We posted our second-highest score of 2026 at a recent My Trivia Live game that almost didn’t even happen.
My husband and I decided last minute to go out to the game at McShane’s in Ypsilanti, which was unusually crowded on this night.
Our normal “favorite” table was occupied by another team – whose favorite table was also occupied by a group of people who were not regulars for trivia night.
We wound up sitting at a hybrid booth against the wall squeezed in between the team of almost all women called Keeping Up With the Joneses, and the Ypsi Starlings Rugby team. Very David vs. Goliath – with our two-person team dwarfed by a seven person team to our right – and a 10-person team to our right.
I’m not gonna go as far to say it was like the lyrics in that Stealer’s Wheel song – “Clowns to the right of me…jokers to the right.” That wouldn’t be very nice, would it? They weren’t clowns or jokers at all I’m just very, very susceptible to getting random songs in my head.
Which inspired the team name we used “Crowded House says Don’t Dream it’s Over.”
Prophetic perhaps since this band is from New Zealand and we had a question about its native people? 😲
Our team is no stranger to weird occurrences!
We finished with 71 points going into the final question, but our longtime competitors from the long, long ago at the Wurst Bar – aka the “Pants” team – finished with 73 points going into the final question.
This means they had zero misses up until the final question. We missed one question about an Apple TV series that we’ve never seen. Well played, you guys! 👍
Only one team – Dorks – got the final question correct.
Sigh – and we worked SO hard on our wrong answer! 😕😆
Speaking of wrong answers…
We also had a 73-point game back in January of 2026, and failed to get the final question for that game correct, which means we still have a chance to have a “true” perfect game sometime in the future!
You can read about our only 73 point game we ever had here:
Are the odds of a perfect MTL ever game happening to us very good? Uhhh…. 🤔
We won a second place/$20 prize.
Here were our very, very abbreviated game questions:
Round One
Doctor Seuss – What thieving character dressed as Santa does Cindy Lou Who ask “Why did you steal our presents? Why?”
Candy – What yellow-wrapped candy has been advertised using characters from “The Simpsons?”
Same Name – What six-letter word meaning to “bother” or “provoke” also describes a slender tool used for sewing?
Round Two
Politics – Cindy McCain named secretary of agriculture by what president?
’90s Movies – What 1999 Sci-Fi film features Keanu Reeves’ character in a brawl in a subway with someone named Mr. Smith?
Infamous Athletes – What all-time hit leader was disallowed from being in the Hall of Fame because of a tax evasion conviction which caused him to spend five months in prison?
Round Three
Latin – What Latin phrase translating to “Something for Nothing” is often used in the context of repaying a favor to someone else?
Literature – What work by Cervantes is published in two volumes of 1,000 pages and is about a delusional knight and his squire?
Rock Bands – What band took a year-long hiatus after the death of member Chester Bennington?
Halftime
Identify four of the five countries encompassing the “Arctic Five,” which all border the Arctic Ocean and are all located within 200 kilometers of the Arctic Circle.
We got all of these correct.
Halftime scores: Us and a few other teams were all tied with 37 points.
Round Four
Kings – What last plantagenet dynasty king’s body was found buried under a car park in England in 2012?
I remember joking about this at the time (pardon me I am a huge nerd):
“My corpse…my corpse…a car park over my corpse?”
It’s a parody of a quote by this same king in a Shakespeare work named for him. “My horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse.”
I warned you about the nerdiness! 😆 No apologies!
Queens – What song opens the 1977 Queen album “News of the World?” Good guess.
People – What is the name for the indigenous peoples of New Zealand?
Round Five
Fashion – What two-word French phrase describes a high-fashion garment created by expert artisans? Took a minute, but I managed to yank this out of my brain. It was quite painful. I mean – what would a fashion train wreck such as moi know about “high fashion?” 🤔
Prestige TV – Keri Russell and Matthew Reese play two KGB agents posting as a married couple in what TV series?
Science! What chemist and crystallographer’s work was central to understanding the structure of DNA? We used our answer of the week freebie to avoid answering this and getting full points.
Good thing, we’d never heard of this person before.
Round Six
Actors – What 500 Days of Summer actor wrote, directed and starred in “Mr. Corman” on Apple TV? I only remembered one person from that movie and it wasn’t the right person. Miss.
Writers – What motivational speaker wrote the book How to Win Friends and Influence People? I remember using this author as a guess for another similar question we had a while ago, glad it was correct this time!
Punctuation – What punctuation mark means “full stop” in British speaking?
I didn’t get down all of the team’s scores, Team Pants was in first with 73, we were in second with 71, two teams were tied with 69 points.
Here’s an image of our final question:
Team Dorks took first place and were the only team getting this correct. Rumor was someone on their team knew the Greek language pretty well.
We were in a tie with Tequila Tigers for second. We had to answer how many minutes long was the Queen album News of the World. My guess was three minutes under the correct answer, I don’t know what Tequila TIgers’ answer was. But I guess we won the tiebreaker or something?
I’m allegedly attending a MTL semifinal game this weekend just to hear the questions. And that will conclude our trivial pursuits for the week if I actually show up. “Game day decision” is my mantra for trivia these days since I’ve been so busy with work.
So we’ll see how I feel in the morning!
As always, Go Pods, and stay classy Joseph Gordon Levitt! And Pete Rose! And Denny Mclain, who I thought about during the game when we talked about incarcerated athletes (my mind is weird).
Answers
R1 grinch, butterfinger, needle
R2 Biden, the matrix, pete roser
R3 quid pro quo, don quixote, Linkin park
Halftime usa, canada, russia, denmark, norway
R4 richard III, we will rock you, maori
R5 haute couture, the Americans, Rosalind franklin
R6 joseph gordon levitt, dale carnegie, period
F 24
