On Thursday, February 29th Bear Creek Golf Club put on a special Trivia Night. The flyer read: “Get ready for an evening of brain-teasing fun and delicious food! Gather your friends and form a team of six to eight players.”

 

America’s Pub Quiz is a live-hosted trivia show that brings a free quiz night to bars, pubs, and restaurants throughout the United States. Their website boasts that the broad range of categories includes music, movies, TV, sports, history, and more, with plenty of surprises along the way. All team members can play to their strengths and useless knowledge stored away will finally be put to good use.

 

Nine teams gathered round their assigned tables, enjoyed a delicious buffet dinner and discreetly discussed strategies for the evening’s competition. Each table selected a team captain whose responsibilities were to download the America’s Pub Quiz app on their phone and then enter and submit the table’s agreed upon answers for each trivia question.

 

Andrew, our jovial Master of Ceremonies for the evening explained the rules of the game and issued stern warnings:

  1. No cheating or reference material, no looking up answers.

  2. Do not shout out answers.

  3. One answer per team.

  4, Submit before the music ends.

  5. The decision of the M.C. is final!

 

OK, Andrew, let’s go. Early questions about hall of fame baseball players and 70’s rock songs were answered correctly by most teams. When Andrew would announce the correct answer, small cheers went up around the room as successful teams congratulated themselves.

 

As the competition progressed the questions became more difficult. Here are three examples:

  1. In the Lord of the Rings, what was Gollum’s name before he was corrupted by the One Ring?

  2. Who won the Best Actress Oscar in 1988 and also won a Grammy?

  3. Which Indian chief rode with President Roosevelt during his 1905 inaugural parade?

 

Tricky, especially when you aren’t allowed to consult your phone.

 

For the last question of the game, much like Final Jeopardy on TV, the category was revealed and, before the question was asked, teams were required to wager a number of points from 0-15 depending on their confidence level and where they stood in the running score. One team that had been leading most of the night wagered conservatively while another team languishing in the middle of the pack bet all 15 points.

 

Can you guess what transpired?

 

Answers:

(Smeagol) (Cher) (Geronimo)