PAX: Wet Tap, White Meat, Maneater, Honeysuckle, Fence Post, Safety Valve, America’s Best
AO: Tuesday Tuff, 07/22/2025
By: America’s Best
Today was the final installment of what I thought was going to be a one-and-done beatdown.
More trivia and even more stuff that kinda sucked. This was the most-refined version of the game, with the PAX moving backwards for even one missed question. We started with Mike Tyson Merkins on the stage, and after successfully finishing them and being correct, we moved forward to curls at the flag. Then a we completed a circuit of Thrusters (thanks to SV for helping me remember that they existed), WW3 sit-ups, and OHP, with MOT between stations being murder bunny, block and bear, coupon lunge walk, and rifle carry.
An incorrect answer resulted in MOT backwards (redrum bunny, etc). We actually didn’t have too much backward movement today, as the PAX came through with some pretty solid answers. Because Honeysuckle and Safety Valve knew the source code, they were excluded from answering.
Today we also had some new events, including Baby Billy’s Burpee Breaks (where the PAX can win nothing and like it) and an Audio Daily Double (where the PAX got introduced to The Dead Milkmen).
We finished up with enough time to do some more curls while the PAX tried to figure out where all these questions came from… a pretty good (I thought) clue was given, and Maneater was close but couldn’t quite crack it so we just continued to curl away until time.
COT and Wet Tap prayed us out.
SYITG,
AB
—
What Else Do I Have to Say?
Oh, right.
The background.
The resource for all these trivia questions. Honestly, the source only gave me the answer, and I wrote all the questions.
I had an idea, but I was sure someone would catch on to it, (likely in the first beatdown, Use Your Illusion I) and as a result know all of the answers to my trivia. So this was supposed to be a one-time beatdown, not a 5-day series.
First of all, the idea with trivia is to try and distract the mind with difficult/stupid trivia, and make you forget the physical discomfort. But a funny thing happened: because the PAX was busy concentrating both on the physical activity, and the current question, nobody saw the pattern. The forest was lost amongst 119 individual trees. Until some sailor man figured it out last week.
My idea was: What if the trivia answers were every lyric to a song? A specific song that goes like this:
“It was consistently fueled, from the time of initial global rotation.
While we were not responsible for its ignition, we did attempt to battle against it.”
Or something like that. That was the clue at the end of today’s beatdown (that Maneater almost got).
Whether or not that pulls back the curtain a bit for you, or if you are still somewhere on “As the World Turns” like Maneater, here are the hints I peppered into previous backblasts:
Go look at the backblasts entitled Use Your Allusion II, Heartbreak Motel, Deja Vu, and Tardigrade Brigade.
Looking only at the paragraphs before COT, just read the first word in each paragraph in those 4 backblasts.
Go. Now. Go read that now. I’ll wait.
On the first day, I was about 50% sure when first two answers were “Harry Truman,” followed by “Doris Day” someone would figure it out. In fact, that first day, I had 2-3 other beatdowns ready to pivot into.
There were a lot of other times I thought the string of answers was too obvious:
“North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe” and “Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland” come to mind.
But then, finally, last Thursday these were the answers: Space, monkey, mafia, hula hoops, Castro, Edsel, no-go, U2, Syngman Rhee, payola, Kennedy, Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians, Congo, Hemingway, Eichmann, “Stranger in a Strange Land’, Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs Invasion.
At the end of the beatdown, Popeye says, “A lot of those answers, those are in ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire,’ right?” Amazing catch. Equally amazing now that you see it all is that nobody else saw it before that?
Anyway, thanks for playing.