REPORT FOR APRIL 2018
Over the year, we have had 30 different teams with 21 attending all 5 sessions to date. We had nearly 90 players in the House for the April meeting. I got off to a bad start not remembering that the number 1 is not a prime number. Mybad. The second question about hedonophobia was answered correctly by 17 out of the 24 teams present. That was good. I was looking forward to question three about who the inspiration was for the bully in the film “Back to the Future II”. Here, to my surprise, 18 out of the 24 teams got Trump. The other 6 teams said Gary Busey (2 votes), Andre the Giant, actor Charles Laughton, Frankenstein and ……Hitler! Good guesses. From this point the round was apparently more difficult and wound up with 49% correct responses. There were only 4 correct answers regarding the first country to utilize time zones and when it was. No team got the country (New Zealand) and Positive Vibrations, Trivia Trailblazers, Space Cadets and Cashew were close with the correct year. I suppose the “deadliest job in the U.S. was a bit of a trick question which I don’t approve of normally but it was too interesting to leave alone and no team got it which is quite rare in our 8 year experience to date. The most popular choices for this question were fireman, crab fisherman, farming and taxi driver. Altogether, 21 out of 24 knew the age of passing for the three musicians (27). This was a different start to the night and it did not improve very much until the last two rounds.
Round 2 came in at 56% with 17 getting the question about the TV show that never had theme music. The Hotel squad left that point on the table. A surprise. Question 2 came up blank with Mr. Potato Head being the first to show up on TV. The water difficulties in Flint, Michigan was answered correctly by all but one team. Nine teams got that Alberta is Canada’s 4th largest province in area. The correct order is Quebec way ahead of Ontario, then B.C. Fifteen teams knew the favoured male dog name as Max. Our new dog is named “Jake” (sort of similar). Most knew Dusty Springfield for the music question.
The score of Round 3 was an average 52% and I noted that in reviewing the “exam papers” that We Know Stuff’s happened to be on the top of the pile for this round and it is time to acknowledge that they indeed, do know stuff, as they were the only team to get the music question as Wilson Pickett albeit they spelled Pickett as Picket- an allowable “error”. Speaking of knowing things, only Thistle Rocks and Broken Record knew that there have been 5 left-handed U.S. presidents. Most all teams knew that Johnny Depp used his Jack Sparrow outfit when visiting hospitals. There were 18 teams that knew that the Rolling Stones were the object of the video clip although the Dave Clark 5 got one vote.
Round 4 was not a high-scoring segment with 44%. Lady Gaga got 22 votes with three who said Gwen Stefani-very logical. Slightly more than half the teams got the hometown and name of Kirk Douglas and as of this writing he is 101. Six teams (better than guess-work) knew that Bobby Freeman was the singer in “Do You Want to Dance” that ended the round. Round 5 I think set a record for frustration as the score for the round was only 30%. It started well enough with the $100,000,000 box-office record for “Jaws” but then it wasn’t pretty. The high score for this round was 5 achieved by 7 of the top 9 finishers. A few teams got the longest movie (224 minutes) to win an Oscar (“Gone with the Wind”) but there were some good tries such as “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Citizen Kane”. More than half the teams knew about the identical birthdays of Lincoln and Darwin. It has been occasionally in the news. No teams answered 2/3 of the highest GDP/person question. It was hard. The Slinky question was not well perceived as to invention time (1943) during the war years and only Cheap Dates got Bobby Vinton for the music question.
Round 6 came in at 60% so things were finishing up reasonably well doubling the score of the previous round. Five teams got Rudyard Kipling as the first English-speaking Nobel for Literature and these were the Bulldogs, Crusader Rabbit, Wasted Synapses, Cheap Dates and the ultimate winner of the night, We Know Stuff. Eight teams knew Raphael’s impact on art including the Blonde Artifacts and their neighbors, Hotel de Ville. The next question was almost offensive in its contrast to the one with Raphael and was much better answered showing modern “culture” with “Duck Dynasty” being the subject of the query. The Audi logo was identified by ALL teams. Good ads or high pay are responsible for this win but I suspect it is the good ads. The music question was answered by all but one team as Gladys Knight and the Pips. I was reminded that the “Pips” were all male.
The final round ended on a high note with a 64% score and three teams with a perfect 10/10 and these were Cheap Dates, Thistle Rocks and ….We Know Stuff. Hansen’s Disease aka Leprosy was tagged by about half the teams. Nine teams follow the history of Molson’s founding (1786) probably a Bar-Trivia question often asked. I thought the last song, “Can’t Hurry Love” could have had a variety of titles and there were 7 takers with “Hangin’ On, “Love Don’t Come Easy” (2 votes),“Momma Said”, (3 votes) and “Give and Take”. As mentioned, this was a night on the low side with a net 50% “grade” for all.
May 10 (birthday of Homer Simpson) is our next and last venture of this season.
I thank as usual, our excellent scorekeepers Cordelia, her friend from Queen’s University, Julia and Steven. I always thank Kim Stephenson for gathering the money and for some of the prizes. Due to this and March’s game, We Know Stuff has a dominant lead but positions 2-6 are up for grabs.
On the next pages are the overall results.
