Recap: Harvard Square roars for the BQT, again

Dare I say it? Last night was the best Big Quiz Thing yet at our Boston-area venue, Oberon. I wasn't sure it would work—Cambridge apparently clears out a bit in the summer, and I was sans EDP, but the crowd certainly came through, and my special guest, DJ Tanner (get it?), provided able support. (Thanks, too, to the return of B-Cutie Jessica.) I even recovered from my horrible mangling of the name of the Latin American cake includes three varieties of a single ingredient.
High-five.

Round 1 stunned me a bit, as these trivia geeks did very well—three perfect-score teams, I believe, and several within spitting distance. For example, this question was a backbreaker when I asked it NYC-side—"What animal, which has never existed in the wild, is the largest cat in the world?"—but nearly everyone came through in Mass. I attribute it to a strange fascination with this film.

So I turned up the heat, showing them the video round ("Three Degrees of Celebrities"—I love how Crazy Harry the Muppet counts as a celebrity) one time only. That brought the skill level back down to earth, and everyone did particularly well in the rest of the game. Afterward, one of my area regulars commented that Boston breeds a hardier race of quiz nerd, which I denied, then challenged him to prove it by crashing the New York City Clash of the Trivia Champions. C'mon, you know you want to!

And in case you were wondering, that guy yelling about Joey Chestnut and "the warm season of mutual oral stimulation" was indeed my father. He's very proud. I was praying his team would make it into the Three-Way Finale, just so I could have a little fun with (read: take revenge on) him onstage, but sixth place was the best they could do (would've tied for fifth if they'd listened to my mom for "'What’s your favorite color?': What’s the most common answer to that question among Americans?
").

Speaking of, the Finale was longer than most—six questions—but the more, the tensionier, as I always like to say. Returning champions Bob Sheppard Kicks Ass (né Jackie Robinson Kicks Ass), plus verified BQT hardcorites Monstrous Humanoid, plus upstarts Quips Ahoy took the stage. Six questions (three of which no one got—really, no one knows the genre of music that shares its name with the Latin for “to learn"?). But Quips Ahoy (mm…cookies) pulled through on "Existent since ancient times, what was the first human invention to break the sound barrier?" And here they are:
Man, that stage looks huge.

Hope to be back at Oberon sooner rather than later, although the venue is booked out the wazoo, so it might take some time (also, their staff—the best staff team in BQT history—is in heavy training). There are a multitude of methods of keeping up with us online, via bigquizthing.com, so please do if you want to do this again and again and again (and again).