We hit the town looking for the best places to play trivia. Put on your thinking caps and come along with us! (No smart phones, please – only true brainiacs need apply.)
The Barley House
Our first foray into the world of trivia went down at The Barley House, where trivia takes place Wednesdays at 8 p.m. The game is set up in four rounds of six questions each. Teams can assign a point value of one through six to each answer, keeping in mind that each bid can only be used once per round. So, you need to bid big on what you know for sure and wager low on the questions that you're guessing on. Then, you run your answer up to the MC on a slip of paper so they can keep score.
There is also a halftime matching game that can net you big points. Ours was a matter of matching songs with the movies they appear in; of course we nailed it.
Unfortunately, that was about all we nailed. We finished near the bottom of the pack, well away from the $25 gift card that the winning team is awarded.
We're told that team Tin Foil Hats are often the dominant squad at The Barley House, but that night belonged to team Firecracker Shrimp. Congratulations! We're coming for you next time.
Cheers
Our next bid for triva glory went down at Cheers, host of trivia sessions Fridays at 9 p.m. The folks from Game Time Trivia are in charge of the festivities, and they brought a true multimedia experience to the table. We got multiple handouts with picture questions, and there was an “identify the song and artist” round that forced us to use our ears!
The game went six rounds, with most questions worth one point. In the final “hail mary” round, teams could wager up to 10 points per question – but a wrong answer means you lose the amount of points you bid! Things get pretty crazy in the hail mary round.
We put up a much better fight in the Cheers trivia game, finishing fifth out of about 15 teams. We were getting better, but we were no match for team Mitt Romney: The Demon Barber of Cranbrook, who handily defeated all comers with their big ol' brains. They took home the $30 Cheers gift card. The second-place team got a $15 gift card, while third place merited some fashionable T-shirts. All the Insider got was a fun night out.
Uno's
For our third attempt at showing off our smarts, we went to Uno's. They have Trivia Tuesdays every week at 8 p.m. Each week, there is a different sponsor; when we attended, the sponsor was Pepsi, which meant that each round had a Pepsi-specific question in it somewhere.
The format at Unoss is similar to the Barley House; five five-question rounds in which you can bid one to five points per question, only using each bid once. The clues were both read aloud and displayed on a large television, which is a plus, especially for those of us who read faster than we listen. After each question was posed, the trivia MC walked around and took down each team's answers – no more running up our answers on slips of paper! The MC also liberally distributed Pepsi swag, such as Darth Maul-based T-shirts, to the competitors.
We didn't know much about Pepsi, it turned out, but fortunately for team Insider, that was about all we didn't know. We led wire to wire and ended up winning the night! Our prize was a $25 gift card to Unos; we'll be back to dominate again.
Take-home Trivia
We wrote down some of the stumpers that were posed to us at the various trivia nights. See if you can get them right!
Send along your guesses to us at news@theconcordinsider.com and we'll run the right answers in an upcoming issue.
1. Who was the winningest Major League Baseball pitcher throughout the years 2000-2009?
2. Which United States capital city is at the highest elevation? (Hint: It's not Concord.)
3. What is the only body part that is also a kind of tree?
4. War of the Worlds author H.G. Wells was originally a professor. What subject did he teach?
5. The 2007 film There Will Be Blood was based on a 1927 novel by Upton Sinclair. What is the name of that book?
