The Bilt Bar – Prospect Heights – Wednesdays @ 7 pm

The Trivia: Traditional Pencil/Paper Pub Trivia. Four themed rounds of ten questions each, with one Final Jeopardy style wager question at the very end. The themes of the night (Food Network Star or Canadian Prime Minister, Nic Cage Movies Before & After, an “I am” Songs audio round, and a visual name-the-film round featuring people coming back from the dead) were fun, easy to understand, and comprised a nice variety of question structures. Host Jason writes all his own questions with a personal touch. The movie rounds were clearly written with a deep love for the source materials, complete with bonus trivia when the answers were revealed, a sign of somebody who does a ton of research before boiling it down to a succinct question. The music round felt very much “from my record collection”, and even though there were some songs and artists I had 100% never heard of in my life, I found myself looking them up on Spotify afterwards to listen more. In the end, I felt like I got to know Jason from the questions he asked us, which is a great way to build a trivia community that keeps coming back.

Outside of this-or-that, before & after, name-that-tune, and name-that-movie style rounds, there was only one traditional trivia question of the entire night (“What group of people are exempt from the 10-years-dead rule to be featured on U.S. Postage Stamps?” see answer below), and it came at the very end. This was also the only one that extended outside of the realm of pop culture. Overall, the night featured 50% questions either completely or partially about movies, 25% music questions, and 25% questions that could be directly or tangentially answered with knowledge of television food programs. There are a few schools of thought when it comes to bar trivia, and not every trivia night has to appeal to every person, so it’s okay that some hosts cater more to the pop culture lovers. The small, but energetic crowd were eating it up, so we know which camp they belong to. That being said, one round in the night for the… non-pop-culture nerds can’t hurt. We really should come up with a good word for that. “Anything-but-pop culture”? “poP-culture” but we have to specify that pop is spelled backwards?

The final question of the night works exactly like Final Jeopardy: you hear the category, you submit your wager (from 0 up to your total score), and then you hear the question, and either gain or lose those points depending on if you get it right. It certainly makes the end of the night dramatic, but… it also makes everything leading up to it feel like just a tiebreaker for the groups that get the final question right. That’s almost exactly how it plays out on the TV show Jeopardy, as well, but at least on that show, every point you get is a point your opponents don’t, so you have the ability to build up enough of a lead to make it a runaway. This probably only matters to degenerate nerds like me who show up with the intention and expectation of winning, but I felt bad for the groups that ended with 0 points. It seemed like the prevailing strategy was to simply bet it all; nobody was gonna win by 1 tonight. Also, I loved the final question. It’s not something most people would know off-hand, but the question itself was straightforward, and the answer was simple and clear and made perfect logical sense after some discussion with the team: of course U.S. Presidents would be exempt from the ten-years-dead rule. It was an excellent question to finish the night with, but I don’t think the previous two hours should have been rendered essentially moot because of one question.

I’ve got a proposal for anybody wanting to do Final Jeopardy style questions in the future: make the wagers be set numbers that range from nothing, half a round, or a full rounds worth of points. If your rounds are 100 points, then 0, 50, and 100 could be the wagers. That way, you can still have a “runaway” in the traditional sense: a team that has answered correctly an entire round’s worth of questions more than the second place team should be guaranteed their win. Also, teams don’t feel pressured to bet their entire point total, and can end the night in the plus! Overall a great night, and we look forward to returning in the future.

The Venue: The Bilt Bar is spacious and clean and there were plenty of available tables even though we showed up right at 7 (benefits of an earlier trivia start time). Plenty of beers, cocktails, and wine, and a friendly bartender. While the website says they have charcuterie boards, the kitchen was closed that night. Luckily, there are a ton of good take-out places around there, and they didn’t mind us bringing in outside food and eating it there. Our team of ate sushi, burritos, and poke bowls, all from different places less than two blocks away. It’s right down the street from the Barclays Center, so don’t expect to find parking on an event night!