Sea Witch – Greenwood/South Slope – Monday @ 8 pm

The Trivia: Traditional Pub Trivia. Four rounds of six questions each. Bonus shot round questions in between. Each round is themed (this night’s themes were Born This Week, Marathons, Rangers, and Movie Password). Shot round questions were themed, as well: name the company from their NYSE stock ticker symbol. The host delivers questions via a PA system and teams answer on paper. Host was easy to hear from everywhere in the bar, although, regrettably, not from the backyard space.

This is a Trivial Dispute trivia night, a medium-sized trivia company that operates at several locations in Brooklyn and Manhattan and has been a stalwart on the trivia scene for over a decade. I remember playing a round at the Alligator Lounge (of The Rehearsal fame) over ten years ago, and not much has changed with the format in that time. The questions are generally high quality. A decent mix of easy and hard, with many falling in the sweet spot, but there were also a handful that were very niche “you-either-know-it-or-you-don’t”, and could have used a few more avenues of entry. I would classify the overall difficulty of the questions as higher than average. That being said, the philosophy seems to be quality over quantity; if you’ve already done the math, you’d know there were only 24 questions the whole night. It’s not the fewest number of questions at a Brooklyn trivia venue, but it definitely leaves you wanting more. As the host dragged these few questions out to fill two and a half hours, the pauses between questions, and especially between rounds, felt excruciatingly long. This was made especially more painful by the fact that the answers to round 1 weren’t revealed until after round 2. People want to know the answers. Why make us wait so long? It just leads to players looking them up on their phone, which isn’t satisfying, or should even be tolerated for that matter… but people have their limits. It didn’t help that the music in the bar was a little too low, leading to an awkward lull in the proceedings.

I think ONE more round would have helped a lot to fill the time more effectively. Additionally, the absence of any sort of music round felt very pronounced, as it has become a trivia night staple that a lot of folks expect and deeply enjoy. Conclusion: add a music round!

When the answers are finally revealed once every two rounds, teams swap sheets with another team to grade each other. I’m not a fan of this practice, as it can feel awkward and overtly competitive, and it’s hard not to feel judged when you get a wrong answer. I’d prefer if we skipped that extra source of anxiety during trivia night. I also don’t see the point in it, because the host should be checking the work anyway, so it doesn’t actually save any time. Also, what if there’s an answer dispute? I also don’t love that the host randomly decided to award a bonus point on a particular question because one team provided additional information beyond the scope of the question. That’s cool that you know there used to be a third correct answer to this two answer question, but that wasn’t the question that was asked. Should teams just start writing a bunch of extra facts on their sheet and hope the host gives them extra points? It’s a bad precedent.

Overall, it’s an okay trivia night. The host was enthusiastic and engaging even if she re-read the questions a few too many times for my liking. I have a few other nits: point values for questions felt arbitrary, the question writer broke their own rules for the questions in the Movie Password round (aka pass phrase(?) round), and the shot round questions were repetitive and uninteresting (Stock ticker symbols… the whole night? ho hum).

The Venue: Sea Witch is a nautical-themed bar with a ton of beers on tap, pub grub, and a variety of cocktails and wines. Beautiful fish tank behind the bar is nicer to look at than a TV (for some folks). The backyard is lovely, but you’ll have to be inside to play trivia.