Answers are in the comments.

Show of hands – how many players knew the “Screamo” answer in Sunday’s Sporcle Events Globe Games?

Sadly, we were neither as adorable looking as Reese Witherspoon is in this photo from the dark comedy movie Election – nor were we clever enough to know the answer!

The top three teams at our Globe Games spot at Spoons Place in Canton MI were Blue Moon Investigations, 117 points; Gift Cards are for Closers, 120 points and Notorious QUIZ, 126 points.

We weren’t quite clever enough to finish among the top three teams taking home cash prizes, though we got really, really close – finishing fourth overall with 112 points. Seriously though, it was really impossible for any of us to be in bad spirits about our misfortunes, because the weather wasn’t oppressively hot for the first time in days, we got the final question correct (even wagered on it), we had a nice second half comeback and…and…

I’m sorry…am I using too many 90s movie references for one trivia recap? I don’t recall having any 90s movies questions in our game, though there was a 2010s movies question and a 2020s movies question (we actually got those both correct, one on a total guess).

When “Screamo” was revealed to be one of the correct answers in a mystery round, I thought that it sounded like a character from the animated series Adventure Time. A character that probably… screams a lot? Maybe an archnemesis of Lemongrab (who seriously disturbs me)? On another sad note, we have yet to be lucky enough to have to answer a trivia question about this series! Someday?

Conditions weren’t exactly ideal for me to write down every question thoroughly, and we couldn’t even see the very wordy round one mystery round question from our seats! It also wasn’t showing on the phone of our designated question answer person, so THAT was a bit chaotic! Almost made us want to start screaming like Screamo would…or Charlie Brown…

How about some very, very abbreviated questions? Some questions may be reverse engineered versions of the ones that were actually presented to us (I did my best to recreate them accurately please do not be TOO nitpicky thanks).

Round One

1 Companies – Headquartered in Amsterdam, which brewery has been the second largest in the world since 2016?

2 Books – What 1979 novel by Octavia Butler featured a character who time traveled to plantations in the slavery era in the U.S., meeting her ancestors in the process?

Tough, tough call! I actually remember reading this book in college, and thought I knew the name, but someone else said “No, that’s a Toni Morrison novel.” Fair enough…Sadly no one on our team could remember this book’s title, even if one person actually read the damn book (it was actually quite good…maybe I’ll have to re-read it). Well, gosh darn it all! Our fortunes would only start getting worse from here!

3 Songs – The song Seven Rings by Ariana Grande references what song from a 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, which gives both Rodgers and Hammerstein songwriting credits? We really, really tried on this, but all we did was overthink it into a miss. Had we been given the year the film adaptation for the musical was released, then we’d be as happy as someone wearing warm woolen mittens! Though we’d still probably get it wrong, because none of us old farts knew quite enough about Ariana Grande songs! I joked that you almost need to bring teenagers to Sporcle trivia games these days to help out with answers! We had a teenage girl help us out on a couple of modern music questions in a recent virtual trivia game!

4 Hockey – What is the term for a hockey penalty involving a player using their stick to impede an opponent’s progress? Brad was all over this, woot! Anyone else think of Shoresy from Letterkenny doing this?

Mystery Round One

I did not get all of these questions in entirety, some of them may only be similar versions of questions that were actually presented to us.

The answers to the following clues all contain letters found in U.S. state capitals.

M1 Really bright light, five letters

M2 Herb used commonly in Italian seasoning blends, seven letters

M3 Aggressive music subgenre of Emo, seven letters

M4 System for selecting professional sports players for teams, five letters

Missed 2 and 3.

Round Two

5 Film Roles – What type of animal is portrayed by Robin Williams in the 2015 film Absolutely Anything, which was his last feature length theatrical film he made before his death? Lucky guess, got this.

6 TV – Characters Stefan and Damon, both hundreds of years old, appear in what series debuting in 2009? Had two possible answers, including the RIGHT one, guess which one we picked? Miss.

7 Activists – What civil rights activist, along with William Monroe Trotter, rose to prominence as a leader of the Niagara Movement, which was a precursor to the NAACP? Our “loaner” player Phil handled this one with success.

8 Cards – Per Hoyle’s official rules, how many cards does each player receive at the beginning of a round of gin rummy? Miss.

Mystery Round Two – Fill in the Blank – Government Missing Persons Edition

Fill in the missing government people from the following lists

M1 U.S. Presidents – William Harrison, John Tyler, BLANK, Zachary Taylor

M2 Supreme Court Justices – Sotomayor, BLANK, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh

M3 Secretaries of State – Christopher, BLANK, Powell, Rice

M4 Democratic VP Nominees – Lieberman, BLANK, Biden, Harris

Got all of these (nice teamwork everyone)!

We were not doing great at halftime, only 33 points, which put us right about in the middle of the 15 teams or so in the room. Warmup game? Let’s DO this!

Round Three

9 Websites – What e-commerce site established in 2005 sells handmade and vintage items and uses the slogan “Shop for Anything From Creative People Everywhere?”

10 2020 Films – What 2020 film is semi autobiographical story of writer Lee Isaac Chung and depicts Korean immigrants living in rural Arkansas? Loaner Phil watched this and got it for us yay!

11 Chemicals – Dopamine, Seratonin and Histamine are all examples of what of chemical which relays signals across a chemical synapse?

12 Shared Names – What is the shared name of a 2007 single by Daughtry and a 2012 single by Phillip Phillips that peaked at #6?

Nope.

Mystery Round Three TV Series. Pick ‘Em

Choose which four TV series from the following list were released in thr decade of the 2010s.

Kitchen Nightmares, Ozark, Reservation Dogs, Suits, The boys, The Mindy Project, The Suite Life on Deck

Got all of these, helps that we’re watching The Boys right now, so it’s fresh In our minds!

Round Four

13 Drinks – What drink is made with white rum and fruit juices, is the national drink of Nicaragua and is named for a five letter bird beginning with M? I’m glad I was talked out of my initial guess of Mynah!

14 Regions – Three of the 17 autonomous communities of Spain have names beginning with the letter A including Andalusia, Asturias and what other region? Our team’s “wizard” aka my husband Mike thankfully knew this (I love your weird obscure knowledge, honey)! 😍

15 Commercials – Snoop Dogg advertised what product in TV advertisements referencing his 2004 single Drop it Like its Hot?

15 Deities – The Hindu deity Ganesha is depicted with the head of what animal?

Mystery Round Four

Millions, Billions or Trillions?

Decide which describes the numbers in the following answers -millions, billions or trillions

M1 Seconds in one year

M2 Red blood cells in human body

M3 Sun’s circumference in meters

M4 Known digits of Pi

Missed #2. When we were trying to land on the right answer for the sun question, I said “Imagine that Carl Sagan is talking about it.”

Going into the final, we were in fifth (I think) with 82 points.

We decided to wager all 30 of the available points on the final category of:

Sports Teams

Name three of the five professional sports teams in North America whose team names do NOT share any common letters with the city/team location.

I knew it was a good sign when our loaner player Phil asked me for a whole sheet of paper (he had been using his own tiny note papers). I strongly encourage written brainstorming in our trivia games!

And all four of us were off to the races, naming all of the sports teams that we could. Phil named one fairly quickly, Brad named another right after that, and we kept going. I didn’t want to be left out of the fun, so I started naming teams in Canada and well…

You can just imagine my excitement when I picked a team whose name seemed to fit. We checked and double checked the letters of all three of our guesses, submitted them, and tried to get the other two! We managed to think of one more, but didn’t think of the fifth one.

I’m not sure, but I think we may have moved up by one place! No prize money, but we didn’t embarrass ourselves!

And with that, we bid adieu to another Sporcle season. We will still occasionally hit up some Sporcle games when our schedules allow, and as of now, we’re officially dipping our toes into the My Trivia Live scene again after a five year hiatus (by special request) 😘 “One Game at a Time” is our new team motto these days!

As always, Go Pods, and stay classy, Ariana Grande!