We logged our highest-scoring game of the year last weekend while playing a trivia game at the YpsiAlehouse with 133 points! Our only misses of the night were a question about stacking dolls, a mystery question about a rapper we’d never heard of and the “nerd points” on both questions in the game. We also managed to win a first place/ $20 gift card for the first time at this place since…2016? Which sounds more awful than that – we played here when trivia started being offered in 2016, then stopped playing there until just a few months ago.

Game two was “nearly” perfect for us, with us missing just the nerd point portion of a question about the Night at the Museum movie series. In another rarity, we managed to use our point wagers from biggest to lowest in order! Since most Sporcle spots don’t have score sheets, I have no way to prove that to any of y’all, but trust me – it happened!

But had we gotten the nerd point correct, we wouldn’t have had a sexy 69 points for game two, which as you can imagine, was far more awesome for players as arrested in development as us!

Sometimes it’s all about the little things, isn’t it?

Mike, Brad and I battled the following questions:

Game One

Round One

1 Games – In order to play the game cat’s cradle, what piece of equipment is required, in addition to another person?

2 Nicknames – What U.S. capital city has been nicknamed “The City on a Hill,” Puritan City,” “The Hub,” and “The Athens of America?” Usually questions like this sink us, but yay we got it…

3 Medicine – What branch of medicine deals the the diagnosis and disorders of the heart?

4 Settings – The Overlook is the primary setting of what 1977 novel? FB clue.

Mystery Round One – 1980s DVD Covers

I started writing down all of the best picture winners from the 1980s in order. When I finished, I handed the list over to Mike and Brad and said “OK guys, figure it out!” Thankfully they didn’t need much of my help after that! Got all of these. What a stroke of luck to have a round like this! Just glad it wasn’t the decade of the ought 10s, I’m not sure I can name all of those Oscar winners in order! Let’s see, King’s Speech, The Artist…that one Ben Affleck movie – or was it the slave movie? Birdman? Spotlight? Moonlight? Green Book? After that it gets even more fuzzy (maybe I have some homework to do, LOL)! I have paid ZERO attention to most of the Oscar winning movies of the past five years, though we did see Parasite!

Round Two

5 U.S. History – Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968 in what major U.S. city? Brad almost talked me out of my guess, but we stuck to my guess and got this, woot!

6 Law TV – Name one of the two television series on which William Shatner has played an attorney named Denny Crane.

NERD POINT: Name both.

We knew one, but not both…

7 Dolls – What is the most common name for Russian nesting dolls, also known as babushka dolls, stacking dolls, or tea dolls? When they revealed the answer, I’d honestly never heard of the word before, which makes me wonder how “common” this word actually is. Though to be fair, I’m not much of a doll aficionado, even though I did have Barbies and Cabbage Patch dolls in the 1980s!

8 Drinks – What calorie-free, lime- and grapefruit-flavored soda was first introduced by Coca-Cola in 1966? Anyone else ever experience how awesome this is as a mixer for vodka? Anyone else remember when drinks like these came in glass bottles and if you left them in the freezer too long they’d explode? You just can’t forget childhood memories like those! Also when my parents let me and my brother split 16.9 ounce glass bottles of pop and we’d make damn sure neither got a milliliter more than the other when we poured them into glasses. Did I just out myself as Gen X without actually saying so? And don’t all us old fogeys agree that pop tastes better in a glass bottle? Awright…I’ll stop before this turns into a blog about…pop! Or “soda!”

Mystery Round Two

Name the U.S. state that is represented when reading each person’s initials as a two-letter postal abbreviation. Give the full state name, NOT the person’s name or initials!

M1 American Idol runner-up who has toured with Queen as its lead singer

M2 Pro Football Hall of Fame player and coach who led the Chicago Bears to a Super Bowl victory in 1986

M3 Filmmaker who won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the 2003 film Lost in Translation, which she also directed

M4 Rapper known for his mixtapes, including the Marathon, The Marathon Continues and Crenshaw

Missed #4. When the answer was revealed for this, I thought it sounded like a name for a wardrobe malfunction (the kind that happened to Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl).

We were in third going into the final with 49 points. We wagered all 15 points.

Final Question 1 – Presidential History

What three countries have been visited by U.S. presidents at least 40 times each, ranking them ahead of Germany?

Got it, so did teams ahead of us in prize zone. Game winners were Vote For Me (Street Smarts) and Isla’s College Fund.

Round Three

9 Book to TV – Adapted from books, what TV title characters were played by actors Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy from 1977 to 1979? As if the Gen X memories about pop weren’t enough for ya, I had a poster of Shaun Cassidy on my wall that my mom put there! I didn’t actually ask for or want it, and it was traded for a poster of kittens later on. Was she putting it up just so she could go in and look at it? I know if I asked her about it she’d claim she doesn’t remember! She also put a Cat Stevens poster on my wall even earlier than that, and I KNOW it was so she could go in to look at it (I’m onto you, mom)! In that poster, Cat Stevens was shirtless and was wearing a lei. And this is why I’ve never been a “posters” kind of person!

10 Regions – Patagonia is a region at the southern end of which of the seven continents? It covers more than 400,000 square miles of land and is home to only around 2 million people.

11 Film Characters – Which U.S. president is played by Robin Williams in the Night at the Museum movie trilogy?

NERD POINT: What Tsar of Russia is portrayed by Christopher Guest in this trilogy?

Missed the bonus portion of this.

12 Singers – Since 1980, Simon Le Bon has been the lead singer of what band, who most recently reached the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Come Undone” and “Ordinary World” in 1993?

Mystery Round Three – World Series Pick ‘Em

From the following list of seven MLB franchises, choose the four that won a World Series Championship in the 1960s.

Boston Red Sox, Oakland Athletics, Pittsburgh Pirates, Baltimore Orioles, Detroit Tigers, Chicago White Sox, New York Mets

Got all of these. This round was pretty much all Brad, yay!

Round Four

13 Competitions – What is the name of the competition in which Cub Scouts race unpowered cars constructed from kits that include a block of uncarved wood, plastic wheels, and metal axles? My brother made one of these during the two minutes or so that he was in the Cub Scouts. Wow, can this game be more Gen X? Were these questions tailored for our team? 🙂

14 Trademarks – What is Subway’s trademarked job title for a person who prepares the subs?

15 Oscar Winners – Leonardo di Caprio won his first Academy Award for his role in what 2015 film? This was originally supposed to be an audio clue, but host Emily had some technical difficulties preventing her from playing. Thank the trivia gods, we may have fared better on this as a “words” question rather than a “hearing things” question!

Gotta hand it to Leonardo – after all of those pretty boy roles he played, when he finally decided to get real dirty for a film role (and I don’t mean Wolf of Wall Street dirty, or Django Unchained dirty) – he wins an Oscar! I’ll bet filming that movie wasn’t very fun!

16 Government – In 1997, Madeleine Albright became the first woman to hold what position in U.S. government?

Mystery Round Four – Toon Towns

Name the animated TV series which include the following fictional cities.

M1 Bikini Bottom

M2 Orbit City

M3 Arlen, TX

M4 Langley Falls, VA

Got all of these. We were in first going into the final with 54 points, tied with Vote For Me (Street Smarts). I think the “Vote for Me” name had to do with the ugly holiday sweater contest going on in the bar?

Final Question Two:

Measures – What derived unit of mass equal to roughly 32.17 pounds in standard gravity shares its four letter name with an animal in the phylum Mollusca?

I came up with one guess right away, but we all decided Mike’s guess was better – which is good, because it turned out to be correct! Later on, he’d tell me that he knew this answer because of the Bolo series of books he’s read about sentient tanks. Hey, whatever helps you come up with an answer!

Whew, I don’t think we’ll have another game quite like this anytime soon! As always, Go Pods, and stay classy, Ivan the Terrible!