Recap: Now you know about psychos visiting your home and Scooby-Doo as a werewolf

Sorry this is late. Going to keep it honest: This was our last night at the Midtown Theatre. I know, we'd announced a November 9 date there, but this place is just not working for us, for a variety of reasons. You people are awesome for following us there, of course, but that's it. Besides, I hate carting my quiz gear through Times Square. Fuck that non-naked non-cowboy.

Despite venue complexities, it was a straight-between-the-eyes solid quiz. My favorite entry from Brand Name Bonanza:
I love that shit.

The quiz was on the challenging side, I admit. So let me use this space to educate. For the "Werewolves on TV" four-parter, the hardest entry was "Sherman Fangsworth." What TV show featured said werewolf?…

I forgot how influential Scooby-Doo was (maybe easily replicable is more like it).

One question that I think stumped everyone—and I admit to being shocked by this—was "The cheesy TV commercial for local car-buying service Big Bucks Auto quite amusingly boasts, 'No costly ads or BLANKs coming to your home.'" Really? You've never noticed this?

BQT consumer tip of the day: Don't make any multi-thousand-dollar business transaction with a company that thinks the plural of ad is ad's.

Speaking of which, I also had a "Dictionary Neighbors" four-parter: I name two words in Merriam-Webster's, you tell me the one entry in between them. Definitely tricky (though both the teams that aced it told me it was too easy, ha ha). The toughest: What word comes between lagging and lagomorph? Great word—try to use it in conversation in the next couple days.

The shortest-live Monster Cereal? Not Quentin Tarantino's beloved Fruit Brute; but rather this…

How does one's tummy go yummy? The tummy has neither taste buds nor vocal cords. I'm overthinking this, aren't I?

Now, the Three-Way Finale: hot new format. By popular request, I announced a category for the finale; in this edition, next week's election. I had plenty more I didn't get to use, mostly useless in a couple weeks. I'm such a sucker.

And it was Gerard Depardouche vs. Sugah Titz vs. a BQT portmanteau supergroup, Incontinental Strippers. Election trivia galore; the most exciting moment was when both Matt of IncontStrip and Dennis of the 'Douche garbled the full official name of the rally happening this Saturday on the National Mall, creating an opening for Sugah Titter Kristin to score the point.

But Matt (who, incidentally, told me he knew of all Brand Name Bonanza cold since he's a trademark lawyer) took it all by naming one of the two lost-cause Republican nominees for Senate from New York. Joe DioGuardi wins!

The standings:
1. Incontinental Strippers: Man, that's going to be a bitch making a returning-champions graphic for them.
2. Gerard Depardouche/Sugah Titz (tie)
4. Jefferson Davis Starship
5. Marie Antoinette Dodson
6. Grand Theft Autoerotica
7. Charlie Sheen's Angels/Strippers for Noah Tarnow (tie)
9. Jews Against Jesus
10. The Noah Is Too Damn High Party

As for the future: We are working very hard to end the venue jumping, but it probably won't be till 2011. Tricky days. We are definitely back at Crash Mansion on Monday, December 13; that show will be extra exciting, but I'll tell more in due time, in this space. Till then, we have the Google-Proof Question of the Day on Twitter, we're back in Boston November 8, and we're ramping up for private-party season; hook us up with your office party, and you get in free to the BQT throughout 2011 (booking@bigquizthing.com!). And thank you…

My full day's supply of Red 40

Back in March, we did a "Soda Pop Haiku" video round, from which I cut the following item…

Like Hawaiian Punch?
Tastes great when carbonated
It’s Polynesian

The answer is Tahitian Treat, a bright-red, extremely sweet soda that, yes, tastes like a rough approximation of Hawaiian Punch with bubbles. I decided not to use that particular haiku because (a) it's not the most clever question I've ever written and (b) Tahitian Treat is a pretty obscure beverage, making this question both very hard and very boring. I didn't want balled-up answer sheets pelted at my head.

But Tahitian Treat punches a few nostalgia buttons for me. Stopping at the South Orange Community Center to play foosball after school, we'd get Tahitian Treat from the soda machine that offered only weirdo Canada Dry brands, including something called Hi-Spot (cheapo Sprite). TT was all the kids' favorite; we argued over whether it was pronounced "Ta-hee-shan" or "Ta-hee-tee-an."

Tahitian Treat still exists, manufactured by Dr Pepper (Canada Dry's current parent company), though it's hard to find in the East. Yet earlier today, walking the streets of the UWS and craving sugary soda (I had something grape in mind), I popped into a bodega and saw 20-ounce bottles of Tahitian Treat, which I had almost certainly not consumed in decades. Only $1.25, which is a bargain when you consider it's imported from Tahiti (er…). It was absolutely disgusting, and absolutely delicious.

The thing is, this stuff is definitely not just carbonated Hawaiian Punch. It's got a lot more sugar (37 grams versus 29 grams), it's noticeably sweeter, and it has absolutely zero fruit juice (HP boasts its 5 percent blend, for what that's worth, along with 100 percent of vitamin C). The Tahitian Treat ingredients list:

Carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup and/or sugar, citric acid, sodium benzoate (preservative), gum acacia, natural and artificial flavors, glycerol ester of wood rosin, red 40

I'm fairly certain that that's the recipe for death. I mean "glycerol ester of wood rosin"? (It's a common emulsifier that Wikipedia comfortingly says "leaves the body through urine.") The funniest is "red 40": You really should never consume any ingredient whose name doesn't have a noun in it. I have no doubt that by drinking that bottle of Tahitian Treat, I had shaved a good year off my life span.

Happy drinking, everyone!