There’s a song by Florida punks Against Me! entitled “Mediocrity Gets You Pears”, which is especially appropriate for this week’s quiz. At the Spirit, they had a snazzy new bottle in stock, Fox Barrel Pacific Pear Cider. One of the acceptable answers in round 3 was “Pears”. We got pears, probably because most of the teams tonight, at least for the first 7 rounds, were awfully mediocre. Save for the Scrabble-style Round 3 which had a lot of 7s and 8s, the scoreboard was saturated with 4s, 5s, and 6s. The great thing about this, though, was that the quiz was so close and the jokerings so few, that by round 8 it basically came down to whoever was best in the final set.

At the start, I decided to try the Spirit’s “Ghost Chili Inferno” boneless wings, which were so incredibly spicy I was a little disoriented at the quiz’s start and forgot to mention GWD’s 6-person max per team rule, and ended up with about 3 or 4 teams who had 7 people. One of them were regulars 7 Dirty Words, who usually play with a smaller amount of players. Their 11 point round 2 went unmatched, which basically gave them a narrow lead at the first break, at which point there were absolutely no jokers. All-lady team Six Appeal waltzed in during Round 4 and called me sexist for asking about Star Wars and sports. Last time I got called sexist was for asking about pro wrestling. Quizmastering at the Spirit has been the only occurrence where I’ve been dubbed sexist, let alone twice.

Strangely enough, the 7-person teams really weren’t much of a threat at all. My theory is they spent too much time chatting to listen to my queries. Instead, when the last round rolled around and most teams had saved their jokers, it came down to runner-up trio Joseph Singer with their jokered 12-point round 8, and former champs Joe Buck Showalter Cronkite, a dynamic duo who stole the title with a sly 13-point jokering at the very end. I love these thrilling finishes!

As an added bonus, my mom and sister showed up and played as Old Spice Girls. They didn’t do so well in the quiz, but they did well in pleasantly surprising me upon arrival. Always nice to see fam!

• The Royal Hilltop - Aurora 8:00 PM
• Darcy's Bistro & Pub - Denver 8:30 PM
• Prickly Pete's - Denver 8:00 PM
• The Whiskey Bar - Denver 7:00 PM
• The Cheeky Monk - Westminster 9:00 PM
• The Ram (Meridian) - Meridian 9:00 PM
• Lisa's Restaurant & Lounge - Augusta 7:30 PM
• Opal Divine's (Marina) - Austin 10:00 PM
• Opal Divine's (Penn Field) - Austin 10:00 PM