Testing Smahts
The Boston Globe - August 17, 2003
By Peter DeMarco
"What nation's flag," bellows Mike Lynch, "with a blue cross on a red background, was the first to be placed at the South Pole in 1911?" The response throughout the crowded Cambridge barroom: groans and furrowed eyebrows.
Lynch, the night's microphone-bearing trivia jockey, pops on Frank Sinatra's "The Way You Look Tonight" as contestants start scribbling guesses onto napkins. Some people stare deeply into their beers as if they were crystal balls. Others, meanwhile, such as Jen Zdon, a software company manager, and pal Caitie O'Connor, a researcher, whip themselves into a do-or-die brainstorming frenzy.
"It's Switzerland. No -- they're red and white," Zdon says.
"Admiral Peary," chirps O'Connor. "But isn't he American?"
"Norway must be it."
"I said Norway in the first place and you said no!"
"How about Uruguay?"
"Uruguay? Who from Uruguay would have gone to the South Pole?"
With time almost out, messengers from the various teams -- We Hate Paul Reiser, Who Stole the Booths?, and Porn Star Queens for Greenpeace are among the night's 20 entries -- race to the back of the bar to slap down their written answers. Moments later, Zdon and O'Connor break into an arm-waving celebration as Lynch reveals the correct response: Norway.
At the last moment, they had guessed right.
So, can you name the only state that has an active diamond mine? The value of Roman numeral MCVII? Leonardo DiCaprio's first film?
How about this: what bar craze is sweeping Boston by storm? If you guessed pub trivia, give yourself a plastic green pie wedge from that old Trivial Pursuit game in your closet.
In the past nine months, the number of local bars offering live trivia contests has tripled to nearly three dozen. From Hannah's in Somerville to the Kinvara Pub in Allston to Black Mulligan's in West Roxbury, trivia nights are packing them in, with as many as two dozen teams competing against each other at a time for small cash prizes, beer glasses, T-shirts, and bragging rights.
The questions are usually hip -- if you know the 1980s or US geography, you're golden. Another bonus: It doesn't cost anything to play, and for those willing to travel, there's a 20-question, two-hour game going on every night of the week.
For many fans, pub trivia night is nothing more than a great excuse to catch a mid-week drink or a chance to bond with old friends or co-workers.
"I have a big family -- four kids -- and it's my one night out of the week," said Kim McDonnell, 34, from Quincy, a pub trivia regular since February. "They all know not to plan anything on Wednesdays because it's Mommy's quiz night."
Others have become addicted to the game for the same reason they watch "Weakest Link" or play Trivial Pursuit.
"It's nice to know that the stuff you know matters," said Joyce Greenleaf, 40, during a recent trivia night in downtown Boston. "For instance, I knew [just now] that Anais Nin was Henry Miller's lover. And I need for people around me to know I know that."
For others, competition is the allure. At The Thristy Scholar in Cambridge, one legendary trivia player, known merely as "The Bass Man" for his choice of drink, routinely routs every team in the room. Other players trash talk during or after games, sneak calls on cellphones to get answers from friends at home, or bone up on trivia books before heading to the bar.
"There are rival teams who don't care where they finish in the game as long as they beat a certain other team," said Mike O'Neill, who started pub trivia in Boston about six years ago. "At the Kinvara, we have a very mixed crowd. Fifty percent students, 50 percent working professionals. One crowd is drinking MGD bottles, one is drinking martinis and Guinness, and it's a battle."
The most competitive teams have been known to recruit trivia ringers -- English literature PhDs apply within -- as well as cut loose dead weight.
"When we started coming here, I had trust in Mike," said Stacey Piluri, 24, an administrative assistant, while playing with co-workers at The Kinsale pub across from City Hall Plaza. "Now, I'm like, `Man, you were a lot smarter at work.' "
Philadelphia, Atlanta, London, and other cities have boasted pub trivia leagues for decades, but the game didn't gain a foothold locally until 1997, when O'Neill, a disc jockey, organized the first Pop Quiz Team Trivia nights at the Kinvara and T's Pub in Boston. Soon after, Marshfield native Bob Carney struck up his own version of a pub trivia, called Stump! The Pub Trivia Game, at a handful of Boston and South Shore bars.
As for why the game has suddenly exploded, the two quizmasters can't really say other than that people (and bar owners desperate to attract customers on a slow night) have finally caught on.
"There's X amount of things you can do when you go out to a bar. This is very interactive," O'Neill said. "It gives you something to talk about. It gives you 20 different conversations because there are 20 different questions [per game.] It's competitive. You're being entertained. . . . There's music. . . . It just all comes together."
For Carney, 34, a gregarious redhead known by most fans simply as Bob the Trivia Guy, it's all about asking good questions. By his own estimate, he spends about 25 hours a week formulating three separate quizzes for the 23 bars where both he and his assistant trivia jockeys, such as Lynch, host games. "People come up to me all the time. `I got a great trivia question for you: What was featured on the little Jetson boy Elroy's lunchbox?' " Carney said. "It might have been the galaxy. It might have been a spaceship. Who knows?
"But rewrite that question to say, `What cartoon character had a lunchbox with a galaxy on it?' . . . and the players can narrow it down to which cartoon characters would have a lunchbox, and who among them would have a lunchbox of the universe. Now they can guess.
"The other way, it's just random knowledge."
With one question left on a recent trivia night at the Kinsale, five teams were still in the hunt.
"The catagory is music," announced Carney, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt as the afterwork crowd of government, hospital and office workers listened in. "In the year 2000, VH1 determined that this was the Number One dance song of all time. Name the song."
With guesses such as "the chicken dance," it became clear that Rolling on Dubz, a team of four male office workers, was not going to win. Sitting at the bar, Amy Castell also conceded defeat. "I'm finding it very hard to mix drinking and thinking," she said.
In the end, the Irish Nightmares walked away with the victory, and a $40 gift certificate.
"The answer was 'I Will Survive,' " said team leader Peggy Lavoie, 54, a Boston paralegal. "But I was thinking, `Louie, Louie.' You just can't hear that song without getting up and dancing."
Peter DeMarco has written about Fenway, snowplows and Boston's cabbie exam for City Weekly. To find a pub trivia game near you, go online at www.primetimetrivia.com and www.mcoproductions.com.
