Trivia Hunt V: The Spring Clash
Thank you to everyone who joined us in our fifth installment of Trivia Hunt.
Congratulations to the fastest three teams – winning $514.08 each:
Awful Lawful Falafel Waffle – 37 minutes, 53 seconds
MC Gandalf The Fresh And His Hip-Hobbits – 40 minutes, 59 seconds
Moist Chocolate Ladles – 44 minutes, 21 seconds
Our Recap
192 teams polished their trivia swords for battle in our 5th installment of Trivia Hunt. It was a real spring clash. As usual, it was met with intrigue, drama, and the such. We intentionally scaled back a little bit on this hunt’s difficulty compared to others, and the results showed. We had 74 teams get a perfect score (exactly double the amount from our last hunt), which is our highest to date. 71 of those 74 teams submitted before 11 PM, so they earned $14.08 each. This hunt also had our third lowest overall average time, so right in the middle. The average complete time was 136 minutes, which was down from 160 minutes in our most recent hunt.
Average Completion Time: 136 minutes
Average Score: 23.8
Team Winning Cash – 71
CLICK HERE FOR THE STANDINGS
Trivia Hunt VI is on Saturday, May 15th at 8 PM Eastern. We’ll be quizzing you about anything and everything, but there will definitely be a 90s theme involved. Oh Snap! The prize pool for this event is $2500 and if you get 25/25 before 11 PM Eastern, you win some cash.
A quick note about the questions and how we go about them: when we write each question, we test it in a small group, re-write them, and try again. A different group does a test run 2-3 days before the hunt, and again, we revise. Even with all that, we sometimes don’t discover an additional answer or a possible wording issue. We certainly do our best, and our intent is never to trick you. We want you to get them right, but we also want them to be a challenge. With that said, there are a couple of questions where there were multiple accepted answers.
Question #1:
Welcome to our 5th installment of Trivia Hunt. This hunt will be a real “Spring Clash.” Let’s start with this, then. Find the the most recent studio album by The Clash released in the spring (April-June). There are two songs on that album whose opening lyrics contain a musical instrument. One of those instruments mentioned is a guitar. What other instrument is named in the opening lyrics to one of the other songs?
A: Fiddle or Drums
Most Common Wrong Answer: N/A
Correct Percentage: 99%
Quick Note: When we wrote this question we were initially considering “drums’ in Sean Flynn to be a part of the 2nd line of lyrics. Most lyrics sites present it as such. But upon further reflection, we felt it wasn’t right to call that the 2nd line. Therefore, we accepted fiddle or drums as correct here. 99% got this one right, so a strong start out of the gate.
Question #2:
Gamers first saw the character represented by this symbol in a game revolving around a specific ball sport. A few weeks before this character’s debut game was released in Japan, a major tournament for said ball sport took place in London. Who won the Men’s title for that event?
A: Pete Sampras
Most Common Wrong Answer: Andre Agassi
Correct Percentage: 96%
Quick Note: The character is Waluigi, who debuted in 2000’s Mario Tennis.
Question #3:
Uh-oh! If you change one letter of the name of a popular Internet messaging app launched in 1996, you’ll get the IOC country code of a country whose flag consists primarily of three horizontal stripes. Remove the flag component that isn’t a horizontal stripe, and you’ll get the spitting image of another country’s current flag. Name THAT country.
A: Yemen
Most Common Wrong Answer: Syria
Correct Percentage: 93%
Quick Note: Syria isn’t correct here as you’d have to add some green stars to the flag.
Question #4:
The second youngest woman billionaire in the United States (according to Forbes) has made her wealth with a specific restaurant chain. That restaurant’s first location was demolished due to the construction of a major interstate. What major city does that interstate have as its east end?
Clarifier: Billionaire rankings are as of Forbes most recent list
A: Jacksonville, FL
Most Common Wrong Answer: Los Angeles
Correct Percentage: 96%
Quick Note: Animal Style! Remember, the question asked for the east end of I-10, which is Jacksonville.
Question #5:
We’re thinking of a person. Her first name is that of the Brady Bunch siblings, who famously got hit in the nose with a football. Her last name is the same as YouTubers Jared, Shelley, and their dozen-plus kids. This person is best known for portraying two different roles, one of them being a cartoon character. Take this character’s first name, add a synonym/word that means “trade,” and you’ll get a band whose best-known song was covered (with much greater success) in 1997. Name the song.
A: Torn
Most Common Wrong Answer: Happy
Correct Percentage: 99%
Quick Note: Ednaswap was our group in question.
Question #6:
If you add the initials of all of the Best New Artist Grammy winners (i.e. Zac Brown Band = ZBB) since 1980 whose initials consist solely of Roman numerals, what total do you get? Please write your answer in Roman numerals. Read the clarifier below before answering.
Clarifier: No, Milli Vanilli doesn’t count, and for simplicity’s sake neither does Maroon 5 or Macklemore (as his award included Ryan Lewis). We are only using the seven letters used in the modern configuration of Roman Numerals. Assume each artist/group’s initials is one single value, not individual values on their own (i.e. XIX would be 19 and not 21).
A: MMMCCC (3300)
Most Common Wrong Answer: MMMCL
Correct Percentage: 84%
Quick Note: Our first real big stumper here. A few things are important when playing Trivia Hunt. Read the questions a couple times and read any clarifiers. This question asked about artists since 1980. None before that. We also mentioned that Milli Vanilli didn’t count, which a few of you added in. Christopher Cross (200) + Culture Club (200) + Cyndi Lauper (150) + Mariah Carey (1100) + Marc Cohn (1100) + Dua Lipa (550). “Ride Like the Wind” by Christopher Cross is the greatest song of all time – fight me. 🙂
Question #7:
In 1964 and 1965, the Supremes released five straight singles that reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. In the lyrics to one of those five songs, Diana Ross notes that she’ll be thankful for one of these two-word phrases. Those two words are also the title of a single that hit #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2008 by a different group. That song is the group’s only top ten hit on the Billboard Hot 100. However, the band has over ten number-one singles on the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts. What is the only studio album by this band whose title is named after a type of flower?
A: Amaryllis
Most Common Wrong Answer: Rose
Correct Percentage: 98%
Quick Note: We love Trivia Hunt, because when else would we ask about The Supremes and Shinedown in the same question!?
Question #8:
Кой е третият по големина град с население в страната, който е дом на Наклонената кула в Пиза?
Please answer in English.
A: Naples
Most Common Wrong Answer: Lima
Correct Percentage: 97%
Quick Note: Our question was asking what the third most populous city is in Italy.
Question #9:
The man featured in this short commercial shares his last name with a former acting governor of an east coast US state. Near the end of the movie that was #1 in the box office the day this governor assumed that particular role, a character is about to utter a swear word but instead says what specific type of food?
A: Shitake Mushrooms
Most Common Wrong Answer: Fudge
Correct Percentage: 97%
Quick Note: Phil Swift saws boats in half and fixes them with Flex Tape. That led us eventually to Spy Kids where the kids say, “Oh Shitake Mushrooms.”
Question #10:
Congrats to Stanford on winning this year’s Women’s Division 1 NCAA Basketball tournament. Their campus is about 1700 miles away from the campus of the previous tournament’s winner, Baylor. Which two schools that are in different states and won the championship in consecutive years are the closest together in distance.
Clarifier: “Distance” is as the crow flies. Note: In 2011 and 2012, Texas A&M and Baylor won, respectively. However, they are in the same state, so they are not the schools we are searching for.
A: Tennessee and Purdue
Most Common Wrong Answer: Tennessee and Maryland
Correct Percentage: 84%
Quick Note: Remember the question was asking for schools in different states and for schools that won in consecutive years. This makes Tennessee and Purdue correct. Purdue is in West Lafayette, IN and is 100 miles closer to the University of Tennessee than Maryland is.
Question #11:
RIP to the great Beverly Cleary! Ms. Cleary had a book published in the same year that the first Earth Day was officially celebrated. On the first page of that book, she mentions the “foothills” of a specific mountain range. That mountain range encompasses multiple National Parks. What Academy Award winning documentary was filmed at one of those National Parks?
A: Free Solo
Most Common Wrong Answer: Our National Parks
Correct Percentage: 98%
Quick Note: Nice job on this one, Hunters!
Question #12:
Of all the shows that have ever aired at some point in the 1990s on TGIF, (ABC’s popular Friday night sitcom block), there is only one to have lasted longer than two seasons that remained on Friday nights on ABC during its entire series run. In the opening credits of season one of that show, you can see the picture of a US President. Which President is shown?
Clarifier: All the other long-running TGIF sitcoms at one point or another either started their run on different nights, premiered on Friday nights, and later moved to another night, or eventually changed TV networks.
A: Abraham Lincoln
Most Common Wrong Answer: Boy Meets World
Correct Percentage: 98%
Quick Note: During our internal play test on Thursday, this one slowed our team down the most (Question 25 withstanding). You all seemed to have no trouble finding Honest Abe in the Boy Meets World intro.
Question #13:
One of the people performing in this Sesame Street clip is celebrating their birthday today! That singer’s last name is also the name of a city in the United States with around 4600 people in the 2010 census. What is the official state vegetable of that state where that city is located?
Clarifier: We’re assuming you’re playing this on the day the hunt was advertised – April 17th.
A: Sweet Potato
Most Common Wrong Answer: Sweet Onion
Correct Percentage: 98%
Quick Note: Our birthday boy was Avi Kaplan who was a former member of Pentatonix. Kaplan is a city in Louisiana and their state veggie is a sweet potato.
Question #14:
Below you’ll find 3 HEX codes. Those codes represent three equal vertical stripes of a European country’s flag (in order from left to right).
Stripe 1 – #002b7f
Stripe 2 – #fcd116
Stripe 3 – #ce1126
If you were standing in that country’s most populous city and traveled due west, what is the next country you’d enter?
A: Serbia
Most Common Wrong Answer: Romania
Correct Percentage: 97%
Quick Note: That’s Romania’s flag, but the question asked for the next country you’d enter to the west. That’s Serbia.
Question #15:
Of the world capital cities whose Scrabble score would be 22, which city has the most unique consonants in its name?
Clarifier: Less any bonuses, assuming all tiles had point values, and if the words were legal plays, to begin with.
A: Luxembourg (or Washington DC)
Most Common Wrong Answer: Bujumbura
Correct Percentage: 97%
Quick Note: We accepted Luxembourg and Washington DC for this question. The vast majority of you put Luxembourg, however, we didn’t explicitly state that the city had to be a single word (per Scrabble rules), therefore a small number of teams put Washington DC. The District of Columbia is the federal district, which contains the capital of Washington. So, Washington, DC is like Austin, TX. However, the CIA World Factbook (and most other sources) definitely call it Washington DC, so we opted to allow that for those couple of teams that answered it. This decision did not impact the $500 winners and only added a couple teams to the prize pool.
Question #16:
What 1996 arcade game featured characters that share names with a Japanese word for “dragon,” a letter in the NATO alphabet, and an animal also known as Gulo gulo?
A: X-Men vs. Street Fighter
Most Common Wrong Answer: Street Fighter
Correct Percentage: 97%
Quick Note: You had to see this one all the way through to get to Ryu, Charlie, and Wolverine.
Question #17:
What month and year did all of the following occur (i.e., July 1978):
- A First Lady of the United States released a memoir.
- A pitcher threw a perfect game in Major League Baseball.
- An MCU film hit theaters, but it wasn’t the first MCU film.
- A Dwayne Johnson film was released on home video. A direct-to-video sequel would come out with a different man in the title role about two years later.
A: May 2010
Most Common Wrong Answer: 2010 (without the month)
Correct Percentage: 96%
Quick Note: Laura Bush, Roy Halladay (RIP), Iron Man 2, and The Tooth Fairy were your keys here.
Question #18:
Identify the city located at the following coordinates: A° B′ C″ N, X° Y′ Z″ W, such that:
- A is the atomic number of the element named after the daughter of Tantalus
- B is the code for international direct-dial phone calls to Mexico
- C is a two-digit number included in the title of an album by a singer with the last name Wilkes-Krier,
- X is the sum of the squares of the first four prime numbers
- Y is the 15th number in the Padovan sequence
- Z is the only integer whose English name has its letters in alphabetical order
A: Chicago
Most Common Wrong Answer: New York City
Correct Percentage: 94%
Quick Note: A41° B52′ C55″ N, X87° Y37′ Z40″ W = Chicago
Question #19:
The bloodiest spring clash in the American Civil War resulted in almost 32,000 casualties. One of them was a Union Major General who is often credited with some ironic last words included a rather large animal. Name the animal.
Clarifier: Just as with Question 1, we are defining spring as April-June in this case.
A: Elephant
Most Common Wrong Answer: “No Answer”
Correct Percentage: 99%
Quick Note: 184/186 on this one. Good job teams.
Question #20:
Below you’ll find three clues about different airports. When you take those airport’s three-letter IATA codes and combine them and unscramble them, a nine-letter word can be formed. What is that nine-letter noun of French origin?
- Code 1: The busiest airport in the world in 2019, whose three-letter code contains at least two vowels. (Not including “Y”)
- Code 2: Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this airport overtook ATL in 2020 as the world’s busiest airport. (Based on passenger traffic)
- Code 3: The airport where Scoot Airlines launched its first passenger flight in 2012. (Where it originated, not where it was headed)
A: Naissance
Most Common Wrong Answer: Canines
Correct Percentage: 97%
Quick Note: The airports were Seattle (SEA), Guangzhou Baiyun (CAN), and Singapore Changi (SIN). SEACANSIN can be unscrambled in to the word NAISSANCE.
Question #21:
Please take a look at this beautiful mural and figure out which US city it’s located in. Note what that city’s first two letters are. What is the next most populous city in the US whose name also contains those same two letters in order somewhere in its name?
Clarifier: The city’s letters in the answer don’t necessarily have to be at the beginning of its name like they are in the mural city. Population is based on 2019 estimates. “Next most populous” means the next city down the list that meets the criteria.
A: Memphis
Most Common Wrong Answer: Phoenix
Correct Percentage: 95%
Quick Note: The mural is in Philadelphia. The next most populous city with a “ph” in it’s name is Memphis. Phoenix is more populous than Philly, thus not correct.
Question #22:
Of the elements on the periodic table named after people, only three have symbols that are also U.S. state postal abbreviations. In alphabetical order, these states are the xth, yth, and zth states admitted to the Union. Who was U.S. President in the year xz + (x – y)z – y?
Clarifier: Elements may be directly or indirectly named after a person
A: Woodrow Wilson
Most Common Wrong Answer: George Washington
Correct Percentage: 87%
Quick Note: FL, MD, MT were your three elements and were the only ones named directly or indirectly after a person that fit here. Following the order of operations: (27, 7, 41 as the state numbers) -> (27*41) + (27-7)*41 – 7 = 1920
Question #23:
What 1957-born actor starred in a 90’s video game movie (only to have his role recast for the sequel), once dated an actress who played a Bond villain, and in 2019 played an assassin whose last name is taken from the title of an H.G. Wells novel?
A: Christopher Lambert
Most Common Wrong Answer: Dolph Lundgren
Correct Percentage: 98%
Quick Note: Mortal Kombat as Raiden, Sophie Marceau, and Moreau on The Blacklist.
Question #24:
Two Whig Party US Presidents died while in office. If you take their last names and combine them, they form the first and the last name of a person whose only credited acting appearance (according to IMDB) was when he was a baby. Paul Thomas Anderson directed that film. Name the film.
A: There Will Be Blood
Most Common Wrong Answer: Various
Correct Percentage: 97%
Quick Note: An appropriate movie title for something we’re calling “The Spring Clash.” Well done.
Question #25:
We end our hunt on a little road trip across the United States. You’ll be drawing eight letters on a map of the US. Those letters will be drawn by giving you points on the map. When you follow the points in order using straight lines, a letter is formed. Letters may be uppercase or lowercase. For an example, see the bottom of this question.
When you unscramble the eight letters you’ve drawn, it will spell out the title of a film released in the last 35 years that was nominated for five Oscars. Name that film.
Letter 1:
- Starting Point: The current capital of the 8th state admitted to the union
- Point 2: Home of the Fury 325
- Point 3: Birthplace of the actress that won an Oscar for the film Still Alice
- Point 4: The city in this image
- Point 5: The band whose first top ten hit was “Hold My Hand” was formed in this city
Letter 2:
- Starting Point: The city whose most circulated newspaper is the Post-Dispatch
- Point 2: The city where the first human lung transplant was performed
- Point 3: The city where Tom Hanks character is from in the movie Cast Away
- Point 4: The city which had a major flood in 1867 where their river rose nearly 58 feet beyond normal levels
- Point 5: Home of Baker High School, which a former Speaker of the House of Representatives graduated from
Letter 3:
- Starting Point: The city whose current mayor is named Tim Keller
- Point 2: The city where Make-A-Wish Foundation was founded
- Point 3: The city that was once home to a minor league baseball team named the Toros
- Point 4: The site where the first atomic bomb (named Trinity) was detonated in a test
Letter 4:
- Starting Point: Magic City of the Plains
- Point 2: City that allegedly originated the breakfast burrito at their annual International Balloon Fiesta
- Point 3: City whose tallest building is the 50-floor Devon Energy Center
- Point 4: Birthplace of the woman that won a Best Lead Actress Oscar in 2000 & 2005
- Point 5: The state capital building pictured here
Letter 5:
- Starting Point: The primary setting for the only Burt Reynolds film released in the 90s to have a four-word title
- Point 2: The location of the largest seashell museum in the country
- Point 3: The location where the Spice Girls kicked off their 1998 Spiceworld tour (in the US)
Letter 6:
- Starting Point: In Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, he learns that this building doesn’t have a basement.
- Point 2: City that was recently announced as the host for the 2022 version of Wrestlemania
- Point 3: The city that provided the primary setting for the sitcom Reba
- Point 4: Jimmy Buffet’s company has a location called Lake Resort in this city (but not the Ozarks one)
- Point 5: The city where watching bats near the Congress Bridge is a popular tourist attraction
Letter 7:
- Point 1: On their official city flag, the phrase “Star of the Big Sky Country” appears
- Point 2: A city with neighborhoods called The Pearl District, Bridgeton, and Sullivan’s Gulch
- Point 3: The city where a tragic accident called the Speculator Mine Disaster occurred
- Point 4: Y Magazine is this university’s official alumni publication
Letter 8:
- Starting Point: City whose airport is named after the 38th President of the United States
Point 2: The city where you’d find this statue
Point 3: In 1985, an annual traveling music festival debuted in this city. The festival still exists today. The 1985 version included Roy Orbison, Huey Lewis, Tom Petty, and more
Point 4: City where a 2007 reality show was set. That show featured Erik Estrada, Latoya Jackson, and others
Clarifier: We used Google Maps for the creation of this question. Remember, “nominated” is not necessarily the same as “won.” The film in question may or may not be more than one word.
Example Letter (this letter is merely an example and not part of the actual question):
- Point 1: Home of the Empire State Building
- Point 2: Home of the Liberty Bell
- Point 3: Home of the Little League World Series
This would be New York City–>Philadelphia–>Williamsport, which when drawn on a map in that order forms a V
A: Chocolat
Most Common Wrong Answer: Whiplash
Correct Percentage: 92%
Quick Note: In order, the letters were: O, H, C, O, L, A, T, C. We chose this as our film because most unscrambler sites wouldn’t have it it listed, but it’s also pretty easy to see if you have the letter correct. We hope you enjoyed this one as it was a beast to write.
The Next Hunt:
Trivia Hunt VI – May 15th at 8 PM Eastern
This hunt will have a whole lot of questions about the 90s! Oh Snap! See you there!
Tickets On Sale Here