We are the champions

My friends, parents and I won first prize at the city-wide trivia tournament today! To be fair, we won first prize at one of two trivia tournaments today, but first prize is a championship - no two ways about it. Our victory was a perfect example of team work, proper communication and good juju (special thanks to the Lou Gehrig sign on the wall next to our table, which sealed the deal for the MLB record-holder for most career grand slams). Here I'll share a few questions and how our fabulous team answered them. To allow you to play trivia yourself the answers are posted at the bottom of this post.

1. What two actors won best actor and actress at both the 2010 Golden Globes and Oscars?
2. What is currently the top-visited airline website?
3. Are the main islands of Hawaii north or south of the Tropic of Cancer?
4. Who married Marc Mezvinsky on July 31, 2010?
5. What temperature is the same in Celsius and Fahrenheit?
6. How many original articles are contained in the US Constitution?
7. St. Apollonia is the patron saint of what medical profession?
8. What Texas Instruments product does E.T. use to phone home?

Final question: Place these cities in order by distance in air miles from Chicago:

• Charlotte, North Carolina
  
• Kansas City, Missouri
• Buffalo, New York
• Birmingham, Alabama

There were plenty more question, too, including a far-too easy To Kill a Mockingbird question (who the hell doesn't' know Atticus Finch's profession?!? C'mon!). The answers are listed below, along with a little play-by-play about how we came to them.

1. Sandra Bullock & Jeff Bridges. We'd not have come up with Jeff Bridges if B didn't say "Oh, it's that dude," which prompted my dad to think of The Dude, played by Jeff Bridges. We remembered Sandra Bullock from a previous trivia question about which women in Hollywood made the most money in 2010.
2. Southwest. After much debate we decided it was either Delta or Southwest. As I dashed the answer to the front I erased Delta in favor of Southwest for reasons I cannot explain.
3. South. We drew a picture of the globe, included the equator and tropics, then started talking about Hawaii's distance, sunshine and what sort of things the pilot points out as you fly there.
   
4. Chelsea Clinton! We all shrugged our shoulders for a few minutes. Despite my getting married one week ahead of Chelsea I was drawing a blank. My mom jumped in with the answer. Of course!
5. -40. My dad knew this one right away. J did the math and confirmed. As we discussed the differences between the two measurements of temp we were careful not to give away our answer.
   
6. Seven. B thought and thought - he carries a constitution around with him, but gave an unsure five for his answer. Both J and E came up with seven -- it's almost always a sign to listen to if two players just "know" something like this.
7. Dentistry. We totally bombed this question -- one of the two non-bonus questions we missed. Who knew?
8. Speak-n-Spell. Weird!
   

There were two bonus rounds - one where we chose which of two brands (Oreos or Chips Ahoy, for example) made the most money in 2009. We correctly guessed - seriously guessing is all we could do - seven of twelve. (Seriously, who eats Chips Ahoy? How can they sell more than Oreo? This is unreasonable!)

The second bonus round involved airport codes. We correctly guessed all but one airport. Here are some of the codes - guess the city they belong to:

• FRA
• CDG
• LHR
• AMD
• MAD
• PEK
• HKG
• HND

Airport answers:

• Frankfort
• Paris
• London
• Amsterdam
• Madrid
• Beijing
• Hong Kong
• Tokyo

Final question - a complete clusterfuck of ideas, opinions and dissent. These cities are REALLY close together. We guessed and held our collective breath. We got the final answer right and held on to our first place position. Amazing! The answer - which isn't something any non-cartographer should know - is:

• Kansas City (closest)
• Buffalo
• Birmingham
• Charlotte (farthest)

Our team was pretty phenomenal. I don't think I've ever seen my dad as excited as he was when we won. It was a wonderful afternoon of us all putting our knowledge, experiences and ideas together. Even though trivia is pretty ridiculous and random, our team left feeling like champions. And that's pretty nice.