A Few of My Favorite Things (About Hosting Pub Trivia)
Ten years ago last week, I hosted my first ever in-person pub trivia game, subbing in at The Junction in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester.
As much as I’d love to say that this evening was a memorable benchmark in my journey to eventually own and operate the fastest growing trivia company in Los Angeles (please do not challenge this claim, I have no data to back it up), it wouldn’t be entirely true. I remember very little about the gig, and was only reminded of what the place looked like when I found it on Yelp and discovered that, sadly, it did not survive the pandemic (much to the chagrin of Howie F, who misses it ‘every day’).
The Junction’s weekly trivia game (which, for what it’s worth, had a slew of positive mentions on their Yelp page) was run by Matt, whom I had met when he was hosting at the Castlebar in Brighton, a few blocks down the street from my apartment. My pals and I were regulars there, and we loved Matt. He was funny, fair, clear on the mic, and I distinctly remember one night where he absolutely laid into some drunk dude for trying to look at the answers on his computer screen. Good man.
It was through my experience playing Matt’s game every week that the idea of hosting trivia games myself first started to germinate. It seemed like a fun, relatively easy way to make some extra money while I was teaching (pay teachers more!). Matt put me in touch with his boss, Michael O’Neill, who owned the company Pop Quiz, for whom Matt worked. Mike would have me cover for games here and there (starting at the Junction) before finding me two regular gigs of my own: one at Clarke’s in Faneuil Hall, the other at Orleans Restaurant in Somerville. I looked forward to both of these gigs every single week. I would have so much fun that I couldn’t believe I was getting paid to do it (and I really couldn’t believe how genuinely sad I was to leave them when I moved in 2016).
After a few years without hosting trivia, I founded Lucky Guess in the middle of 2020, with the blessing of (and lots of advice from) my friend and mentor, the aforementioned genius Michael O’Neill. And now, 10 years since my first ever hosting gig, my relationship with pub trivia is one that I didn’t ever anticipate. And I couldn’t be happier about it.
So, to celebrate a decade (or so…), here are a few of my favorite things about hosting pub trivia.
Meeting people who love trivia. Generally speaking, people who come to pub trivia nights on even a semi-regular basis are cool people who like trivia. Some don’t like trivia, per se, but they like competition and the social element of it all. But a rare few love trivia. They can’t get enough of it. They’re the kind of people who go to pub trivia twice, sometimes thrice a week. The kind of people who hate losing, but can stomach it because at least they’ve learned a new trivia fact that they didn’t know before. These people are my people, and this job allows me to spend a lot of time with them.
Sitting close enough to a team to witness them deliberate, go back and forth on a few answers, then have one of them figure out the song clue and settle on the correct answer, confidently bidding the highest amount. It’s hard to explain how much joy this brings me. It’s a similar sensation to watching someone open a gift you got for them that you really wanted them to like and then they absolutely love it. Not all of the song clues work for everyone (that’s sort of the idea), but when I get to see them land like that, it sure is satisfying.
People telling me that this is their favorite trivia they’ve ever played. I first started writing my own trivia games in earnest during the pandemic, for a handful of very smart pals over Zoom who, like me, were looking for something to do other than sit around and endlessly ponder the apocalypse. I defaulted to the Pop Quiz format not only because I was familiar with it, but because I’ve always believed that its fundamental structure is ideal for the pub trivia experience: 1) Rewarding players not just for their knowledge, but for their confidence (referring to the bidding system), creates more competitive game without lowering the overall difficulty; 2) The final question allows for dramatic end-of-game swings, but it doesn’t make those swings inevitable. Sometimes, the most dominant team wins. But sometimes, they miss the final question and a lucky team gets to come from behind. And that can be frustrating, don’t get me wrong! Sometimes a team is winning the entire game, like literally they take the lead and they never let the lead go. And they’re quick with the buzzer and they look great in their suit and they have a charming post-commercial interview, and….wait, what was I talking about again?
I did end up putting my own spin on the Pop Quiz format. When I first started writing these games, Round 2 was the “Unnecessarily Specific Categories Round,” where I would have questions like:
Reasons Why Nathan Lane is Named Nathan Lane — Tony-winning actor Nathan Lane was born Joseph Lane — he took his new first name from Nathan Detroit, a character in what musical that premiered on Broadway in 1950?
As fun as this was, it never quite worked for me because it had nothing to do with the game. It was too gimmicky. I wanted something with more action, something that could generate more points. I had seen connection quizzes around the internet in various places, and I thought that could be a good twist to set my game apart. It also consistently proves to be a fun, challenging way to write trivia questions: figure out what your answers are, and work backwards into the perfect question to get you there.
All of this to say, when people compliment the game or the format or both, I take great pride in it — and I am always quick to tell them where it (and I) came from.
The answer is Guys and Dolls, by the way. But you knew that ;)
Favorite Things: Honorable Mentions
Teams with custom t-shirts, pens, stamps, etc.
People who just learned a fact recently and it comes up in trivia night and they get it right because of that
The team name “Humane Centipede”
