Trivia Night
Worcester Magazine - March 1, 2006
by Noah Schaffer
Ann “The Maiden” McDonald would like to talk. But she’s busy telling her teammates which Oscar-winning actress once married rocker Peter Wolf, and where the worst chemical spill in U.S. history occurred.
Just about every Tuesday, you can find McDonald and her team, The Maiden and The Dirty Old Men, at Team Trivia Night at the Old Timer in Clinton. Since starting the event two and a half years ago, the long-running pub and restaurant has found its slowest night turning into its second busiest.
Trivia nights at area bars are gaining in popularity, offering a rare glimpse of hope for an industry battered by societal changes, drunk-driving laws and a smoking ban. “Trivia has a universal appeal,” says Joel Bates. By day a school administrator, Bates runs several trivia nights throughout the region. He’s just started a Wednesday night game at the new Greyhound Pub in Kelley Square.
The crowd at The Old Timers is a mixture of young and old, working stiffs and professionals. The game starts at 7, with a brief bonus game at 9. “The great thing about it is that you can go out, and be back home relatively early on a weeknight, and be with friends or people you haven’t met yet,” says Bates. “It’s quasi-competitive but fun. There are teams that never do that well but they keep coming back. I think it has the appeal that a pub has in Ireland: a gathering place for people to meet.”
Let’s make one thing clear: This isn’t a guy in a corner reading random questions off a Trivial Pursuit card. Bates spends hours each week coming up with new questions. The format is that after the question is asked, Bates plays a song — often, it contains a clever musical hint — and then each team has the length of the question to jot down the correct answer. He likes to come up with theme nights. For instance, the answers on Valentine’s Day included Love Canal (where the chemical spill happened) and Courtney Love (the daughter of Grateful Dead devotee Frank Harrison and psychologist Linda Carroll).
Last Tuesday, Bob Lavergne was racking his brain for the name of the only chemical produced by a living organism that transmits a message to the same species. “The questions can be pretty tough, especially if you don’t have a firm grasp of pop culture,” says Lavergne. The members of Lavergne’s team went around making guesses, then wrote down “testosterone” on their slip of paper. Right after they handed it to the score keeper, Lavergne’s face lit up. “Pheromones!” he screamed. But it was too late. His team lost out on four points.
Bates stresses that you don’t have to come with a team to play. “The teams can be as large as five people, or as small as one,” he says. “If someone comes in looking for a team to play with, they’ll have no trouble finding one willing to welcome them in.”
If they’re really lucky, they’ll end up playing with Phil Duffy. A bona fide legend of The Old Timer’s trivia night, the Clinton architect once appeared on “Jeopardy.” He racked up more than $13,000. “He’s a free agent,” says Bates. “When he comes in, people are clamoring to have him on their team.”
Bates brought the games to The Old Timer after getting tired of traveling to Boston each week. He uses some questions originated by Michael O’Neill, who he calls “the king of New England trivia,” as well as adding his own. Wouldn’t it be easier just to harvest questions from a few trivia books or Web sites? “There’s no one place that has the format I like,” says Bates, a vice-principal at a Bolton school. “When you do this long enough, everything in life becomes a potential trivia question.”
The Greyhound Pub just opened this month, but Bates isn’t worried about finding a crowd for the Wednesday games. He had previously held a game at Tatnuck Booksellers, and had been getting requests to bring the game back to Worcester. “People will follow us,” he predicts.
Noah Schaffer may be reached at nschaffer@worcestermag.com.
