HQ Trivia

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Ironhorse
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by Ironhorse »

Wow! Congrats!

I got eliminated on the Guns n Roses question and was kicking myself since I own Chinese Democracy. I now wish I'd at least stuck around to see the end.
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grindcore
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by grindcore »

The game started with what, 1.6 or 1.7 million people? And our guy was one of three winners!
seaborgium
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by seaborgium »

Which of these is NOT a common type of underwear?
Bee beard|Briefs|Boxers
A person who can't decide something is said to be "sitting on the" what?
Blockchain|Dock of the Bay|Fence
When referring to the rodent, which of these is the correct plural form of "mouse"?
Mouses|Octopi|Mice
What does the "A" in the biological acronym "DNA" stand for?
Ardent|Acid|Adenine
What is the capital of the North Star State?
Austin|Juneau|Saint Paul
Which of these investments takes longest to mature?
T-bonds|T-notes|T-bills
The mnemonic "King Henry Doesn't Usually Drink Chocolate Milk" is used to remember what?
Moons of Saturn|Noble gases|Metric prefixes
Which of these states is home to the tallest structure in the Western Hemisphere?
Washington|New York|North Dakota
Which of these is an anagram of "twelve plus one"?
Eleven plus two|Twenty-one elves|Twelve one-ups
Guns N' Roses once wrote a song with the same title as what author's most famous work?
JD Salinger|F. Scott Fitzgerald|Truman Capote
Which of the following cities is NOT home to an inaugural NHL team?
Pittsburgh|Chicago|Detroit
Whose Twitter handle comes first in alphabetical order?
Ellen DeGeneres|Neil Patrick Harris|LeBron James
Which of these is a character from the 1980s cartoon series titled "Ghostbusters"?
Slimer|Ray Stantz|Eddie Spenser Jr.
Which nation's flag features a simple geometric form meant to resemble the nation's shape?
Bosnia and Herzegovina|Nepal|Argentina
The last lines spoken by Shakespeare's Romeo and Othello both include what word?
Sleep|Kiss|Heart
Spoiler
Bee beard
Fence
Mice
Acid
Saint Paul
T-bonds
Metric prefixes
North Dakota
Eleven plus two
JD Salinger
Pittsburgh
Neil Patrick Harris
Eddie Spenser Jr.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Kiss
Spoiler
First four were no-brainers.
5: I actually thought of Alaska first before thinking about which capitals belonged to which states, but came to my senses about Minnesota being the North Star State.
6: I figured the T must be "treasury" in all the choices and remembered getting savings bonds (possibly T-bonds? I'm not sure) from my grandparents as a child and how the date of maturity seemed like forever away.
7: I knew there wasn't a noble gas with a D or a U, then I thought of kilo and hecto for K and H and locked in metric prefixes, then did a forehead slap when I realized I don't know of any metric prefixes starting with U. Then I was surprised when it was right, and realized it must stand for "unit," the dividing line between positive and negative powers of 10. Kilo, hecta, deka, unit, deci, centi, milli.
8. I was pretty sure the CN Tower was taller than anything in New York, so I knew there was trickery afoot. So I went for the weird choice. Sure enough, there's a TV transmitting mast in North Dakota that was for a time the tallest structure in the world.
9. The funny fact of this pair of anagrams has been familiar to me for decades.
10. I used an extra life on this one, thinking "in cold blood" was a common enough phrase that it allowed for a song title that wasn't necessarily referencing the literary work in question.
11. I worked this out with the murky logic of ruling out Chicago for "Black Hawks" sounding like the name of an old team, and Detroit for being close to Canada. I thought "Penguins" sounded like it would be a newer team name.
12. Neil Patrick Harris was the only one whose Twitter handle I was totally sure of, and @actuallyNPH made me pretty confident. I thought LeBron might be @KingJames and couldn't think what Ellen could be. But the "ac" up my sleeve kept me from worrying before the reveal.
13. I remembered seeing an animated Slimer in the '80s, so I locked him in, then realized that that show was called "The Real Ghostbusters." If I had remembered that three seconds sooner, I could have ruled out Ray as also being a character in it.
14. The flag of Nepal, the only non-quadrilateral national flag, was easy to remember. I wasn't totally sure what the shapes on it were, but I could be certain that they were emblems that didn't reflect the shape of the nation. I went for Bosnia on the 50:50 and don't have a real reason. When I read this question to my dad, he guessed B&H also, with his reasoning being that since the concept sounded modern to him, he chose the newest country.
15. I had a vague sense that Romeo might have referred to his drinking poison as a kiss (since of course he would have to put his lips to the vessel with the pestle that contained it).

So I got pretty darn close. But I could have easily been gone on Q7 too (I've been semi-resolved not to use an extra life during the first half of a game's questions, and I had the willpower to let the opportunity go last week in the wake of the "ginormous" savagery, so who knows).
Hooray for David! It was exciting to see a username I recognized with such a big figure under it.

edit: corrected some weird grammar caused by thinking of two ways to write a sentence and accidentally splitting the difference between them
Last edited by seaborgium on Tue May 01, 2018 3:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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boson
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by boson »

With inspiration from dhkendall, cmp146 and I did HQ together tonight. We both got to question 12:
(paraphrasing)
Which 1990s talk show hosted by these celebrities lasted the shortest time?
a) Magic Johnson
b) Chevy Chase
c) Pat Sajak

Neither of us had a clue so we hedged our bets and picked two different people. We were both wrong. Sigh.
Spoiler
Chevy Chase's show lasted only 5 weeks
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dhkendall
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by dhkendall »

As I inspired boson (and that's so sweet! Seriously, the comments I've received because of this reinforce my belief that trivia people are the best people), so seaborgium has inspired me to say what was behind my string of right answers in The Game That Will Live In Infamy (at least in my house):
Spoiler
1. mrsdhkendall: "I've never heard of "bee beard""
me: "That's the point, that's the one you're supposed to select"
2. mrsdhkendall: "Oh, these are easy!"
Me: "Yeah, they won't stay that way. The first few questions are ridiculously easy for some reason"
5: Saw the trap for Austin, and gave a nod of the head in respect for the clue writer. Also foresaw that it would be a "savage question". (It was, correct?)
6: This was one of the toughest for me, especially since these are all American terms. I got it through a combination of working with the damn things' Canadian equivalents on my job (but the American equivalent terms never come up) and a lot of guessing.
7: This was the first of a couple answers where I selected the answer, did a headslap "d'oh! Oh well, it was fun while it lasted!" and wound up being right! I didn't think there was a mnemonic for the moons of Saturn (no one needs to know all except the biggest ones), knew there wasn't a noble gas that began with U, and tapped "metric prefixes" with zero thunder. Combination of my Canadianness telling me that "no one needs to remember those, they're ingrained!" and thinking "d'oh! There's no metric prefix that starts with U!" made me seriously think I was out of the game.
8. I knew the answer and had heard the fact before. (I explained to mrs. dhkendall about the tv antenna, as well as the fact that we drive by it all the time (or at least can see it) whenever we go down south)
9. Like seaborgium, this too has been a favourite chestnut of mine.
10. Pure and utter lucky guess. I like Guns n' Roses (I'll fight anyone who disagrees that "Appetite for Destruction" is not the best debut album by a band ever (but the rest of their discography is basically crap)), but had not one single inkling of a clue
11. Another "ingrained Canadian knowledge" is knowing the original 6 teams: Canadiens, Red Wings, Black Hawks, Bruins, Leafs, and Rangers. This one was pretty easy.
12. This was the only one I got wrong, and an extra life saved me (If anyone asks me for tips on winning big money on HQ (I say this in my usual facetious tone, but now that I've done it, I actually think someone might!), my #1 tip is to make sure you have at least one extra life saved for the Sunday game, don't use them the rest of the week, save it for Sunday.). I thought the handles were @ellen, @KingJames (or @Lebron, doesn't really matter for the purposes of the question), and @NPH. Forgot about the @actually part.
13. Like seaborgium, I remembered the animated Slimer as well, and was all set to select him, then I thought "wait a minute, this is question 13, they're not going to have that much of a softball on question 13! Slimer is a trap!" Had not heard at all of the other two and wound up with another lucky guess. (I want to add for the record that usually on HQ I have several questions I guess on, this day was no different. What was different was that all these guesses were right.)
14. This one should come as no surprise. :) The "hidden map" on the flag is a favourite vexillological trivia fact of mine.
15. This was a semi-wild guess. Debated between sleep and kiss, and I figured, with Romeo and Juliet in there, and Othello basically also being a tragic love story, that kiss would be the one. Was actually very surprised at the small number of people from the (12?) left by that point that got that one. (But I have *ZERO* complaints that it did turn out to be a small amount of people!)

So a combination of an extra life and a whole pile load of guesses that came up right helped me on this. I could very easily have lost as early as question 6. To paraphrase some rich idiot, "HQ is two parts luck and one part luck."
"Jeopardy! is two parts luck and one part luck" - Me

"The way to win on Jeopardy is to be a rabidly curious, information-omnivorous person your entire life." - Ken Jennings

Follow my progress game by game since 2012
seaborgium
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by seaborgium »

The main reason I knew Ray was a Ghostbusters character is from the "do, re, Egon" gag from the sequel. Bill Murray says "do," Dan Aykroyd says "re," and because his character's name is Ray, Harold Ramis's Egon says his own name. (I once thought it was just "mi"->"me"->"Egon," but the homonyms of re and Ray are a more satisfying explanation.) It's too bad I jumped to the conclusion of "Ghostbusters" being "The Real Ghostbusters," because I had just enough knowledge to rule out the two wrong answers if I had realized that wasn't the title of the cartoon I saw. (My assumption before getting that question wrong was that the extra words in the title were only to differentiate it from the film, and not from another animated TV series.) I could have cost you over $2,000!

The North Star State capital question was indeed savage, with more than half again as many people choosing each incorrect response as chose the correct one, and cutting the survivors from over 870k to a little over 200k. (These approximate ratios just so happened to repeat themselves on the last question, or at least as closely as they could with 13 players instead of 870-something thousand.)
smenks13
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by smenks13 »

Just wanted to add my congratulations for dhkendall! I remember your name from this forum and was rooting for you when I saw you still in on the last couple questions. I was out on Guns N' Roses - was there no hard rock cover of "Breakfast at Tiffany's"?!

Also wanted to echo your thoughts that saving an extra life for Sunday is crucial. I wrote this up yesterday and wanted to leave it here in case anyone would like to read some tips. seaborgium, thanks for digging up my past Jeopardy connection. While it's cool to play an app in your PJ's, Jeopardy was still the best experience of my life. Good luck to everyone out there!

- Scott (ScottMenke on HQ)
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jeff6286
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by jeff6286 »

smenks13 wrote: Tue May 01, 2018 8:58 am Just wanted to add my congratulations for dhkendall! I remember your name from this forum and was rooting for you when I saw you still in on the last couple questions. I was out on Guns N' Roses - was there no hard rock cover of "Breakfast at Tiffany's"?!

Also wanted to echo your thoughts that saving an extra life for Sunday is crucial. I wrote this up yesterday and wanted to leave it here in case anyone would like to read some tips. seaborgium, thanks for digging up my past Jeopardy connection. While it's cool to play an app in your PJ's, Jeopardy was still the best experience of my life. Good luck to everyone out there!

- Scott (ScottMenke on HQ)
You can see who’s in on the last few questions? What am I missing here?
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alietr
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by alietr »

smenks13 wrote: Tue May 01, 2018 8:58 am Just wanted to add my congratulations for dhkendall! I remember your name from this forum and was rooting for you when I saw you still in on the last couple questions. I was out on Guns N' Roses - was there no hard rock cover of "Breakfast at Tiffany's"?!

Also wanted to echo your thoughts that saving an extra life for Sunday is crucial. I wrote this up yesterday and wanted to leave it here in case anyone would like to read some tips. seaborgium, thanks for digging up my past Jeopardy connection. While it's cool to play an app in your PJ's, Jeopardy was still the best experience of my life. Good luck to everyone out there!

- Scott (ScottMenke on HQ)
Wait, what? *THE* Scott Menke? I've heard of you, and I don't even play HQ! (Welcome back, sir.)
smenks13
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by smenks13 »

jeff6286 wrote: Tue May 01, 2018 9:04 am
smenks13 wrote: Tue May 01, 2018 8:58 am Just wanted to add my congratulations for dhkendall! I remember your name from this forum and was rooting for you when I saw you still in on the last couple questions. I was out on Guns N' Roses - was there no hard rock cover of "Breakfast at Tiffany's"?!

Also wanted to echo your thoughts that saving an extra life for Sunday is crucial. I wrote this up yesterday and wanted to leave it here in case anyone would like to read some tips. seaborgium, thanks for digging up my past Jeopardy connection. While it's cool to play an app in your PJ's, Jeopardy was still the best experience of my life. Good luck to everyone out there!

- Scott (ScottMenke on HQ)
You can see who’s in on the last few questions? What am I missing here?
At least on iOS, you can click on the icon in the top left of the app during the game to see a list of friends and non-friends. Those still in the game are indicated by a blue dot next to their username iirc.
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badgerfellow
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by badgerfellow »

smenks13 wrote: Tue May 01, 2018 2:24 pm
jeff6286 wrote: Tue May 01, 2018 9:04 am
smenks13 wrote: Tue May 01, 2018 8:58 am Just wanted to add my congratulations for dhkendall! I remember your name from this forum and was rooting for you when I saw you still in on the last couple questions. I was out on Guns N' Roses - was there no hard rock cover of "Breakfast at Tiffany's"?!

Also wanted to echo your thoughts that saving an extra life for Sunday is crucial. I wrote this up yesterday and wanted to leave it here in case anyone would like to read some tips. seaborgium, thanks for digging up my past Jeopardy connection. While it's cool to play an app in your PJ's, Jeopardy was still the best experience of my life. Good luck to everyone out there!

- Scott (ScottMenke on HQ)
You can see who’s in on the last few questions? What am I missing here?
At least on iOS, you can click on the icon in the top left of the app during the game to see a list of friends and non-friends. Those still in the game are indicated by a blue dot next to their username iirc.
Android has this ability now. May need to push through via update.
seaborgium
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by seaborgium »

Today's second question: The word "flauta" literally translates to what in English? The choices: flimsy taco, flute, and flux capacitor.

This question drew ire in the chat, because Sarah Pribis prefaced it with "Let's talk food." Of more than 600k people playing, over 200k guessed the option that named a food, not knowing "flauta" as being a food term itself.
Ironhorse
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by Ironhorse »

Over 90,000 participants just answered that the defense is responsible for proving guilt in a trial.
seaborgium
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by seaborgium »

I got the Australian slang question wrong and guessed everything else right. There were just 58 winners, so I missed out on over $80 with one wrong answer.
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dinghammer
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by dinghammer »

seaborgium wrote: Thu May 03, 2018 10:07 pm I got the Australian slang question wrong
Ooh, what was it? That's one of the few things I know a couple things about, but if there are recaps on the subreddit, they're not identifiable.
seaborgium
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by seaborgium »

dinghammer wrote: Fri May 04, 2018 4:24 am
seaborgium wrote: Thu May 03, 2018 10:07 pm I got the Australian slang question wrong
Ooh, what was it? That's one of the few things I know a couple things about, but if there are recaps on the subreddit, they're not identifiable.
Which of these shirts would an Australian most likely call a “skivvy”?
Turtleneck|Sleeveless T-shirt|Crop top
Ironhorse
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by Ironhorse »

I barely missed out on the prize myself; I got all the way to question 11 and was eliminated on the Beyonce question (I would have missed question 12 anyway though).
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Woof
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by Woof »

Ironhorse wrote: Fri May 04, 2018 8:03 am I barely missed out on the prize myself; I got all the way to question 11 and was eliminated on the Beyonce question (I would have missed question 12 anyway though).
Q12 was the easiest of the latter half IMO. I also went out on the skivvy question and would have had to make a blind guess on the Beyonce one.
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dinghammer
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by dinghammer »

seaborgium wrote: Fri May 04, 2018 6:21 am
dinghammer wrote: Fri May 04, 2018 4:24 am
seaborgium wrote: Thu May 03, 2018 10:07 pm I got the Australian slang question wrong
Ooh, what was it? That's one of the few things I know a couple things about, but if there are recaps on the subreddit, they're not identifiable.
Which of these shirts would an Australian most likely call a “skivvy”?
Turtleneck|Sleeveless T-shirt|Crop top
Yikes. My first instinct would be sleeveless t-shirt, but if you and Woof missed it, I wonder if it might be a crop top. I have a hard time believing enough Australians wear turtlenecks that they'd have a special word for it.
seaborgium
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Re: HQ Trivia

Post by seaborgium »

dinghammer wrote: Fri May 04, 2018 2:53 pm
seaborgium wrote: Fri May 04, 2018 6:21 am
dinghammer wrote: Fri May 04, 2018 4:24 am
seaborgium wrote: Thu May 03, 2018 10:07 pm I got the Australian slang question wrong
Ooh, what was it? That's one of the few things I know a couple things about, but if there are recaps on the subreddit, they're not identifiable.
Which of these shirts would an Australian most likely call a “skivvy”?
Turtleneck|Sleeveless T-shirt|Crop top
Yikes. My first instinct would be sleeveless t-shirt, but if you and Woof missed it, I wonder if it might be a crop top. I have a hard time believing enough Australians wear turtlenecks that they'd have a special word for it.
Spoiler
Turtleneck was the answer.
I had to guess on the Menlo Parks question and unconfidently reasoned my way to the correct answer on Q12, but I knew the Beyoncé and On A Friday questions cold.
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