Koob and his crew (who will hopefully not be winning Quizzo Bowl) are playing 7 quizzes in 7 days. Here’s Koob’s recap of the first 3. If you want to follow along in real time, follow @johnlkenney on twitter, as he is live tweeting the shenanigans.
SUNDAY LOCAL 44
We kicked off our first quiz of the week at Local 44 which is a great little bar with good food and a great beer selection. The place tends to get packed for quizzo so we made sure to get there early. The participants were Nate, Kenney, and I.
This quiz was named as the Best Quizzo in Philly mag back in 2012 and it’s pretty solid. I call this the “Irish John” style of quizzo which is three rounds of ten questions each and a joker to play which will double your score for one round. There are also bonus questions mixed in that are basically follow-ups to the question currently being asked and you can gain extra points by getting them right (but they do not effect the joker).
The host, JB Farley, is great. He seems like a genuinely nice guy and he seems to enjoy hosting and we also enjoyed some of the pop culture references that he threw in as part of his banter. My one gripe is that the quiz can take a little long for being only a three round quiz and the host tends to overexplain things sometimes such as when going over the rules at the beginning of the quiz and occasionally giving too many hints during the questions. Just plan on the full two hours from 9-11pm if you are going to play here.
Going into the last round, we had 21 points and I believe the team in first had 31 points but they had already used their joker so we knew it would be close. We were able to pull out a 9 out of 10 plus some bonus points. The only question we missed was “What is Olin’s ball powder used for?” and I think most teams missed it as well so it didn’t hurt us too badly (the answer is something to do with loading ammunition in firearms).
We wound up tied for first place after three rounds so the tiebreaker was a question with a year as the answer and whichever team came closest would win. The question asked was “On this date in what year was Guy Fawkes executed?” Kenney knew right away that the Gunpowder plot was in 1605 so we guessed correctly that Fawkes was executed in 1606 but so did the other team. So we went to another tiebreaker question which was “In what year was the monk Thomas Merton born?” We were not as sure on this one but went with Kenney’s guess of 1922. The other team guessed 1925. Thomas Merton was actually born in 1915 so we pulled off the win for being closer. The prize was a $40 Local 44 gift card. One down, six to go. On to Stoagie Joe’s for night two.
MONDAY STOAGIE JOE’S
Night two of our 7 quizzos in 7 days quest took us to Stogie Joe’s on Passyunk Ave. in South Philly. The participants were Nate, Kenney, and I, plus my wife Kristy and our friend Erica. The food at this place is fantastic. I highly recommend the pizza and the chicken cutlet sandwich but you really can’t go wrong with anything on the menu.
The quiz is hosted by Jimmy who is definitely an old school South Philly guy (which I like being a native of South Philly myself). He does a good job and the questions are usually pretty good. The format of this quiz is similar to the traditional Pat Hines style quiz with three rounds of ten questions, one of which you can double, but instead of just one picture round in between the other rounds, Stogie Joe’s does two picture rounds so you get a total of five rounds (can’t double the picture rounds).
We started off pretty strong with a 9/10 in the first round but we only got 7/10 in the 2nd round and only got 8/10 in the first picture round which was pictures of the set of famous television shows. I talked the rest of the crew out of Frasier as I swore the chair that was pictured was Archie Bunker’s from All In the Family but I was wrong. We aced the second picture round which was famous movie scenes as depicted with Legos, but we suspected that we might be too far behind at that point. We still had the double in our back pocket and we got a 10/10 plus the double on the last round but it was not enough as two of the teams that were ahead of us also got perfect 10s and doubled as well. Alas, my hopes and dreams of actually winning all seven of these quizzes were crushed but we won the 3rd place tiebreaks and scored a $25 gift card.
TUESDAY- SLAINTE
We hit up Slainte right by 30th St. Station for the 3rd night of our 7 quizzos in 7 days quest. Slainte is owned by the same people that own the New Deck Tavern on Penn’s campus and as far as I know still gets their questions from Pat Hines himself straight from Ireland. The participants were Nate, Kenney, Kristy, and I. The format was the traditional Pat Hines format which is three rounds, ten questions, one joker (which doubles your score for that round) and a picture round in between. There is also a connection round in which the answers to all ten of the questions in one of the rounds are connected in some way and if you can figure out the connection, you can get an extra point for the round.
I didn’t catch the host’s name but he was not very enthusiastic. Pretty much just a straightforward reading of the questions with no banter or anything which is fine for some people. They also have pretty good food and drink deals at this place during quizzo and the food is pretty much your typical pub food and very similar to New Deck.
We proceeded to ace the first two rounds with perfect tens. Then came the picture round. The picture round was images from “famous” Super Bowl commercials. I put famous in quotation marks because this was probably the lowest scoring picture round that I have every seen. There were a few that we knew right away and a few that we recognized but had no idea what the product being advertised was and a few others that just did not look familiar at all and we all felt like we had a pretty good grasp of famous Super Bowl commercials. We wound up only getting four right which worried me for a little while…until the host read the answers and scores and we realized that a four was actually tied for the highest score of any team in the bar. I don’t think I can ever recall a round scoring that low overall.
Anyway, we felt pretty comfortable going into the last round and we figured out the connection pretty quickly. The first few answers were “Big”, “Gone With the Wind”, “Go”, and “The Sugar Bowl” and we figured out that the connection was “daddy”. The next answer was “Hoosier” which gave us all a chuckle. We wound up going 10/10, doubling, and nailing the connection so we knew there was no way we could be caught. The one disappointment was after the quiz, the host brings over our gift certificate and it is only for $25. I asked him about it and he said that it’s normally $50 but since there weren’t that many teams there, they lowered it to $25 for that night. But a win is a win and we were very happy with the bounce back performance after the disappointment at Stogie Joe’s. Off to Westy’s Tavern Wednesday night for quiz 4.