Last night, my brain got a bit of a workout trying to answer this question:

Put the following country music artists in order from the least studio albums released to the most – Mickey Guyton, Toby Keith, George Strait, Miranda Lambert.

I’m not a country music expert by any means, and nine times out of 10, our trivia team misses questions on this subject. This time we got it right, and we were quite excited! I basically put the people in order according to how little I knew about them, to the most.

And what fun it was to do this! So much more fun than just simply trying to recall some random factoid from the brain…

This whole experience made me think about a couple of other games where I was tasked with mental gymnastics in trivia games! The firof these was in July, 2016 at the YpsiAlehouse, here’s a snippet of that recap:

Final Category: Assassinations (Brad nudged me and gave me a “knowing” look because he knows about my fascination with assassinated people, lol).

Match the notable American who was assassinated with the state in which they died. People: Robert F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Chicago mayor Anton Cermak, James A. Garfield States: Florida, New York, California, New Jersey.

And here is where my most strange logic ever kicked in for a final question answer. The only two facts I knew for sure going in? Where RFK was assassinated, and where another president was assassinated (one who came after Garfield). Guesswork took over. “Why would Malcolm X be in Florida? Not a good place for a black rights activist to be at that time, is it? And no way two presidents assassinated in the same state…And that Chicago mayor may have had Mafia ties, and Mafia people always seem to gravitate toward Florida, which would be a good place for him to get whacked.”

We wound up getting this and winning a first or second place prize.

Now for the second instance where my brain was put through a trivial ringer, this time in January, 2017 at Johnny’s Grill, where i played by myself:

Here’s an snippet of that game recap –

Scores – Ten teams, scores 28 to 60, with Beatrix Squiddo (me) tied for first with More Beer Less Pants. OK, now THIS is a game! Now to just fuck up that final question and restore order to the trivia universe! Or will I…

Final Category – Landmarks (yikes – this is not a good category for me, even when I have the rest of the team to help out!…wagered 20 anyway).

Put these New York City landmarks in geographical order, from north to south:The Apollo Theater; Yankee Stadium; Times Square; Coney Island.

I know absolutely ZILCH about the geography of the NYC area. Nothing. So I did the next best thing…I figured, “Yankee…that’s what you were if you fought for the North in the Civil War, maybe Yankee Stadium is farthest north? And hm….Coney Island is near the water, maybe that is farthest south. Just flat out guessed on the others. Thought I’d have an aneurysm when the answers were read….bam…bam…bam…and bam. Really? WTF? I don’t even KNOW this stuff! Well, maybe the other team screwed it up and I won. Nope…tiebreaker time!

In what year was the book “Get Shorty” published? My guess was just six years off, MBLP’s guess was off by 17 years, so woot, I got it! Yes, a strange, strange night of trivia. But as I said…anything can happen on any given trivia night!

I’m sure there will be far more mental trivia challenges to come!