Weekly trivia competition has downtown bar teaming with brains
Preview: Brainstormers Pub Trivia takes place every Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at Sean Kelly's Public House, 130 W. Pine St., in Missoula. Admission is free. Next Tuesday, members of the Missoulian news staff will compete in a charity Pub Trivia challenge with other local media. Contributions to the cause are encouraged, with the winning media team choosing the charity that will receive
On a recent Tuesday evening, a group of well-dressed, 20-something guys huddled in the back of Sean Kelly's Irish Pub on Pine Street in Missoula. To anyone walking in the back door of the bar, the crew might have looked like a gaggle of frat boys planning a prank, were it not for the deadly serious expressions on their faces and the silence that loomed in their huddle.
Suddenly, one member of the group leaned forward, and all of his mates tilted inward to hear him whisper. Excited yet muted interactions ensued, until one member of the group scribbled a word on a pad of paper. The five other guys leaned back, some nodding knowingly, others grinning, sipping their drinks.
To the many Tuesday night regulars at Sean Kelly's, the scene isn't just familiar; it's exciting, even a little intimidating. These guys, after all, are the Wolves - one of the most consistent winning teams in the weekly Brainstormers Pub Trivia Challenge, a Sean Kelly's institution that has bred its own cult of devoted, passionate competitors.
Along with 30 to 50 other teams every week, the Wolves have to answer questions that test all manner of trivial knowledge. That night, questions ranged from the Biblical (whose wife was turned into a pillar of salt?) to the historical (what year was the Battle of Trafalgar?) to the musical (what Lynard Skynard song was written in response to Neil Young's "Southern Man?").
Some questions were easy enough for school kids (how many inches are in a yard?), while some would challenge the most stuffed cranium (who was the first president born under the American flag?).
Competitors are encouraged to discuss answers with their teammates, although phone calls to outsiders are verboten. Teams can consist of as many (or as few) members as entrants wish, though there's clearly an advantage gained by teams of five or more players.
But just because the Wolves often win the eight-round competition doesn't mean they're a bunch of pocket-protected rocket scientists. In fact, the team consists mostly of a few old neighborhood friends and fellow high-school students who stuck around Missoula after graduating from college.
"I tend bar up in Evaro," said Wolves member Russell Sherry, 28. "We're mostly just a few grad students, a computer programmer, and some friends. Š A lot of people, the knowledge they bring isn't necessarily related to the professional field they work in, so it's stimulating in ways that doesn't rely on work or study."
Besides the Wolves, a small handful of other teams consistently show up in the running for the weekly grand prize of $30. There's the Cellar Dwellers, Work In Progress, and Dr. R - a team consisting of Missoulian sports columnist Rial Cummings, along with his dad, his brother and several family friends.
The top prize may be barely enough to buy a round of drinks for the largest teams, but that doesn't mean the competition isn't heated.
"Those four teams, they're like the Yankees and the Braves of trivia," joked Jeff Palmer, a regular contestant at the Pub Quiz. "Every now and then my team might sneak into fourth place, and we feel like geniuses for a night."
That particular night, Palmer's team played (and eventually lost) under the moniker The Somali Warlords. Like many of the teams that vie for fourth place, the Somali Warlords aren't too concerned with building a brand. On this particular evening, other teams include the Olsen Twin Sandwich, Democrats for Governor Martz and - in a comical nod to current events - Siegfried and Catfood.
Sipping on a cocktail of vodka and Red Bull, Palmer admits that he's no match for some of the brainiacs who show up every week.
"The Red Bull helps me feel like I know something," said Palmer, nodding toward his cocktail. "The vodka makes me think I should share it with the world."
But just because his team rarely gets in the money doesn't mean he isn't committed to competing, every week.
"This is definitely my weekly ritual," said Palmer, who spends his workdays as a shift coordinator at the Good Food Store. "Right now, my wife and I are the hard-cores of this team. But it's definitely a social thing; our friends always know where to find us on Tuesday nights, so they rotate in."
According to bar manager Paul Rudd - who serves as occasional quizmaster for the event, asking the questions over the bar's PA system - the weekly trivia night has been a boon to business.
"It's a very successful and consistent night for the bar, especially considering it's mid-week," said Rudd. "A lot of the regulars will come down around 5 or 5:30 to grab a good table, and they'll have dinner while they're holding it. And they're always here until it ends around 11."
Rudd purchases his trivia questions from Brainstormers, a San Francisco-based company that supplies original trivia questions to thousands of bars, restaurants and corporate clients around the country. Brainstormers is one of several companies that have capitalized on a recent boom in the nightclub trivia-game craze.
While Sean Kelly's draws a devoted crowd every week, it's still hardly the kind of competition one finds around Ireland, where professional gamers travel from pub to pub, vying for prizes that can range from free dinners, to hundreds or even thousands of dollars in cash.
That's where the pub trivia craze first took off, spawned in part by the success of the Hasbro board game Trivial Pursuit, and the popularity of the TV game show, "Jeopardy."
In more recent years, the pub-trivia craze has stretched around the world. According to a recent article in Australian newspaper The Age, more than 50 weekly contests take place in pubs around Sydney, Australia.
Every night of the week, contestants can find similar contests in bars and restaurants across North America, from New Orleans to Ottowa, Seattle to Boston.
And then there's the NTN Network, a nationwide video trivia game service offered to bars and restaurants by Carlsbad, Calif.-based Buzztime Entertainment Inc. The NTN Network provides a live, digital feed of questions which contestants view on TV screens and answer via a wireless keyboard. Winners earn prizes and recognition every day, and players who sign up for a "Players Plus" account can earn points toward winning vehicles, cruises, and other high-dollar prizes in national competitions.
The NTN Network boasts some impressive numbers that are indicative of the popularity of pub trivia. The company claims 3,500 restaurant and bar clients around the country, with more than 6 million players competing per year. According to an independent audit commissioned by NTN, trivia game players tend to spend more money and return more often to venues offering the NTN service, than to venues that don't offer the service.
"It's hugely successful for us," said Mike McNamara, general manager of Rowdy's Cabin, a restaurant/casino located on North Reserve Street in Missoula, and the only local venue that offers the NTN Network's games.
"We have probably 45 to 60 real steady players, who come in very regularly," added McNamara. "Also, one thing that has really surprised me is the number of people who are just stopping through town, and who say they came here because they looked on the Internet and found out that we have NTN."
Based on that success, Buzztime recently unveiled an interactive trivia-game cable channel. The channel is currently only available from three cable providers in Pennsylvania and Maine, but the company hopes to soon begin deploying the system around the country.
But for the players at Sean Kelly's, the weekly obsession isn't simply about tossing off answers to off-the-wall questions.
Equally important is the social scene that has developed at the pub.
"It's definitely a friendly competition," said Carter Young, a member of one of the oft-victorious teams, Work In Progress. "We all know each other here, and it's great to see how each group works together."
Indeed, Young believes that the trivia night offers an important exercise in group dynamics.
"It's very good practice for being egalitarian, solving problems, working together," said Young, noting that his team is largely composed of his co-workers at local software company Edulog.
"I would highly recommend this to any small business, because there's always one person who knows something that nobody else knows. So it's really a great exercise in realizing the power of numbers. Š I've seen people from other offices come as a group, and sometimes you see one person who's dominant over the other people and sure enough, it doesn't work out for those teams."
While it never hurts to brush up on certain arcana - country flags, Biblical characters, Shakespeare plays - most players admit there's no way to truly predict what questions might show up.
"You can memorize the succession of French kings, or whatever; but who knows if it'd ever show up," said Young. "You could try to suss out what you'd think would be useful, but it never works. I just try to read the newspaper every day, and hope that my teammates can help on the areas where I'm weak."
For that reason, Young believes the best teams draw on a mix of ages and backgrounds.
"It'd take some 14- to 15-year-old kids, some ivy-leaguers, some people who'd never left the TV screen - and even then you'd miss some questions," said Young. "No matter how intellectually capable you are, you're gonna miss something.
"That's why this has been such a success down there at Sean Kelly's, I think: Practically anybody out there will know one or two of the answers, but it takes a team of people who really get along well and know a broad range of things to really compete."
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