Sometimes you know an answer to a final trivia question for the oddest of reasons! Dig if you will, the picture – a husband and wife playing a zombie killing themed board game in their basement during the pandemic shutdowns in 2020. And the wife is playing Disco tunes on Spotify to go along with the game scenario, which involved a diner waitress on roller skates putting out fires in an abandoned roller rink which is teeming with zombies that she has to kill with a chainsaw. And one of those songs she chose for the night’s playlist just happened to be a song title that would be a final trivia question answer in a game!

Go figure?

We had our second best finish for the season in our game Sunday at the YpsiAlehouse in Ypsilanti, MI, finishing second for the night. Sure, it was only 82 points, but second place is still second place – and boy was that final question in game two a doozy (unsure if any teams got it correct at our bar).

Speaking of Ypsilanti, The town used to be best known for its phallic water tower, but as of late, is better known for its road construction headaches! Even for us folks living here, it can be hard to remember which way to go to avoid the dreaded cones and barriers!

Here were our questions, some of which may be abbreviated:

Round One

1 Games – What mobile video game has had more than a dozen main version releases, including a Transformers edition, in which the Decepticons are the villains?

2 Parks – Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach are water parks located in which US state? Reasoned lucky guess.

3 Nominations – What actress received Academy Award nominations for best actress in consecutive years for her roles in Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music? We knew this one easily, but I just had to ask my teammates if they knew of the movie in which this actress appeared topless (which I looked up just now, it’s called S.O.B., and was released in 1981, for inquiring minds). Come on! You KNOW you want to watch it! 😆 Topless Mary Poppins? The internets tell me that you can stream this by renting on Vudu.

4 YouTube – Motivational speaker Judson Lapply is the star of a viral six minute video showing the evolution of what? As certain as death and taxes we will usually miss questions involving YouTube!

Mystery Round One – Visual

we missed #s 3 and 4.

Round Two –

5 NBA Players – Name one of the twonplayers to have been named All-Star Game MVP on four occasions- once in the 1950s and 1960s, and the other in the 2000s and 2010s. Name both for a bonus point. We got one, not both.

6 Songs – This was an audio question, so my “words” question is to name one of the two singers performing a 2020 cover of the song Under Pressure, originally performed by Freddie Mercury and David Bowie. After hearing the cover, I decided two things – one, this song didn’t need a reboot (it’s perfect the way it is), and two, both Bowie and Mercury are probably restless in their Graves after hearing the awful, awful cover. Ugh…yes, we missed it!

7 Relationships – Callie Shaw and Iola Morton have been the girlfriends of what fictional brothers?

8 Post War – In which decade did the US release control of Okinawa, returning control to Japan?

Mystery Round Two – BS

Give the first and last names of the people described by the following clues, all of whom have the initials BS:

M1 – Irish author known for his classic work of horror, Dracula 🧛‍♂️

M2 Singer whose most recent top ten hit was the 2022 single “Hold me Closer,” a reboot of the Elton John song Tiny Dancer.

M3 – Comedian and actor who played TV dad Danny Tanner

M4 – Jazz Age singer known as “Empress of the Blues.”

Missed #2 and #4. We just couldn’t wrap our brains around anybody but Billie Holliday for #4, whom we speculated was better known than the person in the right answer because of her well-documented struggles with addictions (not to mention a recent miniseries about her life). U2 song Angel of Harlem? Lady Sings the Blues? Oh all right, I’ll stop the Billie Holliday references now!

Funny thing, my husband and I took a short walk before the game and actually mentioned the author in #1!

We screwed the pooch too much in this game to be anywhere near the top teams. Seventh place with 34 points? Then we heard the final category was “1970s R&B Hits.” Brad burst out in laughter and went to the bar to get a beer (I think this was his way of telling me that he thought we should bet zero on it). If he was Walter from The Big Lebowski, he’d be more insistent:

While Brad was fetching his drink, we decided we’d bet it all since we’re kinda old, and know some stuff about older music!

Final Question One –

During the 1970s, Earth, Wind & Fire had six top ten hits on the Billboard Hot 100. Name two of those six songs.

I knew one of them right away. The second one vexed me for a bit, I could hear this one in my head, and I remembered playing it while we were killing zombies (in the game), but I was hemming and having over the exact title. Thankfully I picked the right one! I’m not sure how many teams got this right, but we were pretty excited to move from seventh to second!

Game Two/Round Three

9 Groups – Reed Richards, Susan Storm Richards, Benjamin Grimm and Jonathan Storm were the original members of what superhero group?

10 Logos – What financial services and insurance company uses a white logo that includes an image of the Rock of Gibraltar?

11 Hit Songs – What song, which reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1975, also reached #1 in 2001, when it was covered in the soundtrack to the film Moulin Rouge?

12 Trilogies – What is the subtitle of the film in The Hobbit trilogy that has the longest title? Not to give any spoilers – I lie, of course – this was starting to shape up to be a very friendly question set for our team! Spoiler – that final question though! 😏

Mystery Round Three –

The correct answer to each clue is also the first name of a character from the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:

M1 Title animal played by an orca named Keiko in a 1993 film

M2 The first Roman emperor, who took the throne in 27 BCE

M3 Opening track to the 1994 album Live Through This by the alternative rock band Hole

M4 Nickname given to the middle linebacker position in football

Missed #4.

Round Four-

13 Space – The space probes Viking and Viking 2 were both launched by NASA in 1975 to photograph and study what planet? Yet another question involving the 1970s! Did someone know we were going to be playing and do something nice for us? 🤔

14 Rivers – As the result of a civil engineering project that was completed in 1900, what US river had its direction of flow reversed, now flowing away from Lake Michigan instead of into it?

15 Stadiums – Within two, in what year did both the New York Yankees and the New York Mets begin playing in their current home stadiums?

16 Nicknames – What historical figure was known by the nickname The Serpent of the Nile?

Mystery Round Four

Pro Bowl Pick ‘Em

From the following list of seven NFL quarterbacks, choose the four who were selected for the 2023 Pro Bowl Games in recognition of their performance during the 2022 NFL season.

Josh Allen, Ryan Tannehill, Joe Burrow, Kirk Cousins, Justin Fields, Aaron Rodgers, Geno Smith

We picked two correct guys.

We were in fourth going into the final with 48 points.

We foolishly decided to wager it all on the category “Symptoms.” Clearly a symptom of our own idiocy 😜

Final Question Two –

There are five two-syllable verbs ending in “MBLE” that paramedics and doctors are told to look for when assessing whether someone has hypothermia. Name three of those five words.

Two out of three ain’t bad, but not good enough when it comes to trivia final questions! We started using one of the MBLE verbs to express our feelings about getting it wrong!

As Sam Elliott said in The Big Lebowski:

As always, Go Pods, and stay classy Willie Nelson!