Three part trivia brain teasers

February 1, 2024 6:40 PM

I just participated in a night of trivia in which one of the rounds had clues like these examples: "A telepathic superhero played by Patrick Stewert indicating where the treasure is buried on a map, a small amount of Earl Gray" and "A hot chocolate brand, an unmarried Clue suspect wedded to Colin Jost" the answers being "Professor X marks the spot of tea" and "Swiss Miss Scarlet Johansson" respectively. What is the name of such brain teasers, and where can I find more? I loved it!
posted by Grandysaur to Grab Bag (8 answers total)

I love this, too! There's a whole Jeopardy! category for this called Before And After and it's consistently delightful.

In another universe, my mefi username would be "Midnight in the Garden of Good & Plenty."

on edit: Oh drat, that's only two, not three. Still fun, though.
posted by mochapickle at 6:57 PM on February 1, 2024 [4 favorites]

In high school quiz bowl 20 yeras ago, we called these "combo carry-overs"
posted by Jon_Evil at 7:18 PM on February 1, 2024

I think Jeopardy! once (during the GOAT tournament?) called this "Before, Middle, and After". I think that's a fine name, or maybe "Before, After, and Thereafter" or something. The genre of "before and after" comes up all the time in Jeopardy and many other knowledge competitions, so it's quite well established.
posted by likedoomsday at 7:25 PM on February 1, 2024 [1 favorite]

Only Connect sometimes uses this idea in its missing vowels round.
posted by Paul Slade at 11:56 PM on February 1, 2024 [1 favorite]

The final round of every edition of Richard Osman’s House of Games is ‘Answer Smash’ where the contestants are shown a picture and a clue and have to squish them together. Not quite the same but it might scratch the same itch. It’s also just a fun show.
[ I have no idea how easy it’ll be for you watch it where you are though.]
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 1:13 AM on February 2, 2024 [2 favorites]

You can (at the moment) watch any episode of House of Games on the MondoUK YT channel. I think they get posted 24 hrs after BBC airing.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:11 AM on February 2, 2024 [1 favorite]

I too was going to suggest Answer Smash, although I think that the clues in House of Games are a lot less clever, since it's always in two parts and one part is a picture.
posted by plonkee at 7:40 AM on February 2, 2024

The 3 part clues are known on Jeopardy as BEFORE, DURING & AFTER, and frequently appear during the Tournament of Champions or other high-level tourneys. The Jeopardy Archive now has category search, so you can see all the clues of this type they've used. The tag is @cn for "category name", but here's a direct link to the search:

"BEFORE, DURING & AFTER"

Click on the yellow dollar amounts to bring up the correct responses.
posted by themanwho at 1:02 PM on February 2, 2024 [2 favorites]