Sea Day Trivia Triumph

---

Sharon went off to meet the new priest and celebrate a Monday mass. Our room steward came by and picked up the laundry before I left to meet Sharon. I had waved at her through the window when I walked by, indicating that I would be next door in the Exploration Lounge, and the lady next to Sharon thought that that was cute when she nodded in agreement. I found some Sudoku Forms, and noticed that there was a different game at the back, so I decided to do that one while I waited.



We had breakfast in the dining room; and, again we were seated by ourselves at a table for two. We’re beginning to wonder if our names are on a list of people that no one else wants to eat with. After breakfast, we went up to do our daily Sudoku Challenge. We were very close on the first game, with Sharon finishing just a few seconds behind me. Sharon may not want me to talk about the other puzzle.



We sat by ourselves, and I was wearing my Google shirt, and I chided Sharon for not donning hers. “The room was being made up when I stopped by to put it on,” she explained. Still, we managed to troll a couple from Great Britain, and then a lady from Australia… so we had pretty good international coverage.



Jordan started with, “Who plays the voice of Elsa in Disney’s “Freeze”? Our British teammates came up with Edina Menzel, and Sharon confirmed that was what she was trying to articulate. What followed next was a regurgitation of fourteen questions that Jordan had offered during our first cruise north to Seward, and of the questions that answers she knew, loud enough so that her hard of hearing husband could understand the answer; and, I’m trying to hush her. Her husband would sometimes say what he thought was the answer; but, his heavy accent and very hushed whisper would have been hard to hear from nearby tables, it was hard enough for us to understand; but, then Sharon had already written down the answer. The bonus came down to a new question about HAL ships: “When you get on the elevator after pushing the ‘UP’ button, how many times does the bell chime; and, similarly for the ‘DOWN’ button. I tried to tell them to change it to 1 for each so we’d at least get it half right but our Australian member pointed out they’d be different for people who can’t see so we stuck with it luckily. Four points, and we tried to recall and finally agreed on once for up and twice for down. After the answer sheets had been graded, we had a perfect score. We thought that would be enough; but, another team had also gotten a perfect score so there was the need for a play-off question. “What year did Panama declare its independence from Columbia?” I’m straining to recall our “Panama History” from the cruise we took with my mother last year; although, a better approach would have been to associate the Panama Canal being built with Theodore Roosevelt. I wrote down “1896” to start with; but, the British lady thought that it would be a bit later than that, so I changed the answer to 1910. As it turned out, the other team went with 1951, and I was more confident in our answer being closest. The actual answer was 1906… so we finally have won a trivia game, even if it is somewhat tainted by having heard most of the questions some two to three weeks ago. Jordan was so impressed, he wanted to get us a bonus booby prize, and eventually did rummage up a bottle of champagne for the five of us. Two of the team don’t drink, one (including me) took just a sip, and the British man did drink the full glass.



We went to watch the BBC game show “What on Earth”. There was a sister team, a married couple and a father and young granddaughter who were the contestants vying for dinner for two at the Pinnacle. One of the most interesting questions dealt with trying to identify the animal from squares of a puzzle that were revealed when a team answered a question correctly. From the revealed puzzle piece showing part of the picture of an animal. The first corner showed something with white and fuzzy fur. I thought the guess of polar bear was pretty good; but, also it was pretty wrong. The next piece showed some more white fur and guessed arctic wolf. The next clue revealed more white and a black nose with a slender snout. The guess was “Snow Fox” and when clarification was asked the contestant correctly said “Arctic Fox”. The then showed some BBC footage of an arctic fox hunting and it was absolutely hilarious. The fox would walk gingerly across the frozen snowy field, pause after hearing the faintest sound beneath the snow, then leap high into the air and dive nose first into the snow. Once when he did this, the snow must have been pretty hard because his nose failed to penetrate below the surface; and, I’m thinking that must have hurt. He repeated this until he came up holding his prey in his mouth, and then trotted off to his den with dinner.



It was formal night so we dressed up to impress (Okay, maybe we just dressed up). We showed up at a nearly empty Dining Room and we were seated in the rear, again at a table for two. I enjoyed the grilled shrimp appetizer; and, again I had the quite delicious crab bisque. We both ordered the “Surf and Turf”; and I got Sharon’s lobster after the steward separated it from its shell.



We finished in plenty of time to go up and play Evening Trivia with Erin the Assistant Cruise Director. There was a group in the corner who laughingly objected saying that we’d already won the afternoon trivia and shouldn’t be allowed to play. We were able to attract one teammate; but, Erin threw us a curveball by announcing that tonight we were playing “Movie Trivia”. Yikes! She wanted to know what war movie won the Best Picture for 2009. I was able to come up with “Hurt Locker” because I’d just bought this DVD to bring my collection of Best Pictures up to date. And I came up with the actor starring in the 1961 movie “The Hustler”. It was of course Paul Newman. Erin then asked, “When were the first Academy Awards presented?” Most people seemed to get this one wrong; but, I knew it was 1929 (again because of my Best Picture collection). We got the first five questions right; but, only two of the remaining ten questions and don’t talk to me about the bonus question. We should have gotten that one: “Who was Jane Porter’s significant other?” Many questioned “Who’s Jane Porter?” Just fill in the blank, “Me ------, you Jane.”





Sharon decided to go to the show; but, I decided to skip because it was a repeat from our first cruise. I wanted to use the time to get some work done on the blog. I did meet up with Sharon in the piano bar afterwards and we enjoyed the piano player with his playing and singing Elton John songs.

---