Competition is really heating up at McShane’s in Ypsi as the current trivia season winds down!

The good news is there is only one point dividing the top two non -barhop teams.

The bad news is that our team is not one of those teams! We’re still in the running for a bronze medal! Wait…do they give medals for trivia? 🤔

Teams Maddie Platters and Rather Be At are the ones to beat right now.  They always play Tuesdays, we play occasionally on Tuesdays, but mostly on Thursdays. Sometimes we play both nights.

Unless we can perform some kind of miracle over the next three weeks or Ken Jennings returns my texts (lol), it looks like semifinals and finals are not in our future in early October.

Meh… I’d have a rough time finding players for two consecutive Saturday games anyway! For one, my main trivia partner Mike doesn’t like doing much of anything before noon on weekends. Another player has board game commitments on Saturdays. There is also football season and other fall stuff like pumpkin shopping, driving around to see where new Halloween USA stores are popping up, cider drinking, camp fires, color tours, leaf corraling, visiting haunted attractions, ghost tours, apple picking, griping about or praising pumpkin spice, doughnut eating et cetera et cetera…

We really have done our best to make a go of it this past season!

This was our first time making an earnest semifinals bid by playing weekly games at a My Trivia Live spot since 2019.

We’ve managed to win prizes eight times over the past 23 games we’ve played (two games were at The Sawmill Saloon in Big Rapids). So…roughly one out of three games we’ve won prizes? I’ll have to have my math teacher friend Kim check me on my math! Not my strongest subject!

Is there any good news? Yes! I’m so glad you asked! We won a second place/$20 prize! We also got the final question correct (a rarity for us).

Now how about some abbreviated questions?

Round One

Contests – What food do people eat – typically in mass quantities – in annual contests held every July Fourth and sponsored by Nathan’s?

States – What is the only U.S. state with two vowels as its postal abbreviation?

Birds – Edgar Allan Poe wrote about what bird, often associated with the Tower of London?

Round Two

Mythology – In Greek mythology, what creature was in the Labyrinth of Daedalus?

Disney – What is the name of Simba’s uncle in The Lion King?

Islands – What is the current name of the island where you’d find the Statue of Liberty? Miss. We discussed the right answer…

Round Three

Beaches – In what U.S. state would you find Million Dollar Beach in Lake George Village? Miss.

Pop Culture People – What actor, along with his brother Shannon, founded the band 30 Seconds to Mars? Miss.

Geography – The Sinai Peninsula forms the boundary between what two continents?

Halftime – OK Boomer!

Decide yes or no whether the following celebrities are boomers or not (born between 1946 and 1964):

Hugh Grant, Cindy Crawford, Mark Cuban, Elon Musk

We got three of these correct.

Halftime Scores:

OG, 21; Pods, 28; We Were Never Here, 31; Random Answers/Rather Be At, 32; Spacecats, 33; Maddie Platters, 35; Three/Pants, 37 (perfect scores).

Round Four

Acronyms – What did the letter S originally stand for in the acronym LASER?

Art – What artist with a hypenated last name was kown for his paintings of Can-Can girls and for his diminuitive stature?

Rappers – Who was the first solo rapper to be inducted into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame in 2017, doing so on his first year of eligibility? Miss.

Round Five

Neighborhoods – Deep Ellum is a neighborhood in what southern U.S. city? We used our Answer of the Day to get our points and not put in the right answer.

Debates – What fundamentalist did Bill Nye debate in 2014 asking “Is creation a viable model of origins?” Mike thought about the right person but I…talked him out of it. SORRY! SO SORRY! May God cast me out of the garden – or turn me into a pillar of salt, or some other  horrible biblical punishment! 😂

Remakes – What 1977 horror film was remade in 2018 and starred Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton? I racked my brain trying to think horror films released in 1977 – The Exorcist? No.    Carrie? No. Poltergeist? No. The Freddy or Michael Myers movies? Definitely no. Salem’s Lot? No, that was more of a made for TV  thing, though they did remake it recently (not bad BTW). Time was running out, so out of desperation I put “Annie Hall” on the answer slip. Hey… to be fair – Woody Allen movies are kind of like horror films to me!

Round Six

Same Name – What name is shared by both an REM song and a docuseries featuring the Duggar family? We picked the right one, but apparently quite a few teams put down another REM song that was incorrect for big points. We’ll take whatever luck we can get in our trivia games! We definitely didn’t use our six point slip on this one!

Fun with Flags – What color is the cross on the Finland flag? We had a lot of discussion here, thankfully we discussed the answer that was correct and on our slip!

Food Pairings – What citrus fruit is typically served with seafood?

Scores heading into the final:

OG, 32; Ww Were Never Here, 47; Pods, 52; Three, 57; Spacecats, 59; Rather Be At, 60; Pants, 63; Random Guessers, 64; Maddie Platters, 67.

Final Category – Presidential Firsts

Who was the first U.S. president to be sworn in by a woman?

Oh how I LOVE it when final questions are this short ‘n sweet! No “according to,” no “Founded in,” no “formerly known as,” no “until merging with,” (too many qualifiers)…

It doesn’t matter HOW you arrive at a trivia question answer as long as you get it correct! Yeah I did not think of the right woman who swore him in, but I thought of the right guy (whew).

We moved from seventh to second!

Game winners: We Were Never Here, 94; Pods, 103, Spacecats, 118.

A couple of us are hitting up a Face the Music game in Flint tonight (yes you read that correctly). Thursday we’ll be back at McShanes with hopefully, a few helpers this time!

As always, Go Pods, and stay classy, Ann Richards