Trivianometry 101 - Snakes at the Café

23 January 2025

“The Year of the Snake”

It smoothly and gracefully entered the café, waited a curious time to set up, then all of its undulating lo-commotion was unleashed when, in its self-evident wisdom, it was ready. It was the Trivianometry game with a bite (complete with sounds so unrecognisable), the start of our 2025 series, with the first edition being “The Year of the Snake”!

Café Down Low in Buccoo, Tobago, hosted this charmer of a game where capacity attendance, and then some, meant that one team was participating from off in the unsheltered section. Luckily, the evening weather was expected to be non-threatening, so there was No Doubt going to be zero dousing of competitive (Serpentine) Fires.

It was a return to the top by team Tobago Sisters, with Norfolk & Chance and Victorious Venus, both also seasoned and fierce teams, finishing 2nd and 3rd, respectively. When the Tobago Sisters opened on full marks (and double at that for choosing to play their joker card) on Round 1 titled “DIM”, it slightly offset the 2-point deficit they entered our game with owing to a partly botched MoPro Promo. At that point, TS formed a tie with Norfolk & Chance, who just about went full brightness on the DIM round, not quite getting DIMNESS as “the quality of poor illumination”, which specifically asked for a 7-letter word; instead they chose what they thought would slide (and slither), their incorrect response, ‘DIMMER’. The joker worked to their full advantage as well.

More fun continued with a multi-step Round 2 titled “SUM” where players were given two things to quantify, then add, getting one point only for the summed response. So much could have gone wrong, but these are fierce and adaptable teams. Their respectable fights with the ‘this’ plus ‘that’ included: the number of houses in the legislature of Trinidad & Tobago; the number of national watchwords; the number of birds on the coat of arms; the number of Oscar wins by Daniel Day Lewis (and Meryl Streep!); the number of wins by France at the FIFA World Cup. It never ended! Much like the decimal numbers of pi or e (Euler’s number)! But with a good approximation, like the final question, with pi’s approximation to 3, and e’s approximation to 3 also, thus 3+3=6… Six was indeed the average across the teams. Six out of eight! Nice! Owed, and very legally owed to the joker play by Victorious Venus.

Note well, folks, as an insect, the praying mantis does have 6 legs! Those praying limbs are known as forelegs. Imagine praying with forelegs, but not having four legs. We agree, math-biology was tough! And so was the music round.

We furnish the following scores randomly and anonymously for the “Oh, that hisses!” music round:  1/8, 2/8, 3/8. Enough said. And heard. Sort of.

Our game found rejuvenation in the Tenable round. A straightforward continuation of the MoPro Promo (asking which two countries have a combined population of over 2 billion people), asking players to list the top ten most populous countries. With improvement in the standings due to ≥ 75% performance of all teams in this round, a final Who Am I? round was set up which could have resulted with any team taking the overall win. Starting at an 8-point clue, all teams submitted right answers: Tobago Sisters and Victorious Venus at the 6-point mark; and Norfolk & Chance submitting at the 4-point mark. 

They started at the tail of the leaderboard, quickly went into the lead either on their own or shared, and in the end stood singularly; Tobago Sisters prevailed at the first Trivianometry of 2025. The Year of the Snake was bagged by this charmer team, as was the prize of a 10% tab discount at Café Down Low. All players of the second place finishing team Norfolk & Chance were awarded coupons of half-off on entry to their next individual appearances of Trivianometry. Victorious Venus finished well at third taking into account 3 of their 6 were first-time players. It was clear this was a special night to VV players, who took loads of pictures once they could!

On behalf of the Mosaic Productions team, we thank you all for your support, and look forward to our next games ahead in The Year of the Snake which, by the way, begins on 29 January 2025.

Keep sharp and keep at it!

—Quizmaster