Have Some nerdsholmferret 9/12 '25

What animal is referred to by the word cervine?

What U.S. Civil War general has a style of facial hair named after him?

What does the unit pascal measure?

What Portuguese archipelago has a type of fortified wine named after it?

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1d 3 Comments
Deer

Burnside

Pressure?

Madeira
CM Adams
Winner, winner, brownie sundae!
nerdsholmferret
Ran them all by my best teammate and she didn’t get any!
CM Adams
 

quick noms rone 9/9 '25

turns out papadum really does puff up nice and crisp with a little oil after fifty seconds in the microwave

most of a puffy, cracked papadum on a paper towel
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5d 3 Comments
Yum.
Lindsay Harris Friel
So much crunchy goodness. And yeah, I’m always a little surprised that they turn out so well in the microwave.
Anne Mollo
Wait. Are these reheated papadums from a restaurant, or did you make your own papadums in a microwave?
Jill "xtingu" Knapp
 

Smells Like Victory nerdsholmferret 9/5 '25

Between "seasons", we compete for fun!  (And more brownie sundaes!)

What does the N stand for in FAANG, a group of five large American companies?

What molecule named after the Greek word for "smell" is noticeable during lightning storms?

What Disney character was scheduled for a "Mammal of the Year" cover before the attack on Pearl Harbor bumped that story in Time?

What singer died four years before Keith Moon, in the exact same bedroom?

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9/5 2 Comments
Donald Duck must have had a fowl temper tantrum. After the Magical Mammal got bumped, though, I bet he was quacking up.
Lindsay Harris Friel
FAANG was: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google. I think they've tried to revive such a thing with MAMAA and MATANA but they just aren't as catchy. Meta and Alphabet didn't think about that, did they?



And ozone, the same smell I get when I let the magic smoke out of my failed electronics projects!
Chris Herdt
 

Pride Be Not Proud nerdsholmferret 8/29 '25

We finished third again thanks to another final-question botch, but did qualify for the semifinals.  I was most proud of an answer from my Geography wheelhouse, but also proud of an answer in the Taylor Swift category that strangely enough no one else on my team knew.

What upcoming Taylor Swift album was promoted on the New Heights podcast hosted by the Kelce brothers?

Who was the first TV screenwriter with a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, most well-known for his series that aired for three seasons starting in 1966?

Mexico and what two other countries have agreed to form a multinational nature preserve to protect their rainforests?

Forest Hill Cemetery was "a sea of flowers" after the death of what celebrity, setting a record for the most memorial flower donations?


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8/29 6 Comments
Tom mentioned your recent pub trivia commentary and as a regular myself I thought I’d come check it out. Props on the Swift - we have not one but two (one of which is me) fairly heavy Swifties on my team so that’s one of our strong categories.

Best one we ever got: a tie breaker question of the “here’s a numerical question no one will ever get exactly right - let’s see who gets closest” type.

Question was “how many days were there between the start of the Chicago Fire and the date of Taylor Swift’s birth?”

We knew the exact dates of both - the first because it had come up in a previous question, the second because T is famously a Sagittarius, and somewhat less famously (except to her fans) a triskaidekaphile, and because her “1989” album was titled thus because it was the year of her birth.

Ok. So we have December 13 1989 minus October 8, 1871. Count the years between. Multiply by 365. Account for leap years. Account for 1900 NOT being a leap year. Count the days between 10/8 and 12/13. Total the day counts all up. Argue amongst ourselves over whether the start and end dates are included in the count or not. Take a vote. Turn it in.

Got it exactly.

I don’t think that venue has asked a Swift question since.
CM Adams
Bravo! I famously hate the “toss up” questions of that type, which often encourage us to do math on completely unknown quantities. You certainly aced that one! I *almost* remembered the “largest recorded lightning bolt”, but wrote down 151 miles instead of 515 miles. D’oh!
nerdsholmferret
Ha ha. Well now I’m prepared for that one!
CM Adams
Another one that *might* have been amenable to an exact answer was “how many states have a state capital as their largest city”, but manually pondering 50 states in 90 seconds was a bridge too far.
nerdsholmferret
The other one we nailed almost exactly was “by square miles, how many Rhode Islands would fit in the state of Texas?”



Becca happened to know the exact square mileage of Delaware and a very close guess at how much smaller RI is. Bill had driven east to west, north to south across central Texas and across the panhandle, and diagonally - and he remembered the total drive time of each along with a close approximation of average mph. I had a good mental picture of the outline of Texas and broke it down into a geometry problem. Elizabeth talked us into rounding down from a likely overestimate. The calculations took up the entire back and front of a napkin. We ended up off by 1 and almost got beaten up on our way to the parking lot.



(These two stories suggest a greater degree of genius than we usually exhibit. We got a round one time of “name the emo band shown in each of these 10 photos” and put System of a Down for all of them figuring we’d get at least one right, except System of a Down isn’t actually an emo band at all so we got exactly zero. The usual level is somewhere in between.)



What’s your usual venue?
CM Adams
The American Legion!
nerdsholmferret
 

Rage Quit nerdsholmferret 8/22 '25

Our final answer got submitted before a team member mentioned the obviously correct answer, so I had to performatively stomp up and down in lieu of changing our answer.

The sound effect for what movie prop was created by combining a projector's hum with staticky interference from a television?

What Hawaiian word meaning "mountain" appears before "Loa" and "Kea" in the names of Hawaiian volcanoes?

Michael Crichton's book Jurassic Park shares theme-park-gone-wrong DNA with what 1973 film written and directed by Crichton?

What FPS video game sequel was the first to be rated "M for mature" and also spawned comic books, novels, board games, and two films?

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8/22 3 Comments
rain?; Mauna; The Lost World; no idea
rone
But rain doesn’t hum, nor is “The Lost World” from 1973.
nerdsholmferret
Westworld
Thomas Boutell
 
 
 

In which I mentally list all of the countries on Earth to make sure they don't start with a certain letter nerdsholmferret 8/15 '25

We're back!

What MLB team that plays in Oracle Park has a mascot named Lou Seal ?

A person who does what is called a librocubicularist ?

What kind of time measures the Earth's rotation relative to the stars ?

What country, whose common English name begins with a letter shared by no other, is bordered on the north by a gulf named after it and, in addition to its main export of oil, also produces high-quality frankincense?


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8/15 3 Comments
SF Giants, bookbinder?, sidereal?, Oman
rone
Lou Seal was the mascot of the Baby Seals, a short-lived women's football team from the 1980s.

A librocubicularist curates displays of tempting books in study carrels.

The earth's rotation relative to the stars is measured in parasocials.

Profit! is the only nation with a punctuation mark in its name. It is bordered to the north, and indeed on all sides, by the Gulf of Execution.
Thomas Boutell
I want to be a librocubicularist. How does one get that job? I’m guessing like any other art form, you have to start as a hobbyist and then volunteer.
Lindsay Harris Friel
 

Smacking My Head nerdsholmferret 8/8 '25

We came back from a halftime deficit, but then botched the final question and finished third.

Gwyneth Paltrow's highest-grossing non-Marvel movie was what 1995 crime drama with the character Tracy Mills?

Multiple choice!  Used Wimbledon tennis balls are repurposed as A) tennis racket handles  B) reusable water bottles, or C) homes for wild mice ?

Chuck Mangione played what trumpetlike instrument that has a wider, more conical bore?

What comic strip, nationally syndicated in 1978, surpassed Peanuts to become the world's most widely syndicated comic strip​​​​​​​?

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8/8 3 Comments
I’m gonna guess: Seven, mouse condos, the flugelhorn, and Garfield.
Lindsay Harris Friel
Have you ever considered a career in triviacy?
nerdsholmferret
There are career opportunities available? Where do I sign up? I consider myself highly trivial!
Lindsay Harris Friel
 

The 3 is silent nerdsholmferret 8/1 '25

Don't feel bad if you miss most of these -- so did we and we still won the game.  We felt bad because the correct answers were sometimes in our conversation, perhaps after submitting a response.

What punk rock band started out with the members Jello Biafra, East Bay Ray, Klaus Flouride, Ted, and 6025?

What 14-letter word for a sequence of dream-like images was the title of a 1995 video game?

What is the last name of filmmaker brothers Josh and Benny, known for Good Time and Uncut Gems ?

What vegetable in the onion family is worn on St. David's Day in Wales?

What triply alliterative title is the only Shakespeare play taking place within the current territory of Spain?

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8/1 2 Comments
I remember sharing a tape of the Dead Kennedy's with an older co-worker who was bemused that I did not know the history of Biafra.



While the Shakespeare play is eluding me, Henry V is the is the reason I know the answer to the vegetable question! And I've always wondered if, therefore, the Pokémon Farfetch'd is Welsh?
Chris Herdt
phantasmagoria



leeks!
rone
 
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