Week 2 of the 2011 Elbo Room Spring Trivia Tournament

Playing competitive team trivia means that you have to be receptive to any possible answer at any time. Even if you think you know the answer, it could actually lead to a different response when applied.

Does that make sense? Probably not. Unless you heard the final question last night at Elbo Room.

First off, my trivia teammates Jeremy and Alexis had the hot answers to start off – Alexis knew the country that claimed rights over Greenland (Denmark), J-Mac knew the store whose motto is “Let’s Build Something Together” (Lowe’s), and if you’re going to ask a 10-point question regarding how many sides does a nonogon have, it’s probably in the wheelhouse when one of your teammates is a math professor from Siena. By the way, a nonogon has nine sides.

That’s not to say we were perfect. We actually wiped out on the quadruple bonus question, as we did not know the first years in which Bill Parcells coached his four NFL teams. We were also unaware of Elizabeth Taylor’s age (we thought she was in her 80’s, apparently she’s a spry 79).

We did redeem ourselves by naming the three films for which Jack Nicholson won Oscars (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Terms of Endearment, As Good As It Gets), and we also snagged the date of death for the Notorious B.I.G. (1997), and the film in which Raymond Burr plays a character named Steve Martin (the first Godzilla picture).

So as we reached the final question, we had 106 points, 20 behind the leaders (Stern Fans) and 18 points out of second place (Woo Hoo a Go Go).

We decided to bet 79 points, which if all three teams got the answer right, would guarantee us at least third place.

The category was “Stage Names.”

Urgh. This may as well have been “Celebrity Birthdays” or “Before They Were Stars” or that nebulous category “Things that Chuck Miller has no knowledge of.”

The question. “A character from which motion picture was the inspiration for the nickname for singer-songwriter Alicia Moore?”

So first you had to figure out who Alicia Moore was, and what film inspired her character’s name.

And 3,000 miles away, as she’s reading this blog post, I know my daughter Cassaundra is screaming “Dad, that’s Pink! That’s Pink!!”

Yes, yes, Cassie, I know it’s Pink. But that’s not going to help me figure out the movie, now is it?

Jeremy, however, had the answer. “The only film I can think of with a character named Pink was Reservoir Dogs.”

You know what – that’s as good an answer as any others. Up went the slip, with Reservoir Dogs as the answer.

Stern Fans also had Reservoir Dogs, but Woo Hoo a Go Go wrote down a big fat question mark for their answer. As for the other teams, Get That Poison Out wrote down Reservoir Digs, while the Skidmarks went with Grease (perhaps as one of the Pink Ladies?), while a new team, the Cougars, wrote down the answer of Amadeus. Because certainly Alicia Moore got her nickname from F. Murray Abraham’s interpretation of Salieri.

Anyway, the answer was indeed Reservoir Dogs, and Street Academy nailed a second-place finish!  Get this party started on a Saturday night…

Stern Fans took first place, while the Poisons nabbed third – one more playoff point and another week atop the leader board.

So here’s the standings after two weeks. The top eight teams are listed above the “CUT LINE”; if the tournament ended today, those would be the eight teams that can play in the championship round. Any team with a star in the box marked “Finals” has mathematically qualified for the money round, no matter how they do for the rest of the tournament.

Elbo Room Trivia Standings – Week 2

	Trivia Team	Points	Totals	FINALS
1	Get That Poison Out	1	6
2	Stern Fans	5	5
T-3	Street Academy	3	3
T-3	Woo Hoo a Go Go		3
5	Skidmarks		1

And only the top eight teams will make it into the final tournament round on May 26, 2011. Any team in ninth place or below will not make the cut. So teams now have to keep playing and avoid the dreaded cut line.

Two weeks down. Eleven weeks to go.