they would have ended the night's competition with a respectable 26 points based on their average accuracy. But what of our other brain gladiators? Well, keep reading friends, and I'll give you the blow by blow recount.

Round 1 was our General Knowledge Round, but perhaps the questions were too average because we ended with all the teams tied at four points. Team Average may have technically been a belated entrant in Round 2, but they were welcomed with open arms as I comp'ed them four points to put them on equal standing with the rest of our teams given the lack of differentiation.

Round 2, our Picture Round, wasn't so narrowly equitable in terms of results, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how well most of the teams did in identifying the names of professional sportswomen based on their pictures. We had a median accuracy of nearly 75%, so well-done. In terms of standings our teams were positioned as follows: Team Average in 1st with 11 points, The North Stars in 2nd with 10 points, Bingo Wing Superstars in 3rd with 9 points, and Aprick in 4th with 6 points.

Round 3 was our Themed Round, but I think we can all agree there may have been a special geographical advantage tonight because the theme was Coffee. Our Seattleites crushed this round with an average accuracy of 80%! Unfortunately for Team Average though, they missed what would have otherwise been a successful Double or Nothing by accidentally mixing up the actor playing John Coffey in The Green Mile (we were looking for Michael Clark Duncan; Tom Hanks played the guard Paul Edgecomb).

This led us in to Round 4, our Guess Who? Round. Teams tried their darnedest to try to wrack their brains for the famous person in the first two clues, but they were pretty vague hints. Once we hit our 6-point clue though, I was bombarded with answer sheets as the teams almost instantaneously recognized Sonny Bono after the clue mentioned his fatal skiing accident. But as his tombstone optimistically states, "And The Beat Goes On".

Before we move into Round 5, a quick update on the scores at this stage of the night. The North Stars had taken the lead at 21 points, closely followed by the Bingo Wing Superstars at 20 points, Team Average at 17 points, and Aprick at 10 points.

Our Find the Connection round answers were all tied together by Soda Brands, but unfortunately there weren't any brand names visible from the bar for clever players to benefit from. It didn't stop our teams from logically back-filling their answers though, as we had another superb round with 82% average accuracy! This is also where our late entrant Bangs and Prauns joined us for the rest of the night's contest. They might have even potentially placed after a gutsy Double or Nothing, but unfortunately they missed the name of the Toy Story character with an engine, the not-so creatively named, RC. We also had a fun diversion identifying all the different ways that people might refer to the game Heads Up, Seven Up!.

The final two rounds tested obscure Pop Culture knowledge much to the dismay of our players who saw their average accuracy percentages fall out of orbit down under sub-50% before finally hitting a dismal 20% average in Round 7. Don't feel too bad though, your host scored just as poorly when I did my practice session with these questions too! Round 6, our Handout Round, asked players to match actors from the Harry Potter Movies to their other major film or TV franchises. This was a very tough round, but funnily enough, so many teams identified Gary Oldman as having been in the Die Hard movies that even your host started second-guessing whether there was a mistake in the answer sheet (I ended up double-checking IMDB just to be sure, he can disappear into a role after all).

With the teams still nipping at each other's tails going into our Final Round, The North Stars with 34, Bingo Wing Superstars with 32, Team Average with 29, Aprick with 21, and Bangs + Prauns with 5, the top 3 was still up for grabs. Unfortunately, Round 7 was an absolutely brutal question, as it asked players to come up with:

10 of the 13 original members from the group of D.C. super-villains 'The Legion of Doom'

For those wondering, this was a league of comicbook from a 1978 cartoon series titled "Challenge of the Super Friends". And although just about everyone managed to identify Lex Luthor, that's where the fun mostly stopped as our high score this round was only 3 correct answers (The North Stars). But a special shout-out to Aprick who guessed the most obscure villain out of all the teams, Brainiac. With the scores not changing much at all from Round 6, we ended the night's competition on a bittersweet note.

But with the spirit of friendship and competition still beating in our hearts, we rallied together to enthusiastically celebrate the final tallies and hand out the night's prizes to our top 3 finishers.

1. The North Stars (37 Points)
2. Bingo Wing Superstars (34 Points)
3. Team Average (29 Points)
4. Aprick (23 Points)
5. Bangs + Prauns (6 Points)

Be sure to come join us next Tuesday, my Hulk trophies will still be here waiting for you to fight for the privilege of a glorious group picture!