Congrats to Two for the Money on their perfect game!

Perfect My Trivia Live games are pretty tough to get! My team came close to getting one in 2017 at the Wurst Bar – we missed the benchmark by just one point. Also, they were doing tough three point bonus questions before the plague, which made it even more difficult to get perfect games. If you answered them and got them wrong, it was bad… Still a perfect game is a perfect game! Go you guys!

We picked McShane’s Pub for our first post-plague trivia outing – mainly because we know the host Stacy L. pretty well – and the $3 beer special seemed pretty damn nice after having a shitty evening (ugh). The things you’ll do when there’s no booze in the house! 🙂

Clearly my team had a little more post-plague warming up to do! In a LOT of ways! Not just the whole either knowing the answer or not knowing the answer – which will make or break any trivia game – but the social aspects, too. This was the FIRST TIME my husband and I sat INSIDE a bar/restaurant since the long, long ago (16 months ago when the plague hit). Keep in mind neither of us were extremely adept at being social animals BEFORE the plague – and when you add social distancing, closed bars/restaurants, stay at home orders, not seeing friends/family in person for months on end – then even the bare minimum you think you might have known about social graces – well, that goes out the window. Maybe it was just a bit too much forced socialization for me too soon. I was certainly not ready for a fist bump from a player on a rival team, so I might’ve…gotten a bit mouthy with the person forcing his fist at me. He was invading my space – and well, I freaked out. I said things I shouldn’t have said. I panicked and got overly defensive with my space. Also, I was at the end of what was a pretty shitty day (walking to the auto repair shop in a pounding thunderstorm ain’t fun, folks)!

It’s akin to being a “pandemic puppy.” Did any you adopt a young pet during the pandemic? Yes? What happened when you brought other people into your house or yard for the first time when social restrictions lifted? Did you poor doggo freak out? How long did it take for them to stop barking their fool heads off? The poor dears got so used to their little bubbles of people that any new people who wandered into their yards or houses when the restrictions were lifted – yup – overstimulation central! I saw this firsthand with two different “pandemic puppies” recently. Thankfully only one of those dogs bit me – she didn’t break the skin (whew)! And I haven’t started howling incessantly when the moon gets full (or maybe I do)!

And here I go with the VERY FIRST REAL PUB TRIVIA RECAP SINCE MARCH 2020! I think most of you know the drill by now. The questions you will read are abbreviated versions of the questions that were asked, qualifiers to the questions were presented to players that you won’t see in the questions below – I didn’t write down any of the questions in their entirety word-for-word.

And here…we go!

Round One

1) Fast Food – What fast food chain used the slogan “Have it Your Way?”

2) White House – The Oval Office is in what part of the White House?

3) Airports – In what state are you flying to if your stop is JFK International Airport?

Got all of these.

Round Two

1) Human Body – A Brannock device measures what part of the body? No it’s not THAT body part (a simple tape measure will do)!

2) Shipping – What was the name of the tanker that spilled more than 10 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William sound in 1989?

3) Flowers – What flower has 23,000 species including painted, gervera and ox eye? Miss for 1. Though we did talk about correct flower.

Round Three –

1) NHL – What is the name of the NHL team based in the greater Las Vegas area since 2017?

2) Soup Songs – “Chicken Song Soup” with the ingredients parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme is named for what Simon and Garfunkel song?

3) Car Brands – Encore and Enclave are model names by what automaker?

Halftime – Given the headline (abbreviated), ID the decade in which the following events occurred:

H1 – Dewey Defeats Truman

H2 – Titanic Smashes Iceberg

H3 – Cubs Capture Title (for second time)

H4 – Simpson Not Guilty

Got all of these.

We were in second going into the second half with 36 points.

Round Four

1) Company Names – What restaurant based company has top selling dinner sides including mashed potatoes, dinner sides and oven baked dinner sides? I’ll give a hint since I didn’t write down this question very well – they used the slogan “Down on the Farm” before…Miss – we crossed off our correct guess and put Stouffer’s (there’s another hint – don’t say I didn’t do anything nice for you today, LOL)!

2) Business Men – What man who shares his name with a software brand died in June, 2021 in a Spanish prison before being extradited to the U.S.? Nope, no clue. We put Bryce. God what did he do? And why does this make me think of the “Turkish prison” line from Airplane?

3) DC Comics – Name two of the three “Gotham City Sirens.” Yay points for us in round four!

Round Five

This is going to be a bumpy ride, be sure to have your motion sickness bag handy and buckle up!

1) ’60s TV – Who was the main adversary of the “Man from Uncle?” We used our get out of jail card on this one and put the secret word that MTL lets you use once per game if you don’t know an answer…no clue, but we got our free six points anyway. Unsure if any teams actually knew this one.

2) US States – The number of “Midwest” states per the U.S. Census criteria is an even number. Name that

even number. Miss.

3) Government – The commission established to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy had what informal name for a real life person?

Round Six

1) Disney Parks – Though built in 1917 – decades before Disneyland and Walt Disney World – what ride is the oldest in the park – located in the Magic Kingdom? Miss, we put the teacup ride.

2) Famous Families – What family’s cow was thought to have caused the Chicago Fire of 1871? Thanks Mike for remembering the right “Irishy” name…

3) Mother Goose – What ran away with the spoon in the Mother Goose rhyme?

Fourth place going into the final with 60 points.

FInal Category – Well, Nuts

What common snack “nut” is grown on tropical evergreen trees – has a toxin in its shell similar to poison ivy – is used to make an Indian alcoholic beverage called Fenny – and had 4 million tons produced in 2019?

We quickly eliminated what would have been the right answer because we didn’t think it was a nut. So…you probably have a pretty good idea how this strategy fared for us (pssst not good)!

The “real life” pub trivia shenanigans may have just begun for our team, but they’re not over! We’ll continue trying to put our thinks down and (hopefully) winning some prizes! So we’re back, I guess? Baby steps?

Hopefully our next indoor bar adventure isn’t as scary! Hey, if we could handle going out to Powell’s after the game, we should pretty much be able to handle any level of socialization, right? Throw kids into the water to teach ’em to swim? 🙂 Throw drunks into a dive bar?

We might be out for a trivia game next week too! As always, Go Pods, and stay classy, Earl Warren (Homer Simpson knew your secret).