Week 5 of the $2,000 2011 Elbo Room Trivia Tournament

There have been many questions regarding this year’s tournament.  Will Get That Poison Out win back-to-back tournaments?  Will Woo Hoo a Go Go or Team Fist shock the world with a victory?  Will my Street Academy team claim the big bucks?  Will Team Schooled step to the plate and win?

Nah, those are easy questions to answer.

The big question everyone at Elbo Room is asking, however, is…

Where are the Skidmarks?  They haven’t returned to the Elbo Room tournament this year, and it’s like watching an NCAA basketball tournament without the participation of Gonzaga.

But last night, some of the Skidmarks – okay, Bryan Kafka, his girlfriend and a couple of his buddies – returned to Elbo Room to get back into the tournament.  Nice to see them again.  Let’s play.

My Street Academy team – Jeremy, Alexis and a couple of Jeremy’s friends, Todd and April, started out well.  It kinda helps when you know the first four inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame that aren’t Babe Ruth (Walter Johnson, Ty Cubb, Honus Wagner and Christy Mathewson), as well as the last three female singers of American Idol (Carrie Underwood, Fantasia Barrino, Jordin Sparks), and the author of “The Yankee Years” (Joe Torre).  We did well, and if it weren’t for not knowing the number of rooms in a game of Clue – we said 12, apparently there are only nine – we finished out with 114 points and a 10-point lead, going into the final question.

Magazines is the topic.

We bet enough to guarantee first place if we got it right.

“In what decade did TIME Magazine first have a ‘Man of the Year’ cover issue?”

We discussed and debated.

“Wouldn’t it have been around the 1950’s?” Todd asked.

“No,” I replied.  “At one time they gave the honor to Adolf Hitler.”

“For Man of the Year?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “It’s not given out to the best person of the year, it’s given to the person who effected the most change in the world that year, good or bad.  Heck, one year they even gave it to the Ayatollah Khomeini.”

Since we knew it was awarded in at least the 1940’s, we worked backwards and put down 1930’s as our answer.

Some other teams went with the 30’s – Woo Hoo a Go Go went back to the 1920’s, as did a new team in the bar, The Polanskis.

And what do you know – Charles Lindbergh was the first Man of the Year, and it took place in the 1920’s.  Correct answer for Woo Hoo and for the Polanskis, which put them on the board.

And who picks up third place and a single playoff point?  A team that bet a safe one-point wager on the final question – the Skidmarks.  Well, actually they were the “Skidmark,” since Bryan was the only regular member of the team to show up.  But I have a suspicion that now that the Skids are on the board, we’ll see all 37 of their teammates at Elbo Room soon enough.

So here’s the standings after five 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 5 of 20

	Trivia Team	Points	Totals	FINALS
1	Team Schooled		13
2	Woo Hoo a Go Go	5	12
3	Street Academy		9
4	Team Fist		7
T-5	The Polanskis	3	3
T-5	Get That Poison Out		3
7	Skidmarks	1	1

And only the top eight teams will make it into the final tournament round. 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.

Five weeks down. Fifteen weeks left to go.