Scroll to the bottom for the answers…

We combined a trip “Up North” to visit family with an excuse to check out a different My Trivia Live scene in Big Rapids, MI.

The scene? Sawmill Saloon, which has been around since 1969. Ben, my husband’s younger cousin, said that when he went to Ferris State, it was “THE out of the way townie bar” for students. With a nice outdoor area out back with a fire pit for chilly evenings, it was an ideal hangout spot for students wanting to socialize and blow off some steam!

It was definitely on the “cozy” side of trivia spots! There were only six teams playing on this right, but at least a couple of them were sizeable ones, and the room was definitely packed wall to wall!

Here were our abbreviated questions:

Round One

Board Games – Park Place and Boardwalk in Monopoly are represented by what color?

Boardwalks – Boardwalk communities including Point Pleasant and Atlantic City are located in which U.S. state?

Board Rooms – What does the letter “E” stand for in the abbreviation CEO?

Round Two

Diseases – What two words are commonly used to describe mononucleosis?

Hygiene – What tool is the first choice for people wanting to remove a single unwanted hair?

Same Name – What is a six letter word for a high speed racquet sport and also a plant with fruiting vines in the genus Curcurbita?

Round Three

Film Franchises – “Bloodlines” is the subtitle of the sixth entry in what horror film franchise? Miss.

Numbers – What is the first prime number after seven?

Animals – What nine-letter adjective describes animals that are active primarily at night?

Halftime-

We missed every one of these 😢

Round Four

Technology – In tech, what four-letter word is defined as a variable unit of data transmission speed like one bit per second? Miss. Heard a lot of groaning (this was a vocal trivia crowd, lots of cheering for correct guesses and groaning for wrong ones). Not exactly a “play cards close to the chest” crowd!

American Authors – What American author wrote the 1984 novel The Witches of Eastwick? I knew it was a dude but I picked the wrong dude. I picked the dude that Rodney Dangerfield’s character hired in Back To School to write his college papers!

Sigh. Sometimes Kurt Vonnegut IS the correct answer in trivia games! Not on this night!

Satellite Radio – Sirius XM Radio has a channel called “Coffee House” which involves covers of songs using an adjective derived from the Greek word for “hearing?” Hit for mom in law slash musician Willow! Happy 😊 🎵🎶 She was so excited!

Round Five

Lakes – What lake is immortalized in the Mexican flag design and was originally located on an island in what lake that was mostly drained by Spanish conquistadors? Miss.

Animals – According to the World Wildlife Fund, the bigeye tuna, black spider monkeys and cheetahs are listed at what species conservation level one level below extinction? Miss for SIX. Minor drama here, I wanted to wager 4 and save the six for something we had absolutely zero guess for, but I was outvoted. Shake it off, it’s just trivia, right?

Politicians – Funny I was more worried about this category than animals but guess which question we’d get correct (spoiler). 😂 What Vice President serving under James Madison and signer of the Declaration of Independence lends his name to a political maneuver first used in 1812? First solo hit of the game for me, I did a whole “When in Big Rapids for trivia” thing and cheered at my little victory because… it was apparently the thing to do in this bar. But as it happened, I was the only one cheering (go figure… classic awkward me)!

I was kind of hoping the answers would be either George Clinton or Schuyler Colfax (my favorite VP names)!

Round Six

Playing Cards – Not including face cards and assigning a value of 1 point to Aces, what is the sum of the numbers in a standard deck of playing cards? I was happy to let Mike do the work on this one because after coming up with the VP answer, my brain needed a rest! Also he’s better at maff, lol.

Internet – What is the name of a defunct video sharing service? There were more qualifiers than I wrote down, but we used our Answers of the Day option to get free points.

Before the last regular round question was read, I made a joke with my husband’s cousin Ben that if the category was rivers at the end of the last round, it would probably be super easy, like “What is the name of the river running through Egypt?”

Lo and behold…

“What river flows through Cairo Egypt?”

We just looked at each other and burst out laughing 🤣

What wasn’t so funny was only having 48 points going into the final, we were in fourth out of six teams. But we were strangers in a strange land and did have any teams who knew who we were, so it was kind of liberating!

And how often do you get to play a trivia game in a bar where your mother in law did an entertaining tabletop dance to the song “The Stripper” as a college student in 1970? 🤔 🩰 Yes her clothes stayed on (or so she says)! 😉

Ten points divided us and team Kwest who had 57 points.

Final Question:

What specific item sold for $850 when first purchased by a Chicago dentist in 1903 and later sold for $264,000 at auction in 2013 to a great grandson of the founder of the company that originally produced it?

A lot of discussion here, and at one point, we even discussed what would be the correct answer. But there was some uncertainty about when X thing came out and when Y thing came out, so we opted to wager just two points.

This was enough to put us in third with a $10 prize! With the very reasonable drink and food prices at this bar, the $10 went a long way! Between the three of us, we had eight drinks, and one fish dinner that came to under $30!

We’ll be back to our local trivia haunts next week. Though we are eager to check out the Sawmill’s beer garden when it warms up!

As always, Go Pods, and stay classy Elbridge Gerry!

R1 blue, NJ, executive

R2 kissing disease, tweezers, squash

R3 final destination, 11, nocturnal

H Leo DiCaprio, j Lawrence, Amy Adams, Ryan Reynolds

R4 baud, Updike, acoustic

R5 texcoco, vulnerable, Elbridge Gerry

R6 220, vine, Mike

F ford model A