Illinois Trivia

Thanks to Frank Simpson and company for letting me sit in last night at Southeast.  I’ve played a couple of times with ‘OJ’ before, and he always puts together a good team, so I was glad to see a chair open at his table.  In the end, we were tied with the always formidable Team Kienzler for first place going into the last category – but botched a couple of Obama questions and finished in 2nd place 89-88.   I’ll take 88 points.  We had 10’s in the Sports, Entertainment, and TV categories and 8’s and 9’s in everything else – except for Geography, where we scored an embarrassing 6. 
As always, the quality of the questions was solid, and well-researched.  I can’t ever remember hearing a groan or seeing anyone complaining about an answer at a Southeast event.  They do tend to lean a bit toward the academic side, but last night there was enough pop culture to make it entertaining, despite a couple of technical difficulties.  One thing that did stick out was that out of the 100 questions, 20 of them required multiple answers – including 7 of the states Rt.66 passed through, the 5 original Trivial Pursuit categories, all the main actors on Bonanza, and the ingredients of Alfredo sauce.  I think unless you’re offering partial credit, 20 might be a few too many questions to require more than one answer, and requiring more than 3 or 4 answers is a bit much (even though we got those right).

Some notes from last night…

• All of the schools in District 186 that are named for Presidents are middle schools (Washington, Jefferson, Grant, Lincoln Magnet).  Addams, it turns out is spelled with two d’s (who knew?) and is named for Jane, not Charles.
• One of those geography questions that gets me every time (but never again!) is about the longest river in the US….The Missourri!  Yes it’s true, and I have no idea why the Mississippi has been burned into my brain for all these years.
• Almonds and Pistachios were mentioned in Genesis.
• My favorite answer of the night was Marjorie Post.  I have no idea where I pulled it from, but it was in there somewhere.
• There are lots of foods that start with Q.
• Bull Shannon’s real first name on Night Court was ‘Nostradamus”.