We played our 54th Sporcle Live pub trivia game since 2016 at the YpsiAlehouse on a recent warm Sunday afternoon. By “warm,” I mean “February warm,” not “where’s my tank top and sandals?” warm! My husband and I took a little walk before the game and saw that a local park adjacent to the Huron River (the aptly named “Riverside Park”), and saw what looked like a huge pond where normally it’s just…grass, goose/duck poop and dog poop if you’re gross and don’t pick up after your dogs (tsk tsk). Unexplained water? Maybe to the flocks of ducks and geese, swimming in it, yes, it’s unexplained “bonus” water! But us humans recognized it for being the result of snowmelt and recent heavy rains as being the explanation for there being water where water should not be. It’s not unusual for this park to get flooded from time to time.

You’d think all of this would add up to a relaxing scene, wouldn’t you? People out walking yappy dogs, enjoying the February sunshine and relative warmth, and flocks of ducks and geese enjoying their bonus swimming pond. But then…a fight broke out! Not between humans, mind you – but some geese started going at it! There were wings flappin’, bills jackin’, it was LOUD! It appeared to be an all-out turf war for their own little piece of the temporary pond! Maybe it was some kind of mating ritual to see which guy goose was going to get the prettiest woman goose? For a few minutes, those geese were really going at it like…like…cats and dogs? I think even the most vicious cats and dogs would have steered clear of THAT fight! I know I was glad to be at a safe distance!

After watching that awesome goose fight, we decided to head over to our trivia spot and get into a more tame fight for trivia domination! How would THAT go? Uh, not great! We had a crappy round one and got the final correct that every other team got – and had a brilliant round two but flubbed the final question! All par for the course for the ‘Pods playbook! We’ve been in a bit of a slump so far in 2024, after having ended 2023 on a pretty good note. Long game…

We finished with 92 total points, sixth place overall, no prizes.

Here were our questions:

Game One/Round One

1 Restaurants – What does Outback Steakhouse call its appetizer that is nearly identical to a competitor’s former item called the Awesome Blossom?

NERD POINT: Who is that competitor? We had the competitor narrowed down to two guesses, picked the wrong one.

2 Cards – When splitting aces in the casino game of blackjack, how many cards are subsequently dealt to each ace? No gamblers in our ranks, miss for two.

3 Actors – What actor plays Kenny Powers in the HBO series Eastbound & Down? Never watched this, miss for one.

4 Rivers – The 80-mile-long Charles River is located entirely in which U.S. state, where it flows into the Atlantic Ocean at the state’s capital city? Yay, Brad knew this one.

Mystery Round One – Visual

Missed #4.

Round Two

5 Canada – Halifax is the capital city of which Canadian province?

6 Politics – Although he was nominated without his knowledge and did not campaign, what abolitionist was named Victoria Woodhull’s running mate on the Equal Rights Party ticket for the 1872 U.S. presidential election? FB clue.

7 Charity – In 2018, what sports entertainer granted his 500th wish for Make-A-Wish, which was the first time that number had been reached? We incorrectly guessed Shaquille O’Neal. I mean…come on, didn’t he play a Genie? Miss for 3.

8 Math – In mathematics, what punctuation mark is used to express the factorial of an integer? Brad again for the points.

Mystery Round Two – Current Events

M1 On January 30, what Tony Award winning actress became the first Latina actress to receive a Kennedy Center Honor in 2002, passed away at the age of 91?

M2 Figure skaters from the United States were awarded a gold medal in the 2022 team event after the disqualification of an athlete from what country, which had originally finished first?

M3 After a long delay, Turkiye approved the NATO membership bid of what Nordic country?

M4 It was announced that WWE Raw will move from what USA Network to what streaming service in January, 2025?

We incorrectly guessed Rita Moreno for #1 (whom is close to the same age) and also missed #4.

We were bottom dwellers in this round…tied with one other team at the bottom with 40 points! So we couldn’t even say, “At least we weren’t the WORST team in the room!” Yup…we were, we were! This was clearly an “either you know these answers, or you don’t” round of questions, and clearly…we didn’t! Maybe if we followed stories regularly about pro wrestling, Latina actresses who are not Rita Moreno, sports stars who are not Shaquille O’Neal. And who knew Madonna was looking as unhealthy as a songstress from the mid 1990s screaming about her breakup with that guy from Full House? And none of us ever watched Eastbound & Down, had the question been about Justified or…pretty much any other series we’d actually watched – in addition to all of the other minutia contributing to us having a bad round of trivia, maybe our fortunes would be better!

In other news, a team of one guy named Mike playing by himself (not the other player named Mike playing with one other person who occasionally also plays by himself – or at least used to, not totally sure what he’s doing these days) was top dog with 50 points! Clearly these questions were in his wheelhouse and not our collective wheelhouse! Team 24 Hour Brunch was behind him with 48 points. Proves once again that team size does not always matter in bar trivia!

Maybe the final question might help us out a bit and actually be about something we know (fingers crossed)!

Final Category Game One – 1990s Movies

Name two of the three actresses who play title characters in, and appear on the poster for, the 1996 film The First Wives Club.

It appears that only one team DIDN’T get this right, so our hopes were dashed for this being one of those one in a thousand trivia questions where you swoop up from the bottom of the ranks into the prize zone. Hey, it’s happened to us before!

“Team Me” solo guy held onto his lead and won first, 24 Hour Brunch took second.

Game Two/Round Three

9 Animated TV – A goldfish named Klaus and an alien named Roger are among the non-human characters in what animated TV series?
NERD POINT: Within one, in what year did this series debut?

Got this for max points and the bonus, knew the year dead on, yay!

10 Art – In the early 1900s, Pablo Picasso co-created what art movement characterized by broken and reassembled objects depicted with multiple viewpoints? Cautious bet of 3, since this is an art question where we are usually too confident – or not confident enough – never the right amount of confident! But got it (yay Mike)!

11 Soccer – Which U.S. city’s metro area is home to a Major League Soccer franchise nicknamed The Union? Before they asked this question, Brad asked me if I was “up” on MLS teams. I said, “I know there are probably lots of new ones I don’t know about.” Thankfully this question didn’t ask about one of those teams, got this…

12 Sequels – In 2013, author Stephen King released the novel Doctor Sleep, which is a sequel to what 1977 novel? Both the book and movie are very good, and the grown-up boy predictably grows up to be a very fucked up adult!

Mystery Round Three – Antoine Fuqua Films

From the following list of films, choose the four that were directed by Antoine Fuqua.

Wow, this was kinda scary…mainly because – Who the hell is Antoine Fuqua?

Training Day, Creed, Selma, Olympus Has Fallen, The Equalizer, Straight Outta Compton, King Arthur

Through some weird magicks, we got this all correct! And none of us have ever seen ANY of these movies! We just happened to make right guesses about movies we thought weren’t directed by this guy!

Round Four

13 Alcohol – What type of alcohol can also be used as a fuel is the main type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages? Brad for the points here, SCIENCE!

14 Inspirations – Two identical-looking bumbling detectives from The Adventures of Tintin comics inspired the name of what British band that had three top ten hits on the Billboard Hot 100 in the 1980s? Mike with correct guess.

15 Marketing – In a 2012 redesign, what brand removed the phrase “Famous Old Tyme Root Beer” from its label and marketing? Correct guess here.

16 Disasters – What country suffered the two deadliest earthquakes in recorded history, killing up to an estimated 830,000 in 1556 and nearly a quarter million in 1976? Had only one point left to blow, and we blew it…

Mystery Round Four – Big “BRO”

The correct answer to each clue includes the letters BRO, in that order.

M1 Facial feature with the Latin name supercilium

M2 Last word in the title of a song by Jimmy Ruffin – “:What becomes of the (blank)?”

M3 – In or to a foreign country or countries

M4 A loud, confused commotion, uproar sometimes used to describe a fight (like with those geese we saw in the park earlier, lol)

Missed #3…though we really, really tried!

We were in second going into the final question with 52 points, Out of Our Street Smarts had a perfect score of 54.

Final Category – U.S. Cities

San Antonio, Texas; and San Diego, California are the two most populous cities that rank second in their own states. Name one of the next five most populous cities that rank second in their states, all of which are more populous than Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Clearly we needed to have a rough idea of the population of Tulsa, OK for this question (which we did not), and had to have a good grasp of “second banana” cities. My word for things that in second place rather than first, like vice presidents, artists who hit #2 but not #1 (like Foreigner). There was a time in late 2023 when our trivia team was consistently ranked as second bananas, getting a string of second place prizes for several weeks! We even finished in second at the bar’s “venue tournament” in November!

So did we know the correct “second banana” city? Nope, we didn’t, though Brad had the right guess that we didn’t go with (sorry man)!

Would’ve gotten first had we listened to Brad since the team ahead of us also missed this. Oh well, maybe next time?

Isla’s College Fund took first, 24 Hour Brunch took second.

A Saturday night trivia game is possible this week, since our Sunday game is canceled – as are most other spots, because of the Super Bowl. If the Saturday game comes to pass, this will be our first post-pandemic visit to this trivia spot, which was an “occasional” spot in the long, long ago. Doesn’t look to be too competitive this season, but…we’ll see if any dark horses come out of the woodwork to keep us in line!

As always, Go Pods, and stay classy, John Cena!