Davenport Central Blue Devils Productions Trivia Fundraiser — May 16, 2026

Saturday night at Cunnick-Collins Celebration Center, eighteen teams pulled up chairs, claimed table-top trophies, and threw their points around for a trivia fundraiser benefiting Blue Devils Productions — and what unfolded over four rounds, eighty questions, and a roughly 100–150-person room was one of the most wager-soaked nights we've hosted all year.

We built the lineup specifically for the audience: a custom theater round honoring the program's biggest hits, a Quad Cities-only round drilling into the kind of local lore you can only know if you live here, a viral-format "what if historical figures had Twitter" round, and a closing "Are You Smarter Than A 10th Grader?" round that turned the whole room into "adults vs kids". By the time the final scores hit the leaderboard, the standings had been rearranged so many times it was hard to remember who'd been leading after Round 1 — but the answer was not the team holding the trophy at the end.

R1 — "Into the Woods" and Other Central High Productions

The opener was an unapologetic love letter to the Blue Devils Productions catalog. Twenty questions covering Into the Woods, Hairspray, The Little Mermaid, Mamma Mia!, Les Misérables, and the wonderfully weird Ride the Cyclone. The room handled it beautifully — 71.7% accuracy, with five questions hitting perfect 100% scores from the teams that buzzed in.

The cute Baka kittens announced themselves immediately: 18 of 20 correct, a beautiful 17,648 points, and the only team to top the leaderboard with 90% accuracy. Ellerie's moms (14,786) and The Hustlers (13,744) rounded out the top three. Meanwhile, two teams that would later define the night — TS and The Office(rs) — were sitting in 7th and 9th, biding their time.

The two wager questions ("Ride the Cyclone" challenges and the Thénardiers from Les Mis) both ran clean — every team that wagered the Thénardiers question got it right at 100% accuracy. The biggest stumper of the round was the ABBA round-trip: Q5 asked which ABBA song Donna and her friends sing reminiscing about their past in Mamma Mia!, and only 17.6% of teams nailed "Chiquitita." Close behind: Q13 on the original 2002 Broadway Tracy Turnblad (Marissa Jaret Winokur), which only 18.8% of teams got right.*

R2 — Local Legends and Lore

We turned the heat up. Round 2 dove into Quad Cities history — the kind of trivia you can only get right if you've lived here, read the plaques, or genuinely know your John Deere from your Bix. Room accuracy dropped to 59.7% — the hardest round of the night, and exactly what we wanted from a "for locals, by locals" set.

Mr. Taylor Swift took the round outright with 17,000 points, followed by 7 gals and a guy (16,000) and Eclectic (15,000). The standings boards reshuffled hard — seven teams scored zero in this round between blown wagers and missed questions, including the previously red-hot Ellerie's moms and 90%-accuracy R1 champ The cute Baka kittens.

The toughest questions of the night both lived here. Q7 — C.C. Knell, a furniture store owner in Rock Island, is credited with inventing and selling the first what? (Answer: Reclining Chair) — went down at just 11.8% accuracy. Tied for hardest: Q18, which asked which of four Quad Cities educational institutions was founded first. Easiest of the round: Q15, the Lincoln-defended-the-Rock-Island-Railroad question, which 94.1% of teams nailed.

The wager on the Quad Cities River Bandits original name (the Davenport Braves) cratered the standings even further — only 13.3% of teams got that right.

R3 — If They Had Twitter

This was the format-flip round, and the room ate it up. Each question was a posed tweet from a famous figure — Edgar Allan Poe goth-posting about ravens, Gandhi spinning his wheels in Calcutta, Newton humble-bragging about inventing calculus from quarantine, Margaret Thatcher reacting to her "Iron Lady" nickname. Room accuracy: 75.7% — the highest of the night.

But the points were not friendly. With four wager questions instead of two, R3 was where the leaderboard started to detonate. Eclectic racked up a staggering 151,260 points in a single round to leap from 15th overall to 1st overall — a 14-position rocket. The catalysts:

• Q15 (Newton inventing calculus during the plague) was a wager — Team Awesome banked 38,530 points, but Sopa wagered the wrong scientist (Leibniz, not Newton) and lost 23,005.
• Q20 (the Ross Geller "PIVOT" tweet from Friends) was the round's biggest wager. Eclectic won +75,630 points for the correct Ross answer. The Hustlers, who'd been in 4th overall, picked Phoebe and dropped -20,968 — falling from 4th to 15th cumulative.

After R3, the new leaderboard was Eclectic (168,738), TS (149,738, up from 14th), Team Awesome (134,637), Hairspray, Bawk Bawk Chicken, with R1 leader The cute Baka kittens now sitting 6th.

R4 — Are You Smarter Than A 10th Grader?

The closing round was a Jeff Foxworthy-flavored romp through a 10th-grade curriculum: Science class, Math class, PE/Health, English/Language Arts, and Social Studies/History. Room accuracy held strong at 72.4%. But this round had four wager questions at 10th-grade subject difficulty — and the back half got brutal.

The Office(rs) finally cashed in their 85%-accuracy night with the round's biggest score: 193,000 points, anchored by a perfect +89,000 on Q15 (max heart rate formula = 220 minus your age). TS put up 162,000 of their own, including a clutch +81,000 on the final wager. Sopa quietly assembled the second-highest round score at 166,000 — climbing from 16th in R3 individual rankings to 5th overall final.

And then there was the John Locke wager.

Q20 — The Enlightenment philosopher John Locke argued that all individuals are born with certain natural rights, including life, liberty, and what other key right?

The correct answer was the right to property. Most teams went with "religious freedom." The damage:

• Ellerie's moms: –151,000 points (the single biggest loss of the night)
• Hairspray: –101,000
• Hot and Deaf: –107,000
• Bawk Bawk Chicken: –100,000
• We Break Legs: –14,000
• Chud university: –7,000

That's nearly half a million points evaporated on a single question, and it's the reason six teams sit at 0 in the R4 column on the standings table below. Meanwhile, every team that correctly went with "property" cashed: TS +81,000, Harris +51,313, and a few smaller wins from Team Awesome, Table 15, and The cute Baka kittens.

Smartest play of the night? The Office(rs), Mr. Taylor Swift, Sopa, Eclectic — and others — didn't answer Q20 at all. Strategic abstention is its own wager.

Final Standings

The Comeback Story

If you'd shown someone the R1 leaderboard and told them to pick the winner, almost no one would have said TS. They were sitting 7th with 10,696 points. They went to 16th after a tough R2 (scoring 0 from a busted wager). Then they climbed to 2nd cumulative after R3 with a 139,042-point round. And in R4, they nailed enough of the school subjects — and crucially, picked "property" on the John Locke wager — to lock down the championship with 311,738 points.

Honorable mentions in the comeback bracket: The Office(rs) (9th → 2nd), Mr. Taylor Swift (11th → 4th), Sopa (13th → 5th), Eclectic (15th → 6th).

On the other side: The Hustlers (3rd → 16th), Ellerie's moms (2nd → 12th), and The cute Baka kittens (1st → 10th) all started fast and got swallowed by the wager rounds.

By the Numbers

• Teams: 18
• Rounds: 4
• Questions: 80
• Total answers logged: 1,309
• Total correct: 915
• Overall room accuracy: 69.9%
• Hardest question (tied): R2 Q7 (Reclining chair) and R2 Q18 (oldest QC school) — both at 11.8%
• Easiest questions: 10 questions hit 100% accuracy across the night
• Highest single-round score: The Office(rs) — 193,000 points in R4
• Biggest single-question swing: R4 Q20 (John Locke) — gains up to +81,000, losses down to -151,000
• Biggest individual wager loss: Ellerie's moms, -151,000 on R4 Q20
• Biggest individual wager win: The Office(rs), +89,000 on R4 Q15 (heart rate formula)
• Tightest accuracy spread between top 4 and bottom 4: less than 15 percentage points — meaning the wagers, not the answers, made the night

The Verdict

A trivia fundraiser only works if the room is alive — and Saturday's room was electric. Eighteen teams. Custom rounds built around a high school theater program and the city it calls home. A leaderboard that scrambled three different times before settling on a champion. A John Locke wager that's going to live in Blue Devils Productions trivia legend.

Huge thanks to everyone who turned out, brought their A-game, picked clever team names (The cute Baka kittens, Bawk Bawk Chicken, Skibidy Soldiers, 7 gals and a guy — you know who you are), and supported a program that puts a lot of heart and a lot of Into the Woods into Davenport every year.

It was a great honor to emcee as your upcoming musicals were unveiled! Exciting times ahead. Thank you all so much for having me! --- Arnie

🎭 Hosted by Gleeful Events — interactive, device-based trivia for venues, fundraisers, and private events across the Quad Cities.

Photo from Blue Devils Productions Facebook page

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