After a whopping nineteen days with us playing no general knowledge trivia games – just two music trivia games – we decided to put on our long underwear, down jackets, wool socks, snow boots, smartphone compatible winter gloves (yes that is a thing), our heaviest winter coats and…

Walk to the car parked in the attached garage – and drive to a pub trivia game!

I know all of you are probably just saying to yourselves “Wow” to the level of rigorous adventure I described in that first paragraph, aren’t you? 😂

Truth be told, the car was actually in the driveway – not the garage – when we left! Which makes us even more adventurous!

Nope, no prizes on this arctically frigid evening that would make a Super Soaker stream of water freeze in mid-air (show of hands who wants to try this now). Though we did have a perfect first half of the game.

There were fewer teams than normal on this trivia night, we did not see some of the “regular” contenders – though the usual die-hards were there – Dead Guys, Spacecats, Three, We Were Never Here, Maddy Platters and us lowly semi-regulars – “Pods.” We usually like to embrace irony and go for the brevity-inspired team names, as a rebellion against the overly long hashtagged dad-joke inspired names that a couple of the McShane’s teams use in every game!

Running jokes are what make the world go around – and occasionally groan, right?

Here were our abbreviated questions:

Round One

Words – As the “di” prefix dictates, the word dichotomy refers to how many things?

Walks of Fame – What “fancy” red-headed singer was in the first group to be inducted into the Nashville Music City Walk of Fame? The word “fancy” didn’t help us at all here, but we did think of the correct red-headed country singer.

U.S. History – The U.S. acquired the Louisiana Territory from what foreign country?

Round Two

Songs by the Years – A song by the group Jax uses the lines “We’re going down with the ship, Leonardo” and “Take a hit, me one more time like Britney, bitch” was released in which decade?

First Names – Which typically male name can describe speaking by using few words or rude shortness?

Candy Bars – The Whozeewhatzit candy bar, released in 2021, was a spin-off of what other Hershey candy bar? I loved these first candy bars when they first came out! 😋

Round Three

Fun with Flags – The orange, green and white stripes on a Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) flag are identical to the ones on which European flag when put in a different order? It probably helped that the country’s flag that we needed was on display in the bar we were playing! 🇮🇪

U.S. Cities – What seventh most populous U.S. city was given its name based on the feast of St. Anthony? Another good guess from Mike (don’t worry his streak will end soon enough)!

Homophones – What word for a brand of margarine sounds the same  (but spelled differently) as a word for a patterned wood flooring? Had to give both words. Finally a question that I was able to answer (seriously most of these were all Mike up until this point)! Yes I know, it’s not a contest!

Halftime – Regions of the Country

The Appalachian Regional Commission encompasses 13 U.S. states in the region described as “Appalachia.” Name the first four of these states that come alphabetically.

As he was with a good number of other questions in this first half, my trivia pardner and husband Mike was the hero here (it helps that he spent some of his high school years in Appalachia). So we knew all four of these for 10 points!

Halftime scores:

We Were Never Here/Three, tied with 31; Spacecats/Maddy Platters/Dead Guys, all tied with 32; and us (Pods), in first with 37 points.

Round Four

Comedy – Johhny Galecki said that what type of comedy is described by these two things – never saying no – and never asking why? Good guess from Mike. We were talking a couple of days ago about this being among the things that we’d be exposed to 24/7 in Hell!

Memoirs – Whose 1978 memoirs were simply titled R.N.?

Michiganders – What former football player turned actor born in Michigan got his start as a courtroom artist for WJRT in Flint? I feel like this is something I should have known since I’m a native of this area, but we did not – so we used our “answer of the week” option to avoid having to answer correctly and still get points. Yes we’d regret that in round five!

About round five…

Round Five

Political Philosophy – What philosopher did Karl Marx collaborate with in the writing of the Communist Manifesto? Miss, never heard of the guy, we guessed Nietzsche.

Literature – In Gustav Flaubert’s work Madame Bovary, what is the first name of Mme. Bovary, which is shared by a Jane Austen title  character? We brainstromed the right lady, but didnt’ write her name on the slip (oops).

SCIENCE! – What plants did scientist Gregor Mendel experiment with during his studies of genetics and geneaology? Thank the gods for this seventh grade level science question!

Round Six

2020s Movies – Referencing a zone where the title video game character races, what 2020 movie is set in the Green Hills of Montana? Maybe it’s just me and my dumb, easily distracted brain, but I thought that there were way too many qualifiers to this question. It made us think of regions of Montana (which we know nothing about except Jackson Hole, which is not actually in Montana, and Bozeman, which the Yellowstone TV series showed us is a touristy gentrified town with pour- over coffee joints in Montana, and the fictitious Yellowstone Ranch). So utter failure for us, though to our credit, we did think of the right video game character. We just felt like this question threw us in the wrong direction. Especially for a round six question! But again, maybe we’re just…dumb! 🤦‍♀️ I said that, not you (don’t you dare say it)! 😂 Ah, OK I  won’t fight you!

Animals – What animal, widespread throughout the Eastern U.S. and Canada, is known by the common name spring peeper, known for its chirping sound?

Bored Games – (don’t correct me) How many maximum spaces can a player move in the game of Life? Miss.

Scores heading into the final:

Maddy Platters, 56; Pods/Three, tied with 61; Dead Guys, 62; We Were Never Here, 63 and Spacecats were in first with 64 points.

Final Category – Advertising

In the early to mid 1990s, what brand used a finger character with a face in its advertisements named “Fingerman” to show how easy the product advertised was to use?

I attempted to control the direction of our brainstorming by saying “Let’s think of *nice* things people do with their fingers and not gross things people do with their fingers.” 🖕

We figured we’d better wager on this because of being tied with another team and having three other teams ahead of us. Which would have been a brilliant strategy had we actually gotten the answer correct – and if the teams ahead of us all wagered it all and missed it!

Nope, no teams got this correct, so zero wagers ruled, and the top teams stayed the same.

This most likely concludes our trivial pursuits for the week. We’ll be going out for music quiz next Monday, and probably one other regular trivia  game as well.

As always, Go Pods, and stay classy, Terry Crews! We never knew that you were so talented! Football, acting, that nipple thing you did in Balls of Fury and courtroom sketch artist? Wow, all that and you’re a Flint native too? Color us impressed!

Answers:

r1 two, reba mcintyre, france

r2 1990s, curt, whatchamacallit

r3 ireland, san antonio, parkay/parquet

halftime AL, GA, KY, MD

r4 improv, nixon, terry crews

r5 engels, emma, peas

r6 sonic the hedgehog, frogs, 10

f: ziploc