Greenwood Park – Greenwood/South Slope – Wednesday @ 7 pm

The Trivia: Traditional Pub Trivia. Five rounds of eight questions each. Raffle questions in between rounds. Each round is themed (this night’s were common bonds, before & after, music round, This Week in History, and genericized trademarks). The host duo delivers the questions via microphone and PA system that allows players both outside and inside to play. Teams answer their questions on good old fashioned pen and paper, and there’s no wagering system involved. The hosts hand out raffle tickets at the beginning, and if your ticket is called between rounds, you get the opportunity to answer a question live to win a free drink.

The hosts write all their own questions and explore a wide range of subjects. Their first round (common bonds) tackled pop culture, science, geography, food, and film, just to name a few. Throughout the night, the questions felt like they pulled from a variety of knowledge bases, making it easier to engage the entire team. The This Week In History round had an especially fun twist, where the first letters of each answer unscrambled to form the answer to another relevant question (about BASTILLE day) which was a fun way to tie everything together. Even without the added twist, the round worked well on its own. The Before & After round also contained some clever wordplay; “Tequila Sunrise Sunset” made me chuckle because I was imagining the wine bottle dance from Fiddler, but with bottles of Jose Cuervo instead. However, 1912th Amendment was a bit of a stretch and probably should have been cut.

Each round contained high quality questions and hit almost all the right notes, but the Common Bond round had a few misses. You have to be careful that the bond isn’t too general that the connection is uninteresting, but also not too specific that people can’t guess it. Connecting “World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, Everquest” with video games is technically correct, but shouldn’t be worth a point, as it’s too broad. Calling them RPGs is more accurate and should be worth a point, but should we be more specific and say that they are multi-installment MMORPGs? It can be difficult to establish that cutoff, but it should be consistent. “Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson, and Christopher Nolan” are all directors. That’s too easy to earn a point. There are a LOT of things that those three have in common besides that, though. They make films that millennials love. They all made movies starring Scarlett Johansson. They’ve all worked with their brothers on their films. They all got their start with critically acclaimed indie films in the ’90s. They’ve been nominated for Best Director at the Oscars, and they all lost to a non-American guy with a beard. But which of those things should earn the point? Ultimately, what they were looking for was “Directors who HAVEN’T won an Oscar” (but um… ackshually Coppola did win an Oscar for the Lost in Translation screenplay). The difficulty with these, as a host, is that you have to make judgment calls and often do extra research to accept or disqualify an answer, which often leads to outrage among the players: “Hey that should be worth a point!” OR… “Hey that SHOULDN’T be worth a point!” I appreciate the effort that goes into writing them, but it might be best to avoid these types of rounds unless the bond is clear and concise and really can’t be anything else.

I don’t want to nitpick too much, though, as I was overall very happy with the quality of the trivia and look forward to playing again!

Prize: $50 gift card to first place.

The Venue: Greenwood Park has a huge outdoor space (it’s a former gas station), with typical gastropub fare, dozens of beers, a respectable cocktail list, and some frozen drinks, as well. They also have a woodfired pizza oven, and on trivia nights, you get a free margherita pizza (good for one or two people) when you order any pitcher of beer. The bar is located right next to Green-Wood Cemetery, which is a beautiful arboretum on top of being an active cemetery. Get there early and take a stroll through the cemetery before trivia starts. Since the venue is so massive, you are unlikely to need to reserve a table to get a spot. There were 15 teams on the night we played, yet it didn’t feel crowded at all, even with several groups there to watch the Gold Cup Semifinal. This trivia is a great time, and I highly recommend it!