The fifth installment of the Triple Rock Social Club’s Pub Trivia Night is tonight at 8 p.m. If you weren’t planning on going, I would instead. Triple Rock Trivia has proved to be some serious fun.

At the end of this post is a pop vocabulary quiz. But first, a little history of Triple Rock Trivia Nights so far:

The first time out, the winners were “The Winners” — a team who, full of optimism, named themselves that, then spent all the goodwill they may have garnered with their winsome name by actually winning.

When “The Winners” kept their name, somewhat mawkishly the second time, and won again, they were reviled by all. When “The Winners” won for the third time, foul play was suspected and blows threatened, until it was revealed by the hosts that there had been a simple “mathematical error,” and “The Winners” hadn’t really won. Conspiracies were propounded, but the riotous crowd was quelled.

The fourth time around, my team, “Ample Recompense,” won. Some say this had a lot to do with Team “The Winners” not being there. Some say it had everything to do with it. Who knows?

As a little practice for tonight’s trivia, let’s do a vocabulary quiz. Vocabulary may not have appeared at Triple Rock Trivia so far, but that only makes it exceedingly unlikely rather than impossible to appear this evening.

For another vote in the vocabulary quiz column, I’ve visited Free Rice.com a lot recently, a site where you’re tested on your vocabulary knowledge, and when you answer correctly, they give rice to hungry people around the world. (This is for real.) Which can lead you to really really think about you guess, what with the starving children’s lives in the balance and all.

We don’t have any rice. But if you get these wrong we will stop in for dinner at the residences of several destitute families, which comes to the same thing.

Click “Read the rest of this entry” to take the quiz, and to read an answer, click your mouse and roll over the grayed text.

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The other night at the bar, two of our friends tried to tell Pulao and me about a practical joke called “doortricking”.

“Have you ever heard of doortricking?”

“No,” we said.

“Well,” our friends continued somewhat sheepishly, “When someone goes into the bathroom, you strip naked and do a handstand right outside the door, so when they open the bathroom door, well . . . they’re surprised.”

Of course it turns out that “doortricking” can only be confirmed to have been done twice in the history of the world . . . both times by the same guy that they know (let’s call him “John”.) So this is not exactly sweeping the nation and maybe more aptly called “John is somewhat acrobatic and likes to take his pants off.”

I mulled the whole thing over for a while before I decided that this was not the practical joke for me. First of all, the elaborate joke would get even more complicated with the addition of the crane I would require to get into a handstand. And more importantly, any practical joke where you’re the one who ends up standing on your head, naked, defeats the whole purpose.

Today, September 19, is Talk Like a Pirate Day! This will make some people very happy. Arrr. If you go with it, this could bring you pleasant distraction for at least 3 minutes. To help you facilitate that, try the Pirate Translator. I just plugged in that last sentence and got “Aye, t’ help you facilitate that, try the Pirate Translator. Gar.” but I’m disappointed because pirates don’t say “facilitate.” Oh well. See what results you get.

Ahoy and walk the plank.

The other day I was talking about the University of Florida (where I spent part of my schooling) with some friends.

“There was a good community in the English department,” I said. “There wasn’t much to do in Gainesville, so there was a lot of drinking.”

My friend — let’s call call him “Mr. M,” to protect the innocent — created a word on the spot: “A comdrinkity!”

At the time, I found that to be wildly hilarious.

48 hours later? . . . Still funny!

(anybody have any made-up words to share?)