Last night we had the opportunity to defend our bar trivia Tournament of Champions win, and in grand fashion came in third. We were tied for first going into the final question, and made the classic move of coming up with two possible answers and guessing the wrong one. So rather than getting five Sox tickets and a $200 gift certificate to Eastern Standard, we got a post-work event at the Harpoon brewery and a hat each (summarily dubbed the Hat of Shame).

Still, it's a better prize than the Bruins tickets we won previously. As if I needed another reason to sing the praises of Harpoon, what with all their great beer. Yup, Harpoon is awesome. Seriously; I would not kid about beer.

We were pretty lucky to even be tied going into the last question, as we performed a fair amount of ass-finding in getting correct answers. Anyway, your sampling:

What country's national symbol is a white elephant?

What novel begins, "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." One Hundred Years of Solitude (Matt B.) - there was some talk of this being Hemingway, until the point was made that it's not exactly his style. One of our semi-educated guesses that paid off.

What country's flag bears the motto "Ordem e progresso?" Brazil (Mike B.) - It's a little harder when it's spoken, as you can assume the 'e' is actually a Spanish 'y'. "Ordem" should be a pretty good clue that it's Portuguese, though. I put this down immediately and went with a full 10 point bet. I then got to second guess myself during "Where the Streets Have No Name," thinking that it may be El Salvador or Honduras or wherever that song is about.

What is the capital of Hell in John Milton's Paradise Lost? Pandamoneum (Paul) - if memory serves, the Wikipedia entry has one of those mashed "ae" things where the second 'a' is here. We missed this, as the best we could come up with was "Mayhem." I think that was a suburb.

Name four countries who (going back to pre-Euro days) used the lira/lire as their unit of currency. Italy, San Marino, Vatican City (Cooch)

Gymnophobia is the fear of what? nudity (Jack) - we went with something plant-based due to memories of gymnosperms. None of us had recall of Tobias Funke and his cutoffs, sadly enough.

What music group's early names included The Pendeltones, Kenny and the Cadets, and Carl and the Passions? The Beach Boys (Greg) - I knew there was a Carl in the Beach Boys, which we combined with a hint that it was an older group to make our guess.

What "color" star has the highest surface temperature? blue (Paul) - we thought of both blue and white, but went with white as none of us could think of blue stars. Should have thought back to high school science and talk of how the blue part of a flame was hottest. We didn't, and so no Sox game for us.