A trio of Gen X players living a couple of thousand miles away from each other (give or take the distance between Southeast Michigan and Las Vegas, NV – I’m way too lazy to check Google maps right now) – virtually met for some trivia Friday night and wound up finishing second. Let’s just say it would be an epic cross country trip if I were to hop in the car and go visit my friend Michelle! And I would have to see giant balls of twine and giant rubber band balls and every other kitschy thing imaginable on such a road trip!

We’re hoping to try once again to go out for our first “in person” Sporcle Live game next week, though it will be a game day decision and depend upon how both me and my “trivia pardner” Mike feel like when our work days are done.

Here were our questions:

1) SCIENCE! What is the five-letter term for the outermost layer of the Earth, which ranges from roughly 3-43 miles thick? Geology 101…easy peasy.

2) Companies – What alloy is produced by the company using the letter X as its ticker symbole on the New York Stock Exchange? This one wasn’t so easy. We could only think of 2-3 different alloys, but guessed the right one.

3) ’60s Hits – According to the title of a 1966 song by Frank Sinatra, who were “exchanging glances” and “lovers at first sight”? Thankfully one of the hosts posted this clue before the game, though Mike said he probably would have known this without the clue based on memories of our friend Dave making fun of this song on karaoke nights.

4) U.S. History – The Siege of Yorktown, the last major land battle of the American Revolutionary War, took place in what is now which U.S. state? Mike said he remembered going here as a kid – and he said it was boring…I’m sure this state has many such boring historical places (oh those poor kids on field trips)!

5) Movie Quotes – What two words complete the following quote from a character in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz?
“You cursed brat! Look what you’ve done! _ _” Mike recently read this book, because we have this wacky idea of playing characters from this book/movie into Zombicide characters. Now we’re discussing who plays which characters (which are bad-ass versions of the ones you might remember from the movie)! Dorothy has a Samurai sword, for one…

6) Rivers – The Platte River, Kansas River, Milk River, and James River are among the longest tributaries of what river? We were torn between two river that would be large enough to have tributaries, picked the right one.

7) Apples – Of the 15 most popular varieties of apples grown in the U.S., name one of the two that have names beginning with the letter “J.” Nerd point – name both. Strangely, our bonus guess was correct, even though Mike said it didn’t sound like a real apple name…but we didn’t get this for the points and the bonus.

8) Spinoffs – Which NCIS spin-off series is set in a city that is closest to the setting of the original series? Miss.

9) Books – The fictional material Ice-nine appears in the 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle by what author? Miss.

10) In 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared December 15th to be a day to commemorate the ratification of what group of amendments to the U.S. Constitution, in honor of the 150th anniversary of their ratification?

The following lists of names contain past or present members of a boy band, with one name in each list that does not belong. Give the name in each list that does NOT belong.

M1. Justin, Lance, Joey, J.C., Harpo

M2. Danny, Donnie, Josh, Jordan, Joey

M3. Nathan, Shawn, Marlon, Wanya, Marc

M4. Harry, Niall, Liam, Louis, Landon

Missed #4 (we don’t know modern boy bands that well, apparently).

We were in second going into the final with 57 points.

Final category – TV Seasons

We hemmed and hawed over what to wager, since TV isn’t usually a strong category for us.

Final Question:

Place the following TV series in order according to how many seasons they ran, beginning with the series that ran the longest.

Lost
House
The A-Team
Married… with Children

We knew which one ran the longest, and had a really good guess as to which one ran the shortest time. And we managed to make guesses on the other two. This put us in second place at the end (woot)!

As always, we’re unsure when we’ll be chasing the trivia dragon next. Also as always, Go Pods, and stay classy, B.A. Barackus!