SALISBURY — In a battle of the brains between five local Councils on Aging, the home team came on top during the six-round trivia competition at the Salisbury Senior Center.
“I can’t believe it, I’m shaking,” Salisbury senior Carole Campo said as she and others got ready to pose for a photo with the trophy after the competition Wednesday.
With questions ranging from who was the first female Nobel Prize winner to what was Disney’s first feature length film, seniors had to dig deep to come up with answers.
Broken up by table, Salisbury was joined by the Amesbury, Newburyport, Groveland and Merrimac COAs.
Salisbury COA Assistant Director Andrew Suggs acted as trivia master for the evening, while Amesbury COA staff member Courtney Hutchinson kept track of the score at the front of the room.
The room was buzzing with excitement, laughter and just a bit of trash talk as more than 60 players packed into the room for what Suggs called “straight pub-style trivia.”
“Each round has five questions, and teams wager between one and five points based on confidence. You’ve got to throw in some tough ones, otherwise we’d need 300 tiebreakers,” he said.
The game kicked off with general knowledge as seniors easily answered questions, including translating Julius Caesars famous phrase, “Veni, vidi, vici,” which means, “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
The first stumper came in the second round: entertainment.
While every team knew that “The Departed” was Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning film in 2007, they were all stumped on who the first Saturday Night Live alum to win an Oscar was. The answer was Robert Downey Jr. for his role in the 2024 film “Oppenheimer.”
“We had some good guesses: Tina Fey, Seth Rogen, Adam Sandler,” Suggs told the crowd.
A trick question about “The Silence of the Lambs” tripped up more than half the room, with the question being what serial killer was the FBI hunting? Only Salisbury and Amesbury seniors correctly answered “Buffalo Bill”.
“Hannibal was already caught,” Suggs reminded those who shouted out “Hannibal Lecter”.
Round 3 pivoted to history with seniors answering everything from the date of the Pearl Harbor attack (Dec.7, 1941) to the city where the first newsletter was regularly published in 1704 (Boston).
The next round focused on sports and leisure, with everyone correctly identifying James Naismith as the inventor of basketball.
On the flip side, when they were asked what baseball league Japanese legends such as Ichiro Suzuki and Shohei Ohtani hailed from, no one could come up with the Nippon Professional Baseball League.
Round 5 brought everyone back to general knowledge, with cheers morphing to groans when every team got Michelangelo right for painting the Sistine Chapel, all betting the maximum five points.
The final round, music, featured a final head-scratcher as folks were asked to name the original writer behind the song popularized by Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.” Only Amesbury knew the original man behind the music was Otis Redding.
Things grew intense with the final question of the day as teams were able to wager up to 20 points.
While Salisbury had been down 10 points for most of the competition, they decided to wager that exact amount on the final question: “How many points are on the Statue of Liberty’s crown?”
As the only team to answer correctly, Salisbury wound up leapfrogging Groveland, which had fallen to 85 points and wound up with a winning score of 93.
Salisbury senior Fred Knowles said he had a great time competing against the other communities.
“Our new assistant director, Andy, did a great job putting this together,” he said.
Matt Petry covers Amesbury and Salisbury for The Daily News of Newburyport. Email him at: mpetry@northofboston.com.