No one figured out the Secret Theme round at Frank's this week, which was directly connected to the bar. Try and answer these questions for 5 points @, then figure out the connecting theme for an additional 8. Answers to be posted in a few days.
1) What 2002 romantic comedy starred Sandra Bullock opposite Hugh Grant?
2) What TV show on the CW network follows the lives of five teens, including Lucas Scott and his half-brother Nathan?
3) Who produced William Shatner's 2004 album Has Been?
4) What 1995 film starred Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman and Gwyneth Paltrow?
5) Who succeeded Ben Franklin as US ambassador to France beginning in 1785?
6) What CBS sit-com follows the fortunes of the Harper family?
7) What New York City neighborhood dervied its name from the intersections of Park, Worth and Baxter Sts.?
8) What 1987 movie featured Andrew McCarthy as Clay Easton?
9) Name the campaign American Idol is conducting to raise money for AIDS and poverty causes.
10) What is the Mitsubishi A6M much better known as?
... and what's the theme?
I heavily diluted the quiz at Frank's this week with some 17 movie questions, 8 TV questions, 4 sports and 1 celebrity news. I made the Before/After round year 2005, making it less a history round than a current events round (and one without much possibility to answer "After," reflected in 9 of a possible 10 Before events.) I even made the Secret Theme theme something directly related to Frank's itself so that regulars might better be able to get the 8 bonus points.
None of this helped change standings, as Group W cruised to another victory, surpassing Team Edward 147-99. Last week Team Edward called themselves Team Mike and placed last, so this was quite a turnaround for them. A perfect American Geography round propelled them to So-So Silver. 
Smell the Glove moved from their usual 2nd place position to 3rd with a frustrating 98. They should not be forced to smell the glove... well, at least not over and over...The infamous W shuns the photographic lens like a rare Southeast Asian leopard, thus I represent them here with Fred Flintstone, his wife Wilma and little Pebbles. Pebbles is last week's Mr. Ball, who is the first to note he serves as more a team mascot than a contributor.
I was surprised to learn that some teams couldn't name Fred's wife in the easy round (I got a few "Betty" answers, which was Barney's wife) and two teams thought Justin Timberlake had been married to Britney Spears for the past couple of years. If there was one piece of information that I thought had been pounded into the head of every American above the age of 5, I thought it was the K-Fed thing. I was wrong.
The recent pop culture question glut somehow managed to lower the average score about 10-20 points. I'm not sure how that happened, but it happened.
We had to scratch three questions owing to drunks and stooges shouting answers. Thus the scores are out of a possible 202 and not 212. I am fully well sick of that crap. It becomes impossible to market this quiz to people who enjoy the quizzo thing and usually play at other bars and retain the new people for more than one visit if a comparatively small (but loud) group of regulars can't behave at a minimal standard of middle class behavior. I can't grow the quiz and ensure that it continues if the business trails off because people are frightened away, and it seems almost every damn week we have one or two new teams I've brought in through aggressive (if low budget) marketing who walk out, never to return.
I'll remind people who want to be there that you should tell the staff if someone is annoying you, directly or indirectly, by ruining your ability to participate in the activity you showed up specifically to do. They need to change their behavior or leave, not you. And don't be shy about telling someone to shut up or stop bothering you if you need to, this is well within your rights as a paying customer.
Everyone walked out a winner at this quiz. Every team who stayed through the duration received a prize, either a certificate from the bar or a new copy of the CD Toolbox Classics, classical music played on power tools. No, really.
Your scores:
Champs: Group W 147
So-So Silver: Team Edward 99
Shameful, Shameful Bronze: Smell the Glove 98
Also-rans:
Das Sauerkraut a.k.a. Group XYZ 64
My Glass Is Empty 62
Debauchery Parade 48*
* indicates team arrived late &/or left early
I asked a round of May Day-related questions at Ray's this week on May Day itself. As the Frank's quiz has been pop cultured (if this is a verb) for lowest common denominator appeal, Ray's was the place to do this subject round. This photo is from NYC in 1908. You have to love the English-language Irish and Yiddish signs at the same rally. How many of these would you have gotten right? Answers will be posted in a few days.
1) The distress call "May Day!" is a homonym for a French phrase that's pertinent to your distressed situation. What does this phrase translate as in English?
2) What May 1,1886 event in Chicago led to the establishment of May Day as an international labor day?
3) What nominally autonomous province of Yugoslavia had its administrative capital at Novi Sad?
4) Who was the leader of the government that was overthrown by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in 1917 (not the czar, the head of the Russian government)?
5) In what year did the Cuban Missile Crisis take place?
6) In what year did the USSR officially dissolve?
7) What was the only communist country ever to host the Winter Olympics?
8) From 1975-1978, Cuban troops fought with the leftist MPLA in what African nation?
9) More than 700 dissident intellectuals signed a human rights declaration called Charter 77 in 1977 in which communist nation?
10) In 1921 Soviet troops helped a revolutionary movement create the world's second communist country. Which country was that? (It was never incorporated into the Soviet Union.)
The lefty news commentary site CounterPunch has reprinted an article from the San Francisco Chronicle by a writer named Carla Blank which makes the same points I did ealrier on this blog about coverage of the Virginia Tech killings. This was far from the "biggest massacre in American history" or some such nonsense. What's even more damning is that I believe Ms. Blank and I only shared one counterexample! So many massacres, so little time...
Hello everyone!After several weeks of blogging about my pub quizzes in Philadelphia and a few other notes on happenings elsewhere, I finally seem to have struck a chord (or more likely nerve). My previous post was about the recent fatal Estonian riot in Tallinn, the capital. Since then I've had heavy visitation from Estonia, their neighboring country and ethnolinguistic relatives Finland, and Russia itself. I wish I had this kind of traffic from Philadelphia!First off I want to make clear that I had a great time in Estonia, that people were very nice to me, and although I was there during a cold winter month I'd highly recommend the country to anyone looking for a very interesting experience. Estonia is a fine place, and most of the time much safer to walk around in than many parts of my own country.That said, I think some of the comments in the previous post are by some folks from that small country who don't want to hear certain things. Part of the country did in fact side with the Soviets during the war; this seems to argue against rather than for removing a Soviet war monument. I don't follow the logic of how removing the monument and especially the bodies of people who fought the Nazis and died doing it has anything to do with the Soviet occupation after they died.I'm sure some Estonians were, for whatever reasons, active members of the Communist Party during the period that it was the Estonian SSR. Perhaps these people should get as much or more blame as ethnic Russians for people being sent to Siberia. You'll notice that a good number of Russians were anti-Soviet and were sent to camps regardless of where they lived, in or out of Russia. This is an ethnic dispute and trying to make it a referendum on whether or not the Soviet Union was a moral country that treated Estonians well doesn't sound very honest to me.
Battles over historic markers, monuments, etc. are always really about the present and future rather than the past. If you didn't have a large Russian ethnic population right now who are largely poor, more heavily involved in crime (as most poorer people are) and regarded as criminals and intruders in the country where most of them were born - in the case of younger people through no fault of their own - this wouldn't be an issue. The monument and bodies would still be there I suspect. I think this was a move to remind the local Russian population that they're not fully welcome, and they responded in the same spirit.I should point out that my translator when I was in the country, who was very nice to me personally, had many negative things to say about Russians as an ethnicity. I heard similar comments from other Estonians, who warned me to avoid going out alone at night because Russians, specifically, might try and rob me. I began to think of Russians in Estonia the way that African-Americans are regarded by some in the United States. None of this makes the rioting and looting OK, I'm not saying that.The big thing that no one seems to want to discuss is that Estonia's Jewish population disappeared during the war. It seems to have gone from about 20,000 or so to "less than 12." Not 12,000, I mean a dozen people. Twelve people. There was a Nazi death camp in Estonia and I think pretending that ethnic Estonians weren't a part of that is very selective. The Nazis probably killed more Estonians than the Soviets did, but they were Jews and also looked at as outsiders. There's no one left to mourn for that population.I have ancestors myself from Poland, and frankly I think the behavior of most Poles and Eatern Europeans when the Nazis moved in was shameful. People throughout the region weren't too upset about the Jews being removed. In many, many cases they helped - in far more cases than the SS was resisited. For all the bad the USSR did, the inconvenient historic truth is that the country did more than any other to defeat the Nazis. More than the USA, more than anyone. If it weren't for those Soviet soldiers most of the people reading this blog over the past two days might be speaking German now. Maybe you wouldn't mind that..?I don't buy the argument that people "make you" help invaders. Millions of people died resisitng the Soviet Communist Party, millions more decided to go along and not suffer as much. You can see right now in Iraq that dedicated people would rather die than accomodate. None of us need to make excuses for our ancestors when they made poor decisions.Surely we realize that if you have an ethnic minority who now feel like second-class citizens, and if you dig up soldiers of their ethnicity who died removing the Nazis from your country, they're going to be upset. Of course they are.Now I imagine that I'll get some angry comments from Estonia, Poland and who knows where else. I'm probably one of the only people in America to make any comment at all about this, most people don't know and don't care. Maybe some Russians will make me some sort of hero now too - you shouldn't, I think there's been some bad behavior on that side too. As is so often the case with ethnic battles, both sides are mostly wrong, but both sides are also accurate in accusing the other of being asses.UPDATE: Estonia to relocate statue, remainsFURTHER UPDATE: I've learned that the Estonian government paid to erect a monument to Estonian Nazis which was later moved to a museum after pressure from a number of countries
The fellow looting to the left is likely part of Estonia's 1/3 ethnic Russian minority. There have been riots in this small, typically frozen and usually safe/mellow country recently owing to the removal of a World War II monument to Soviet soldiers and the disinterment of some of their remains. So far one person has been killed.
I've been to that monument, having done a short period of contract work in Tallinn, the capital, back in 1999. It's a strange and incredible little corner of Europe. The old town is a thousand years old and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It "looks like Europe" more than anywhere else I've been.
The issue has brought a number of uncomfortable social forces to a head. A lot of ethnic Estonians sided with the Nazis during the war. There were thousand year old ties with Germany, and frankly the average Estonian, who is related to Finns, probably thought of themselves as better people than your average Russian. Many still do. When the Soviets kicked the Nazis out of the Baltics, they incorporated the Baltic States into the USSR whether people liked or not. (For the most part "not.")
Ethnic Russians moved to the port cities of Estonia, which shares a border with western Russia, and although a minority everyone had to learn Russian to get ahead in school and in careers. Resentment ran high. When the USSR fell apart, about a third of Estonia became an ethnic minority overnight. Laws were changed to make Estonian the official language and the language of school and commerce. Suddenly the Russians became disadvantaged, and ended up with the crappier work and salaries. I noticed that my Estonian phrasebook wasn't always useful; there's a good chance that your bus driver or waitress speaks Russian.
Now we come to deciding to remove a monument to the people who liberated Estonia from the Nazis... and incorporated the country under Soviet/Russian control. You can understand how the mutual resentment has boiled over.
Hopefully this will blow over at some point, and you can visit this cool little country some day soon when the tear gas clouds dissipate.
In case you had a world record in mind for breaking, you should really check out the Guinness page on applying. It appears a good number of the records recently broken are a bit on the lame side, such as Largest Simultaneous Stretch and Largest Parade of Mercedes Benz cars.
I'm more a fan of the older school weirdness, such as fattest twins and longest fingernails. But I'm just a foolish ol' sentimentalist I 'spose...
Last week's bar attendance was a bit thin at both venues. Hopefully we can get more people out this coming week. Here are your temporal/spatial coordinates for the upcoming quizzes:
Tuesday, May 1, 9pm
Ray's Happy Birthday Bar
1200 E. Passyunk St. (near 9th & Federal Sts.)
Subject Round: MAY DAY
Wednesday, May 2, 9pm
Dirty Frank's
13th & Pine Sts.
Subject Round: AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY
The Subject Round at this week's Frank's quiz was Reduplication, in which all the answers had the common element of repeated syllables (for example Walla Walla, Washington or Lulu). Here's the whole round, how many would you have answered correctly? The winning team answered nine, the second-place team eight, and only one of the questions was not answered correctly by anyone in the room (#9). I'll post the answers in a few days. By the by, the duplicate soldiers were photographed by yours truly in Puebla, Mexico, the city that most of the people who cook your food in Philadelphia restaurants are from.1) What 1966 Neil Diamond song was his first Top 10 hit single?
2) What Thor Heyerdahl book (1958) examined the origins of Easter Island's giant stone heads?
3) What rock'n'roll standard, first recorded by Richard Berry in 1955, became the subject of an infamous mid-'60s FBI obscenity investigation?
4) What South African bishop won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984?
5) What famous New York prison was known as "Mt. Pleasant" when it opened back in 1828?
6) What character on the cartoon Drawn Together is a caricature of Pikachu from Pokemon?
7) What disease of the nervous system is caused by a Vitamin B1 deficiency? Hint: it's the Sinhalese for "I cannot, I cannot."
8) What's the capital of American Samoa?
9) What well-known children's book ends with a recipie for Monsieur Bon-Bon's Secret Fooj?
10) The Ohio Express had two Top 20 hits in 1968 with songs with reduplicative titles. Name one for 2 points & both for 4.
It's been brought to my attention that there have been complaints that my Wednesday night quiz is too challenging for the masses here in George W. Bush's America. A dumbing-down request has been made.
The irony here is that the people reading this blog are not the complainers. I know that. It's a shame that those of you who like a good quiz have to read this, but I have to explain to you why the quiz will be changing. I suspect the complainers are the sad barstool jockeys who add nothing to the quiz but loudmouthed witless heckling and extra background noise.
Setting aside for a moment the issue of complaining about a free entertainment service provided by a bar which is giving out free certificates for goods and on top of which I'm handing out free prizes, even for last place [!], we're left with the issue of the quiz itself. Is it that hard?
Let's review: 6 rounds, 51 questions.
The first round of 10 is the Easy Round, in which I already basically give away 9 or 10 points in an attempt to make the poor teams feel better about themselves. You've been doing something wrong to this point in life if you don't get 8 right. Seriously. Recently I've asked about Gilligan's Island and the number of quarts in a gallon. It's the Special Olympics of trivia - "Yay, we all win!"
The second round is Before/After. It's a 50/50 proposition; you can sit at home right now, not having heard a single question yet, guess randomly 10 times and the Law of Averages says you'll get 4-6 right. Try it out; pick 10 answers this moment, come in Wednesday and stick with them. I'm handing you a good 10 points, people.
Thus far we've covered 20 questions, and you can't possibly answer less than about 13 of them correctly if you have a command of English, grew up in this country and can grip a pen.
The Speed Round is third. That's a slight bit trickier, but the answers are always things like names of states or major newspapers or members of City Council (in your own city mind you), or other categories of common nouns with which adults are generally familiar. There aren't only 10 correct answers in the Speed Round, there are usually 12-20! Getting all 10 correct is tough, but if you can't hit 3-5 answers out of 12-20 vaild ones most weeks I have to conclude that, again, you have been pissing your intellectual life away, and this really isn't my fault.
Consider this past week's question about the states that have legalized medical marijuana. There are 11 correct answers, you pick 10 states out of 50. If you even write the names of any 10 states in a totally random fashion, your odds of not getting any correct are about the same as your winning the lottery.
To this point I've essentially handed you somewhere in the neighborhood of 33 points just for showing up.
The Subject Round is one I announce ahead of time! I tell you what the subject is days in advance on this blog and if you have the slightest bit of interest in winning you can study up. Even though these are 4-point questions I always make sure at least a couple are gimmies so that people don't get turned off. That's 8 more free points even if you don't study the subject! That's a good 41 points for being baseline literate.
Granted, the fifth and sixth rounds are hard, If I didn't have these rounds the non-knuckle-draggers (if you're reading this, that's you) who come to the bar specifically to play the quiz wouldn't show up. The market for growing this quiz and for any decent pub quiz in Center City are the people who can't be bothered with 30 or 40 unchallenging questions.
The Secret Theme Round has a... wait for it... Secret Theme which is a bit of a riddle/non-linear brain teaser. No, it's not always simple. It's not supposed to be simple, it's a riddle with bonus points for the teams that should win on merit. The hard questions are hard because they're worth 6 points each. This lets the more savvy people beat the less savvy people in a game that's designed around being savvy. It's comparable to letting the faster people win track events. Once a week there should be a reward in some aspect of American life for not being a "moran."
I'm keeping the same format, I'll just notch down the intellectual level. This is the funny thing to me; the people who complain about losing the harder quiz are going to lose easier ones by wider margins! The mob has spoken; enjoy the consequences. Here's a question: if it's embarrassing to get blown out of a decently challenging quiz, what does it say about you if your ass gets smoked in an easy one? Will people feel better if Group W kicks your ass by 70 points instead of 40? Because that's what's going to happen, I guarantee it.
Here's a link to the best thing Ned "Carlos" Mencia ever did, the Dee Dee Dee Song. Toward the end there the lyric captures the zeitgeist of America:
This test is too hard! (So they lower the standards)
I’m not good at sports! (So they give them all trophies)
My dad used to spank me (So they lower the standards)
I’m too fat for this seat (So they widen the standards)
They say no cause I’m black (So they lower the standards)
They say no cause I’m white (So they lower the standards)
They say no cause I’m Asian (So they lower the standards)
No habla ingles (So we all become Spaniards)
And you wake up one day and you don’t have the skills
To get a better job so you’re stuck on the grill
You’re wondering why Julio took your job
But you forget to see, you’re as dumb as a knob
Your ass is too fat to get out of the house
While you’re eating more food trying to figure it out
So they outsource your job to some guy named Habib
Cause he works harder than you and he’s got 5 degrees
And you’re asking yourself how could this happen to me
I’ll tell you why, homie! Cause you’re….dee dee dee
The big news of the week was Group W's nearly record-setting performance at Frank's. They scored a ridiculous 171 in one of my harder quizzes, blowing away the field. Note at the right side of this page that that's the second-highest score in the history of this format. W is almost impossible to photograph, kinda like getting decent footage of mating sharks. Again, you just need to come out to Frank's on a Wednesday night and see them in action. I'm using this photo to represent them, it's a male and a female with a ball. Group W are a male and female, and this week were joined by the similarly purposeless-but-fun Mr. Ball. It's a visual pun, and taken in Iraq to boot. Am I going to Hell yet..? Dave from Group W was also awarded a hardback copy of Dirty Dave's 101 X-Rated Jokes as a spot prize, which is oddly selling for more than $37 Canadian on Amazon.ca. Go figure. It's not even funny.
Team Mike finished an honest last place and therefore won a used-but-intact edition of the game Adverteasing. It's a trivia game focused on advertising, and unfortunately if they play it as a group some of them will still lose. Thanks for coming out, guys! They almost screwed things up by getting 2 right in the Unreasonably Difficult Round too. Last by 3 points!
I'm happy to report that we had our second consecutive week of no shouted answers at Frank's. Thank you. The scores for this week follow...
Champs: Group W 171
So-So Silver: Suck Gas Evildoers 134Shameful, Shameful Bronze: Prufrock 117
Also-rans:
Holding Alli's Hair Back 75
Team Mike 73
We can only hope Alli gets better!
Over at Ray's on Tuesday night, a smaller version of our old friends Frankenberry Harvest won by a comfortable margin. The team walked home with some free drinks and another darn Adverteasing game! What can I say, there they were, they're cheap, they're trivia, I snagged a couple when available as prizes.
In second we had Machete, only one member of which was willing to appear on camera:
This fellow appears to be indicating that he's willing to commit as many as 5 lewd acts for $3. At least that's how I interpret that. Your scores:
Champs: Frankenberry Harvest 108
So-So Silver: Machete 92
Shameful, Shameful Bronze: Cosine of 4 (Minus 2) 89
Also-rans:
It's a Shame About Ray's 76
Shakes 43
There was light bar attendance this week. Hopefully things will pick up next week. Remember that you can play one or both quizzes as a completely new set of questions is written for each. I'll be posting the most challenging questions of the week and a whole lot more in the coming days. See you soon!
If you have a question, comment, complaint or what have you that doesn't seem to belong anywhere else, stick it here. I'll respond to any that need response. Thanks.
As noted in my post below on this week's upcoming quizzes, the Frank's quiz this week will feature a round of reduplication (link to scholarly explanation) questions, in which all correct answers will have a reduplicative element. This is the result of me having taken too many undergrad linguistics classes.
Simply put I'll be looking for answers that round in which there's a repeated linguistic element. Think Walla Walla, Washington or Bang Bang, My Baby Shot Me Down. Or think of it as the spoken equivalent of this photo I took in Mexico City a few years back.
Sometimes I wonder if the word isn't an in-joke from some linguist. I should think duplication covers the issue and reduplication might mean "repeated thrice."
Are you totally pumped for the two quizzes this week? Well, are you, punk?! You darn well should be!
A reminder that each quiz is unique, so you can play and win both.
The temporal and spatial coordinates follow:
Tuesday, April 24, 8:30pm
Ray's Happy Birthday Bar
1200 E. Passyunk St. (near 9th & Federal Sts.)
Subject Round: COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES
Wednesday, April 25, 9pm
Dirty Frank's
13th & Pine Sts.
Subject Round: REDUPLICATION
Group W handed the rest of the Frank's crowd an Ike Turner-level beating this week, and Alkie Bartokemous had to squeak out a win at the inaugural Ray's Happy B-Day Bar event in a tiebreaker, my first ever for first place in this format. Quite a week!
Above is a representative photo of the mighty Group W, whose win I've had to symbolize with another treasure-bearing W as my camera equipment continues to be foiled in my feeble attempts to photograph them. It's uncanny and mysterious. You'll just have to come to Frank's yourself on a Wednesday night to see them in action in person.The formidable W slapped around their opponents like a killer whale bashing a line of seal pups, and cruised to the largest margin of victory I've ever had in this format, missing the All-Time Top Ten list by 1 point. This is even more incredible considering that they were completely blanked in the Speed Round, in which I asked for the names of 10 USFL franchises.
Coming in a distant second were rookies Shithawks!, who played a much better game than their name would suggest. Here we see the group enjoying their winnings at a cozy booth at Frank's:
Lil Roy Screamed used the Spinal Tap-inspired nom de guerre Tonight We're Gonna Rock You Tonight and finished 2 points out of second, or if you see it their way tied for second. Hopefully they and you will return next week and try to fend off Group W.
I gave away a last place prize to a deserving team this week, Pot Luck Dinner scored an honest 41, stayed through the whole game and were good sports about it. That earned them not one but two copies of the soundtrack to Black Spring Break. This fine piece of cinematic delight was a vehicle for the mellow sounds of Tupac and the always positive 2 Live Crew among many others. The team asked me if I was going to make fun of them, and I'm not. The idea of the last place prize is that there should be a reward, however odd and cheap, for anyone willing to stick it out and learn something. Here the kids are, preparing to get as nasty as 2 Live Crew wants 'em to be:
"Word up!"
Frank's scores:
Champs: Group W 156So-So Silver: Shithawks! 94
Shameful, Shameful Bronze: Tonight We're Gonna Rock You Tonight 92
Also-rans:
Neo-Falafelites 86
Piece of Piss Conspiracy 72
Too Dirty Teen Hunger Force 60
Pot Luck Dinner 41
I'll also note that these scores are out of 212 for the first time as the crowd was extremely cooperative and for the first time no questions were scratched owing to shouted answers. Thanks for that, it makes the night 100% better.
Over at the inaugural Ray's event on Tuesday we had a great turn-out despite the last minute notice. For the first time in my format it came down to a tiebreaker question for first place (I'm going to score that as 1 additional potential point out of 213 for both teams), and Alkie Bartokemous edged out a team who kept changing their name but started as Others Not 40 Yet. My tiebreaker was to guess closest to the number of chapters in the Old and New Testaments combined. The answer is 1,189, and Alkie guessed about 600 chapters closer for the victory. Congrats, guys!
Others Not Yet 40, who appended their team name to note that they had all original body parts, finished second with a very respectable 150. Here we see them with the prizes I cobbled together at the last minute, not knowing what to expect at the hastily prepared Ray's quiz (next week there will be a bar tab at stake). Note that the swag included a Coke magnet, a paperback copy of Growing Up Brady and two watch-battery-driven oddities called the "Eros Keychain."
The Engrish packaging on the keychains promises "ROMANTIC APPETANCE!" and "EROTICISM LAXWHOOP!" I have no idea what that means; a Google search turns up nothing. 
I found these things in a dollar store in Camden (best not to ask how or why.) Insert 3 watch batteries, push any button - any one, they all do the same thing - and you get the high-pitched Asian vocalist-style sound of a woman having an orgasm. I have no idea why they have MAD printed upon them either.
Your scores:
Champs: Alkie Bartokemous 151So-So Silver: Others Not Yet 40 150
Shameful, Shameful Bronze: Cosine of 4 (-2) 147
Also-rans:
No Violence at Quizzo, or Pub Quiz or Whatever 146
... [team called themselves "ellipses"]* 65
Shakes 43
* indicates team arrived late &/or quit
Hope to see everyone again next week!
Surrender to the popular will of righteously harmonious quizzing or be trampled underfoot like a running dog imperialist's lackey! Here are some of the toughest or most interesting questions from the two quizzes I ran this past week, plus the whole Secret Theme Round from Frank's. I'll post the answers in a few days.
1) What New York rap duo was a one-hit wonder with their 1990 hit "Turtle Power!," from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles soundtrack?
2) Not counting D'Artagnan, name the Three Musketeers.
3) According to the Recording Industry Association of America, what's the best-selling album of all time in the US?
4) In the zoological hierarchy, what comes between Phylum and Order?
5) In what California city were both the McDonald's chain and Hell's Angels founded?
6) What was the only US Top 40 single for the Jimi Hendrix Experience?
Secret Theme Round from Frank's
1) In the sci-fi cult classic Logan's Run, at what age are people put to death in the future?
2) What was the original name of the city of Toronto?
3) The largest National Forest east of the Mississippi is in Pennsylvania. Name it.
4) What sappy children's story about a poor girl was first published in 1765 and is generally credited to Oliver Goldsmith?
5) How many players play defense on a cricket team?
6) Who wrote "Of Human Bondage?"
7) How many rods are in a furlong?
8) Which amendment to the US Constitution forbids excessive bail, excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishment?
9) What's the capital of Barbados?
10) What famous anthropologist wrote Coming of Age in Samoa?
... and what's the link to those 10 answers?
... from this post, below.Unreasonably Difficult:
1) Euclid (read his proof here)
2) University of Iowa, Iowa State, Oklahoma State
3) Actinium
Theme Round:
The theme was RED. Why?
1) Dawn, as in the film Red Dawn
2) Bono, he of the (Red) campaign
3) Cincinnati (home of the Reds), and here's the story of how the name came about
4) Eric Robert Rudolph; hence Eric the Red or the Red-Nosed Reindeer
5) Mars, the Red Planet
6) Harum Scarum, and the link being the Red Scare
7) Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia, who was a Red leader
8) Greg "The Bull" Luzinski - via Red Bull
9) Fox in Socks; Redd Foxx or Red Sox
10) Fez, and they're usually red
No one figured out the Secret Theme round at Frank's this week, which was directly connected to the bar. Try and answer these questions for 5 points @, then figure out the connecting theme for an additional 8. Answers to be posted in a few days.
