Last night was a blast at The Guild.  It was a full house, everyone who comes to The Guild enjoys a free game with special incentives to entice along the way.  The first incentive of course, is a night that toggles your brain cells a little bit, you balance that with lots of beer and great food (something the good people at The Guild know exactly how to do, and every well).

Couldn’t have asked for a better night.  My favorite things were in the quiz… actually, it boils down to just one thing… Vampire’s Kiss, starring Nicolas Cage.  After the audio clue (“I’M A VAMPIRE, I’M A VAMPIRE, I’M A VAMPIRE”), I had to spend about five minutes discussing why everyone should see that movie.  Of course, I imagine it was hard for the quiz writer to choose a clip from Vampire’s Kiss, as there are so many brilliant lines, delivered with Cage’s poignant and flawless delivery.  If anyone takes the extreme effortlessly for us all, and he shall be remembered forever in Vampire’s Kiss… anyway…

The stakes were high last night.  All teams were neck and neck, fluctuating throughout, which I love seeing (means its a good fair game).  The Voter files were in the lead for a good while, which is impressive since it was just a team of two.  Gay Straight Alliance closely followed.  Then, The Squirrels made a fun to watch leap forward (As squirrels often do) and ended up taking the prize home.  A 25$ gift certificate to the bar, and The Voter files took home a 15$ gift certificate.

Every team member on every team playing got a chance to win Timbers Tickets.  the more you play at the Guild, the better your chances become.

On top of all those prizes, every player on the top two teams received a five dollar gift certificate to Genie’s, which is NE 11th and Division.  Great place to be!

Here’s are the happy winners.

Welp, thats all folks.  Until next week Guild, keep Burnside Fresh.

–QuizMaster Muss

The festivities will also proudly usher in the newest member of the Pub Quiz USA team: Quizmaster Casey! Casey comes to us from the lovely San Joaqin Valley by way of Starbucks, and we’re absolutely thrilled to welcome this hilarious barista to the Pub Quiz USA team.

Oh, did we mention the paid-for pitchers of brown goodness called Guinness for green teams?   If each member of your team dresses in green for the quiz (that is, shirt & pants or skirt), you’ll get a pitcher of Guiness for your table, courtesy of Pub Quiz USA. What a deal!

Biddys Pub Quiz is this Tuesday night, March 15. Quiz starts promptly at 7pm. $3 per person, no more than six people per team. Cash prize to the winning teams plus Irish revelry to be had by all!

Of course, the quiz is always FREE TO PLAY at the Guild, so folks leisurely strolled in to join their teams within the first half hour of the quiz. Bingo had some great zinger questions (True or false: a bullfrog has teeth, and What can you not do to yourself that only someone else can do because it does not trigger a fight-or-flight reflex?).

While running the Bingo round, yours truly was able to order a beer on the microphone from good ol’ Matthew behind the bar. Naturally, everyone else immediately was green with envy and wished they could just order a beer by talking onto a microphone. It was at that moment I launched the idea of a pub quiz-hosting bar that had an iPad on every table from which to view a menu, order from pictures, and have their foamy, hoppy goodness delivered in minutes.  What a great idea! Now if only I could find the capital….

Anyway, back to the quiz! We had a number of new teams playing the quiz, which is always terrific to see. Our round two du jour was Who Am I?, in which teams try to guess real or fictional characters with the least amount of clues. Since our theme of the week was Schoolhouse Rock, I must say I was uber-impressed by the “Monkey is the Magic Number” team by getting the answer with one line: “I come from a small town in America, all the way to Washington D.C.”. Yes, it’s a BILL. As in, “I’m just a bill, yes I’m only a bill, and I’m sittin’ here on Capitol Hill…” Way to go!

By the end of the quiz, it was the Monkey team in the lead, who chose the category “Computer Rock” as the final challenge question. Teams bet their points on the final challenge Q, which asked for the two recurring characters in the Computer Rock season. And in the spirit of a great pub quiz, when you just never know who is going to win until the end, it was the Gay Straight Alliance who bet high, got the right answer, and WON the pub quiz! Good job, guys!

As this quizmaster was so caught up in the moment and having fun talking with the teams, sadly I neglected to snap a photo of the winners that night. So I bring you a past shot of the winners below.

I’ll be at Biddy McGraws on Tuesday, March 15 and 22, working with our newest Quizmaster Casey, who is taking over the quiz for QM Kevin P., who has decided that the world needs more lawyers and is working full time at his law practice. Best of luck to you, Kevin!

Until next time, quizzers… peace, love, and quizzery!

The Queen

It’s a great read!

• John Doyle, our host going on three big years now, arrived at 6:30 with the quiz firmly handcuffed to his wrist, to assure everyone that the quiz was totally unknown to anyone but him.
• 135 people at $5 a pop = $675 Pot to split! 
• Started at about 7:15 pm. J.P. Pullen our Monkey, this Quizmaster’s favorite team name of the night,  started the quiz in the lead after the big Bingo round.
• Round two was NAME THAT TUNE, everybody’s fav! Lots of great scorers, though Tom Peterson & the Glory Holes really kicked butt that round, as did Clarification Please and Laird Creeger.
• Teams in the top spots included Laird Creeger, Clarification Please, Spoonful of Whoopass, I Smell a Clambake, and Beige Food. In the end, it was BEIGE FOOD who took home the big $500 prize! 

Here are a few photos from the night (more to come):

Seems that the warm weather and spring break conditions did not effect the attendance at the Thirsty Lion last night, where we had a whopping $216 pot and a standing room only crowd.  As always, it’s great to see new teams at the quiz, like Three Girls and a Little Man, the McFlys, and Space Juice. Naturally we had the regulars, like Yahtzee, the (variations of a) Monkey (team), and Your Tax Dollars at Work. But it was the team Kim and the Jong Ills, a long time regular team of Thirsty Lion, that FINALLY get their long awaited win!

Yes, that's a $50! Kim and the Jong Ills team

Yes, they knew the video clips of the Georgia Satellites, Linkin Park & Jay-Z, and even the boat capsizing on the ocean was from the remade movie Poseidon.  See what happens when you keep on trying? You eventually WIN!

I have to admit that the Thirsty Lion Bar Team really kicked some butt this week. They did better than they had EVER done, finally making it into the top five teams of the night, only to LOSE it on the question about Rip Van Winkle (one of their team members admitted that he thought it would be a Madeline L’Engle question about her book A Wrinkle in Time).  For the folks that don’t know this, the bar team runs interference every week, playing for free so that if they should win anything, the cash that they would’ve won rolls over into the next week’s game.  Bar team, you were SO CLOSE!

A little shout out to the new management team over there at TL– Luke and Cheryl. They had some trial by fire last night with the crowd management. A daunting task when there’s that many people to keep happy and they’re still in training. Good job, guys!

Hey guys: only one more week for the THIRSTY LION standings. One more week to see who is going to take home the $100 gift certificate to Grand Central Bowl.  Check the big board (next to the stage) for the current line-up. With last night’s win, the Kim & Jong Ills team is on the board, but I believe Hangin’ Brain is still the team to beat.

ONE FINAL NOTE: Quiz Against the Quizmasters is NEXT MONDAY! If you want to compete against we brilliant-minded trivia royalty, the annual big event is the only time to do it, with a guaranteed $500 CASH PRIZE to the winning team! BOO-ya! Of course we want you to come so we can fund the pot. After all, the QM’s are gonna TAKE it this year!

• a bottle of champagne for the team closest to the correct answer to the Thirsty Lion Question of the week.
• a BONUS challenge question, the winner of which gets a chance to spin the Thirsty Lion Wheel of Fortune, and win a prize like 20% off your check, an order of nachos, a slice of decadent chocolate cake, or even a 5 point bonus for next week’s quiz (or in this case, two weeks from now)
• the losing team gets a reach into the Thirsty Lion Box o’ Fun (t-shirts, hats, flags, you name it)
• the weekly standings, a MONTHLY game that pits team against team by the month for a $100 gift certificate to Grand Central Bowl
• a kickass VIDEO quiz every week featuring visual rounds, video clips, and interactive pub quiz rounds, and the winning team wins COLD HARD CASH!

What quiz is better than THAT??? Well, let me tell you about March 10th’s quiz and you can judge for yourself.

We had 58 very excited quizzers buzzing with anticipation for the Wednesday night video quiz, of which a good 20 people had never played the quiz before. It’s always great to meet new players, and new team names like the Geriatric Dragons, Sneaky Jesuses and Marshmellow Happens, along with some familiar faces (Your Tax Dollars at Work, Yahtzee, and Kim and the Jong Ills). I finally changed out that DVD scroll that we’ve had rolling since last summer, so folks were happy to laugh at new pics, like this one:

Our SEAWORTHY theme brought out no less than four ships in bottles, our bonus point op of the week. My favorite was a little tiny paper folded ship inside a 1-1/2″ bottle. It wasn’t the object itself as much as the story behind it- it was made by her boyfriend just for her (cue the “awwww”!). (Not on the email list? EEK! Go here, pronto!)

The quiz went great! Lots of fun questions about squids, Captain Marvel, and Popeye. The best question of the night is below. Before I get off on that tangent again, a big CONGRATS to the winning team, Elephantastic! You got yourself a whopping $124 and are now on the big board in the running for that $100 gift certificate, joining Yahtzee and Hangin’ Brain.  Hangin’ Brain also got themselves a bottle of the bubbly by guessing that the deepest part of the ocean was 35,000 ft. (the Mariana Trench is the deepest point in Earth’s oceans, 35,840 feet).

AND NOW……….. the video of the night. Question 10: Who is this actor?

Zod popped into question 12, 15, 18, 20….. then thanks to good spirited, possibly inebriated teams asking to repeat #10, the room got it’s share of ZOD.

HOWEVER, guys, there’s more to this. This is for you, my Thirsty Lion friends. Oh, and remember, NO QUIZ NEXT WEDNESDAY at the Thirsty Lion.

And I think this is just…. well, bad!

We started our terrifically fun WIDMER FIST OF KNOWLEDGE standings all over again for the month of March. The prize? A $100 gift certificate good for fun, food and games at Grand Central Bowl, plus your pub quiz team name engraved on the Fist of Knowledge trophy, and a reserved table for the whole month of April. To add to the fun, the Thirsty Lion now has its own BAR TEAM, who are planning to play every week and run interference for all the other teams. They won’t be able to win any money,  so should their team win any given week, the money pot will ROLL OVER to the next week, making the cash pot just that much more sweet.

Folks, I’ve never seen a REAL Emmy in my life, but tonight a guy brought in the real deal as his “fake” Oscar for bonus points. I was blown away! It was the coolest thing ever! Just wish I had the instinct to grab the camera, or you’d see a big fat real picture of an Emmy. But in lieu of what I really saw, here’s a facsimile:

With a pot of just over $130, we began the night as we usually do with BINGO.  Great questions, as usual, with some related to the theme and others not. For example, “Edith Head has been nominated for an Oscar 38 times, more than any other woman in history. What category was she nominated for?” (Best Costumes), and “The Suez Canal connects what two bodies of water?” (the Mediterranean and Red seas). As a big hint to the question about what movie Meryl Streep was first nominated for, I popped a big picture of a deer in the sight of a gun.  Figure it out?

Round two, I have to say, was a work of art! I plan to post the video for the Round 2 shortly. The 100% video round consisted of questions from past Academy Award shows, along with clips from Academy Award-winning movies.  You will LOVE it!

After round two, we presented the Thirsty Lion BONUS question, a question with a numerical value. The team closest to the correct answer without going over wins a BOTTLE OF CHAMPAIGN. The question:  If you were to drive from the Thirsty Lion to the Kodak Theater in L.A., how many miles would you drive? The answer: 958 miles. The SQUIRT LOCKER won! Next week, we’ll have another question and give away another bottle of champaign, so come on down and try your luck. This bonus question is totally outside of the main game, so ANYONE can play!

Another twist to the night: the question that is not chosen by the top three teams is now being put out on the floor for ALL teams to answer. The winners of this question get to spin the BIG wheel of prizes! Unfortunately we didn’t have a winner for our bonus question, but that doesn’t mean that next week will have the same result. Prizes on the big wheel include free food, gift certificates, and bonus pub quiz bucks, good for another week of quizzing. How fun!

In the end, a big KUDOS to the winning team, Last Monkey in Paris! They make it to the top of the big board for the first week of the Widmer Fist of Knowledge standings. And the funny thing is, they were originally a team of two and another team of two joined them, for the brain power. What a great way to work together and meet new friends!

Until next time…. keep on quizzing!