| Team
Tribune tries trivia
By
Nara Schoenberg
Tribune staff reporter
Published January 4, 2002
There
was a certain amount of wishful thinking -- "We're gonna win!"
-- a certain amount of false bravado -- "We're professional
know-it-alls; the amateurs are goin' down!"
But
the truth is, Team Tribune was in trouble from the start.
I knew
this as soon as I arrived at Chief O'Neill's pub, where the Monday
night trivia contest (a live one, unlike video trivia in some bars)
draws dozens of people competing for bragging rights and $150 bucks
or so. For one thing, two of my swaggering colleagues were conspicuously
absent, allegedly felled by last-minute illnesses. For another,
the co-worker who did show up, Monica Eng, was conducting a search
for replacements that would make an army recruiter blush.
"What's
her last name," she asked into her cell phone. "What street
does she lives on?"
By
8:30, minutes to show time, we had sunk to trying to steal someone
from another team: "Mom, do you want to be on our team?"
Monica said in a little-girl voice. Her mother, a Pub Quiz regular
with an impressive track record dating back to August, didn't even
pause.
"That's
my standing team," she said, indicating she was sticking with
the four confident-looking friends and relatives who were with her.
Left
on our own, we took measure of our strengths. Monica knew pop culture
and children's songs; her friend Nicholas, an anthropologist and
encyclopedia editor, was strong in the sciences; Lesawas also an
anthropologist and science buff; I knew my English literature; and
our fifth teammate was non-existent.
The
first round of questions, read with a Scottish brogue by quiz master
Ewan Dickson and answered in writing by each of 10 teams, were humorously
hard.
I didn't
know that Louis XIV was the French King who ruled for 72 years,
nor did I know that Israel bombed the U.S. ship Liberty during the
Six-Day War.
Luckily
we had Monica, who knew a lot more than I did, and Nicholas, who
apparently had memorized the entire World Book Encyclopedia. We,
or rather they, got 10 out of 10 questions in the first round, the
highest score in the room.
"C'mon!
Pick it up ya losers!" we cried as other teams asked for questions
to be repeated. "Don't hold us up just because you're stupid."
Round
two was harder. Nicholas did know which country was the invader
in "Empire of the Sun," but we missed three questions,
among them Tennis World magazine's female rookie of the year in
1974 (Martina Navratilova), and were left to ponder what went wrong.
Nicholas:
"The key is to go with your gut."
Lesa:
"Unless you're wrong."
Round
three involved matching 10 military training centers with the states
where they are located. I was gratified to see our teamwork was
improving. By unanimous decision, we handed the quiz sheet to Nicholas,
the only person who looked pleased by the assignment, and let him
fill in the blanks.
We
moved as a unit in the next round, in which all the answers began
with the syllable "con." One question asked for the name
of an industrial city in Chile, population350,000. The answer, supplied
by Nicholas and approved unanimously by the rest of us, was Concepcion.
We
made a splendid showing in the picture round, with Monica accurately
identifying Sean Young in strange makeup and a huge floppy hat,
and after holding steady in second or third place all night, came
back in the high-stakes Round 8 -- double the points on every question
-- with the anthropologists identifying Pepperdine College's home
state as California: "Go, academia!"
I laughed
when I heard question No. 4: "What disease killed 90 per cent
of Ethiopian cattle in 1989?"
But
I shouldn't have.
"Rinderpest,"
Nicholas said.
Hmmm.
We
squeaked out a second-place finish, ahead of Monica's mother's team
and not without my help. Our MVP was stumped by the question about
Harry Potter's owl's name, but I wasn't. "Hedwig," I scribbled
on my notepad, so excited I could barely breathe. I had a similarly
brilliant moment when I correctly identified the movie starring
Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. That would be "Up Close
and Personal," my fellow trivia-heads.
So
by the end of the evening -- about 11 p.m. -- I was feeling good.
And
curious: "How did you know rinderpest?" I asked our MVP.
"Everybody
knows rinderpest."
Top
five questions we missed
1.
Which city housed the federal prison where Al Capone stayed before
his transfer to Alcatraz?
2.
What year did "The Exorcist" come out?
3.
Where does the European Parliament meet?
4.
Which is bigger, Iceland or Ireland?
5.
Which band was originally known as the New Yardbirds?
Answers
1.
Atlanta. 2. 1973. 3. Strasbourg. 4. Iceland. 5. Led Zeppelin.
----------
The
Pub Quiz is held Monday nights at Chief O'Neill's, 3471 N. Elston
Ave. Registration ($5 per person) starts about 8 p.m. and questions
start at 8:30. Up to five people allowed on each team. The winners
split 75 per cent of the registration receipts (the house matches
the remaining 25 percent and donates the sum to the National Autism
Research Foundation). Call 773-473-5263.
Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune
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