Super Losers

First, the good news.

• Round 1: Doctors — 10 for 10
  
• Round 2: Yiddish — 8 for 10
  
• Round 3: Games — 5.1 for 10.1

At halftime, we were in third place. I think we were behind the leper colony (This week's moniker: Mike D's Tight Bun Warmers or something like that) and the team we were trading papers with (mostly guys; they were using the team name I Miss My Dad).



After that: Disaster. Utter disaster.

Picture the smoking ruins of Southern California after the fires, waterlogged streets in Louisiana after the hurricane, the wasteland of Xenia after the tornado. . . and then maybe you'll be prepared to hear our second half score.

Are you ready? 8.

Not 8 in one round, just . . . 8. Out of 30. Oof.

To be fair, we were missing an apparently vital member of our crew. Someone decided to attend some birthday party in Independence, so when it was time for round 5, Superheroes, Cathy and I just looked at each other blankly while Mike D read questions like "What is Superdog's real name?" and "What color makes the Green Lantern lose his power?" and "Who is Clark Kent's editor?" We got one point. One. I can't even remember which thing we knew. It certainly wasn't the answers to any of that stuff I just listed.

This was after we got one point in round 4, Money. That defeat was even more damaging to the psyche because it was just a repeat of the money round we did a few weeks ago, except that this time he gave us the country and we had to name the denomination.

There was a slight rally in round 6, Movie Comedies, but we already knew that it was over. Some postgame discussion with the leper colony revealed that they didn't do too hot on the money category either, but they were all over the superhero thing, even to the point of having heated discussions with Mike D about the finer points of who was and was not Aquaman's brother. The lepers helpfully advised us that we need to diversify our team, and find more people who know about the things that we don't. They said that they have most categories covered, except for sports. Hmm. I know some sports. . . . and joining them would give me "a better chance of scoring the pasta basket or trucker hat or whatever the grand prize is nowadays," as Christine puts it.

When I returned to our table, I discovered that Cathy was receiving the same advice. She writes:

And after pub quiz was over [the waiter] and I were chit-chatting about the categories and I said that we needed a boy on our team for some of them, like the superheroes, which he pointed out that not all boys know that either ... as he awkwardly alluded that hot boys like himself don't ... it was too cute.

This was after she complained to Mike D about why doesn't he ever do questions about a category she knows something about, like Barbies. He told her that he did Barbies two weeks ago and she missed it. Ha! Also: Not true.

Anyways, we ended up in the middle of the pack — 7th place. And Cathy didn't win a raffle prize, so it was really a crummy evening all the way around.

Next week is the last week, although it starts up again in January. That gives me almost six weeks to line up some additional players. Applications are now being accepted in the comments section.