Dan's Papers Trivia Team Back on Top

After a couple weeks out of the winner’s circle, Dan’s Papers trivia team Thursday Night AA took first place on February 5 at the Townline BBQ Quiz Night and re-took our lead in the season standings.

Some of the topics this week were Current Events, Booze and Random Trivia.

We had a weak start. After the first two rounds out of six, we scored just 13 points out of a possible 20. There were six teams ahead of us, and one tied. The team in the lead had 18 points. We new it would be hard to catch up, but not impossible. And that’s just what we did. We added 8 points in the third round, moving us up to third place. Two teams were tied for first, both four points ahead of us.

The fourth round is always an activity round. For this week’s activity, the Quizmaster handed every team a sheet with 12 T-shirt designs, each inspired by a different movie.

Some were obvious. The Wild Stallions T-shirt was for Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Cyderdine is from Terminator. Hal 9000 was from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Amity Island is from Jaws.

The T-shirt that read “OCP” reminded me of RoboCop, but I couldn’t say why. But then Brett suggested it was RoboCop—also based on his gut—and we went for it. I later discovered OCP is Omni Consumer Products, the megacorporation from the films.

Brett also pieced together that the Martial Arts Tournament 1973 shirt must have been inspired by Enter the Dragon and that Lao Che Air Freight is from Indiana Jones. Brett and Dan knew Polymer Records was a reference to This Is Spinal Tap.

I thought The Slaughtered Lamb must be a reference to The Silence of the Lambs, but it was from An American Werewolf in London.

Despite the missteps, we finished the round with a respectable 9 out of 12, and moved up to a tie for second place. We were now 3 points behind the leaders.

At the end of the fifth round, we were in a three-way tie for first place, with 39 points, and the next team had just 34 points. We knew we’d end the night in the top three, and go home with some money, at least. It was comforting, but what we really wanted was to win.

The sixth and final round is always an audio round, and this week the topic was mashups. The objective was to name the two artists whose songs were mashed together. Many came to us easily. A few baffled us. What ’90s era rock band was playing behind Bruno Mars singing “Uptown Funk”? (It was Rage Against the Machine.)

Out of a possible 10 points, we scored 8. It was pretty good. But was it enough?

The scores were announced and there was a tie: It was us and Desiree.

In the event of a tie, teams can agree to split the pot, or they can battle it out with a tie-breaking question. I was happy to split the pot. Desiree wanted the tie-breaker. We went with the tie-breaker, and it turned out to be a huge mistake—on their part.

The question was, How many people watched the Super Bowl on Sunday? Brett jumped in with an answer of 100 million. Desiree said 150 million. The answer? 114 million.

We won!

The win earns us three points toward our season total. Last week, The Spunky Brewsters posted two points and tied with us in the race for the Townline Trophy for Trivia Excellence, aka the Golden Pig. This victory means we are back in the lead, but the Spunky Brewsters and Desiree are hot on our heels.

There are 16 Thursdays left before Memorial Day. Can we stay on top for that long?

Townline Quiz Night is held Thursdays at 7 p.m. at Townline BBQ in Sagaponack.