Christopher D. Short - Geeks Who Drink Presents: Duh!: 100 Bar Trivia Questions You Should Know (And the Unexpected Stories Behind the Answers)

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Copyright 2019 by Christopher D. Short.

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First Adams Media trade paperback edition September 2019

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Interior design by Colleen Cunningham

Interior mug image 123RF/Agnieszka Murphy

Cover design by Frank Rivera

Cover images by Holland Hume

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Short, Christopher D., editor.

Title: Geeks Who Drink presents: Duh! / edited by Christopher D. Short.

Description: Avon, Massachusetts: Adams Media, 2019.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019016953 | ISBN 9781507210499 (pb) | ISBN 9781507210505 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Curiosities and wonders. | Questions and answers. | BISAC: REFERENCE / Trivia. | GAMES / Trivia.

Classification: LCC AG243 .G36 2019 | DDC 031.02--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019016953

ISBN 978-1-5072-1049-9

ISBN 978-1-5072-1050-5 (ebook)

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and Simon & Schuster, Inc., was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed with initial capital letters.

Whats the name of a female peacock?

There are two Xs in the logo of what beer brand?

Whats the only state flag that depicts a US president?

These questions are ridiculously obvious, right? You should be able to spit out the answer in no time flat? Ormaybe not?

Lets back up a minute. The usual job of the conscientious quiz-writer is to start with a kernel of something you dont know, and stir in just the right mix of hints and parallels to lead you to the correct answer (yes, no matter what it feels like, we do want you to get most of them right).

You wont find those types of questions here. Geeks Who Drink Presents: Duh! starts with one hundred especially super-obvious questions to which, on some level or another, you really should just know the answer. Maybe that answers on the tip of your tongue. Maybe it really wants to get out, but you cant believe its that straightforward. Anyway, hinting would just ruin it. These questions are carefully crafted so as to dare you to overthink them. You may get it right or not, but when you see the answer, youll definitely go, Duh!

Why would we do this to you? Well, long before we grew into a coast-to-coast pub quiz empire, back in the day when Tobey Maguire was still Spider-Man and Sarah Palin was still a governor, Geeks Who Drink was just a few people trying to find clever ways to ask questionseight questions a round, eight rounds a quiz, six quizzes a weekthat didnt sound like they came right off a Trivial Pursuit card. Those three gems above became the germ of our favorite round theme, and it had legs: as of this writing, more than a decade later, weve presented some 860 Duh questions.

And weve used one hundred of our favorites as jumping-off points for the essays in this book, so lets talk about that real quick! Start by looking through the Table of Contents (duh), where youll find one hundred questions with corresponding page numbers. Turn em over in your brain for a minute, and when youre done torturing yourself over a question, just flip to that page. Youll not only alleviate your suffering; youll also be treated with a nice little not-so-deep dive into the pool of random knowledge that our writers wade in every day. Speaking of those writers, the initials at the end of each entry just tell you which of our lovely and talented contributors wrote it. You can learn more about them at the back, so please do!

And with that, go forth and enjoy the book. As for us, were proud as a peahen , and ready to enjoy a nice Dos Equis in Washington (duh).

What more is there to say about the last show standing from the golden age of TV quizzes? With its lightning pace and trademark twist on responses form of a question , you have likely yelled in your living room Jeopardy! holds a special place in the hearts of game show nerds and dining grandparents everywhere.

Created by Merv Griffin while on a plane with his wife, in a story thats not interesting enough to be repeated as often as it is, Jeopardy! has aired more than eleven thousand episodes in various iterations since its first bow on NBC in the mid-sixties. The newest version, with sometimes-snarky septuagenarian Alex Trebek, has been a syndicated stalwart since 1984.

Despite a reputation for strict rules that occasionally border on pedantry, the Jeopardy! staff are not exactly the grammar police. As the lore goes, Griffin originally meant to require grammatically correct phrasing (for example, only accepting Who is when the subject is a person). But this slowed the game down, and the rules were changed to accept any correct response in question form. Nowadays, Where is Duh? is a perfectly valid response to a clue about this book. And if you really want to be cool, by Jeopardy! standards anyway, try to remember that you dont need a What is in front of Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? its already a question.

When young people notice Jeopardy! at all, that generally means theres a new viral video of some hiccup, embarrassing moment, or other bizarre occurrence:

to carry on the rich tradition of Jeopardistas who suck at pop culture. Mortifyingly, she mistook a photo of sad white rap-rocker Uncle Kracker for the way more talented, way more melanated rapper Kid Cudi.

Theres practically a whole YouTube genre of players swinging and missing on sports questions. One contestant placed running back Marcus Allen on the Colorado Rockies. Another named Magic Johnson as the all-time NHL assists leader. In February 2018 all three players stood and stared as an entire elementary football category went bythey didnt even get option play when they spotted the word choice.