The Scottish duo The Proclaimers might have been willing to walk 500 miles for whomever they wrote that song about – but a couple of players on our trivia team have driven 500-plus miles in the pursuit of making it to a trivia game in a single day!

This particular craziness happened in 2012 when we had to make it to a semifinal game in Dexter, MI after driving from Houghton, MI. Michigan’s two peninsulas almost might as well be two different states if you’re driving from the farthest reaches from one of them – to the farthest reaches of the other! While it “can” be done in a day if you start early enough – ideally, you want to be able to take a little more time, especially if you plan to do any sightseeing.

The sad news is we did not qualify by playing in the semifinal game that we had driven roughly 550 miles to participate in back in August, 2012. Though we did qualify a couple of days later in a “second chance” qualifying game – making it to our first ever “finals,” which we played at an old theater in Detroit.

Fast forward to 2022, we’re still doing “slightly” crazy things in pursuit of getting our trivia fixes! This past Wednesday, we drove 272 miles from Cheboygan, MI to our home in Southeast MI and played a virtual trivia game. It was nice to just come home and not have to go right back out the door! This time we only trekked from one side of a peninsula to the other in a day. Easy peasy, right?

Questions from our virtual game that were not so “easy peasy” for us were about Korean YouTube chefs, baseball, a mystery round question about a racecar driver and a couple of album title questions from a mystery round. We did get the final correct about long movies.

Here were our questions from this game:

Round One

1) Court TV – What was the highest Nielsen-rated court TV show for the entirety of its 25-season run from 1996-2021?

2) Magazines – In 1966, what magazine published an issue with the text “Is God Dead?” on its cover, the first time in its history that cover text was not accompanied by an image? A couple of minutes after we put in our answer, I said, “Hey, nine inch nails answered this question in their song “Heresy” (from their 1994 album The Downward Spiral). The lyrics say it all – “God is dead…and no one cares…if there is a Hell – I’ll see you there.” Too bad this wasn’t one of the albums asked about in the second mystery round!

3) Chefs – YouTuber and cookbook author Emily Kim, who has been described by The New York Times as “YouTube’s Korean Julia Child,” is more commonly known by what single name? No idea, miss.

4) 80s Movies – The 1985 Akira Kurosawa-directed film Ran, about a ruler who divides his lands among his three sons, is loosely based on what Shakespeare play about a ruler who plans to divide his lands between his three daughters? I felt a little bad that my trivia pardner Mike knew this and I didn’t, since ’80s movies is supposed to be one of “my” categories. But who cares which player knows the answer as long as you get it right?

Mystery One

The answer to each clue will include the word “Force.” We were bummed they didn’t ask about the pilot that Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction starred in 🙂

M1. Standard call sign for an aircraft carrying the president of the United States

M2. Netflix series starring Steve Carell, John Malkovich, and Tawny Newsome

M3. Sixteen-time NHRA Funny Car champion driver and patriarch of the “First Family of Drag Racing” (Give first and last name)

M4. 2015 film starring Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, and many others

We missed #3.

Round Two

5) Artists – Artist James Montgomery Flagg is known for creating political posters, including a 1917 recruiting poster for the U.S. Army that features what character?

6) Money – The baht, which is divided into 100 satang, is the official currency of what Southeastern Asian country? Mike was all over this one.

7) Books – In what 1954 novel do the characters initially try to have orderly meetings by passing around a conch shell to indicate who has the floor for debate?

8) Baseball – In 2001, what MLB player set the record for the most home runs in a single season, with 73?

NERD POINT: Whose record did he break?

Nope…we didn’t get this one.

Mystery Two – Visual

We missed #2 and #4. We mistakenly thought the “D” album was “Witch’s Brew.” The actual title we were thinking of for that album was “Bitches Brew,” which wasn’t the right title anyway.

We were in fourth going into the final with 43 points.

Final Category – Long Movies

Four films released since the beginning of 1990 are more than three hours long AND won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Name two of those four films, all of which are longer than Braveheart.

Got this, moved to third.

As always, Go Pods, and stay classy, Sauron the Deceiver!