Last night I played pub trivia in the largest pub trivia contest in the USA.  Roughly 150 teams (900 people) gathered at the Fillmore for an extra special night of Geeks Who Drink trivia.

It was kind of disappointing.  The entertainment was pretty bad and the night went on long, despite shortened times to answer each round.  It was hard.  The categories weren’t very fun, like they usually are at our local game.  It didn’t feel especially geeky.  Bummer.

But overall it was a fun night!  We placed 27th overall.  27!!!  I’m proud of us.  We wanted to make top 50.

It was like a normal trivia night.  8 rounds with 8 questions each.  Second round is music, fifth is visual, seventh is audio (video in this case, since they had screens).  Second and Eighth rounds are work double points.  You have a joker you can use one time on any round to double your score.  You write your answers on the score sheets provided and turn them in for tallying.  No cell phone use allowed during game play.

Differences from a local game: tons of people, reserved table with our team name and score sheet pre-printed.  No repeats of questions.  The question was printed on the screen as well as read aloud (wish they could do this locally). Two minute timer after each round to complete your answers.  This drastically cut down the amount of discussion and thought we could put into our answers.  You have much more time locally.  No internet bonus question or free drink speed-answer questions.  The drinks were hella expensive and no pub food to order. The chairs less comfortable than at the Bulldog (impossible but true!).    Super tight security with proctors watching for cell phone users. 
Huh, I sound pretty crabby about it, don’t I?  It really was fun and kind of a crazy thing to do with your weekend. I’m waiting for them to post the final scores and total list on their blog.  Here’s a summary of the categories and how we did.


1) Cold Facts on Colfax (A random knowledge round using keywords “cold” or “fact” or “Colfax” in either the question or the answer.
Score = 5/8

2) Music Round. Identify the song and artist or album (as specified) played by the live mariachi band.
Score = 13/14 (They tossed out one song, or else we would have had 13/16).
We should have jokered this round but we didn’t know we did so well because a few were wild guesses.

3) True/False about True or False (each statement had “true” or “false” in it, was the statement T/F?)
Score = 3/8

4) Pop, Culture (basically a random knowledge round using those keywords)
Score = 3/8

5) Visual Round “No, Ship!”  Name the boat pictured.
Score = 6/8

6) Dowdy with a Chance of Meatballs (Feminism and meatball subjects, but hardly.  More like random knowledge.  Hated this round)
Score = 2/8

7) Identify the movie clips played.
Score = 6/8

8) Random Knowledge
Score = 8/16 (jokered for total of 16 points)