Seattlest Interviews the Guys Behind QuizNight.net

What inspired you to create the site?

Brian: We've been playing for a while, and have found ourselves looking for new or alternative venues more than once. Maybe we'd want to invite a friend out to play, but they can't make our regular night. Or a place might be too easy, or consistently, absurdly out of our league, or it might be too crowded, or start too early, or too late, or whatever. We've even had places close out from under us. But finding a new quiz night always seemed a haphazard, word-of-mouth sort of thing, more a matter of luck than anything else. As often as not, we'd just lump it with the venue we knew, rather than go to the work of finding new places.

Erik: There are a few websites I visit to find happy hours, so I guess that was my initial inspiration. As far as I could tell, there was no website exclusively dedicated to pub trivia in Seattle. Somebody had to do it. My plan was to post a modest list of venues with general information, at least for the time being. It was easier than keeping a mental list and maybe some people could benefit from it. I was taken aback by the amount of enthusiasm shown by Paul and Brian when the idea was suggested. The site was clearly going to be much more than one basic reference page from the get-go. We've each played around with Google Maps over the past year, so it's no surprise that has become a major component. QuizNight.net may be the perfect vehicle to showcase their development, graphic design, and writing skills. It's also a fun thing to do.

Paul: Yes, Erik came up with the initial idea for a directory well over a year ago, and Brian and I expanded on it. Unfortunately, as I suspect is often the case with these sorts of things, we did more talking and planning than actual implementation. Erik sort of kicked us into a forward gear earlier this year with a working prototype of what would eventually evolve into our map page.

How do you see it developing in the future? Will you add more features, expand to more cities, take some other path, or just grow for a while and see what happens?

Erik: QuizNight.net could expand to Portland or the Bay Area, but it's too early to say. We'll see how it goes.

Brian: Yes, we could expand to just about anywhere, really, but with limited time and resources (and day jobs to boot) it just didn't make sense to look beyond the Seattle area for our initial run at this. As it is, just scouting out the venues has been a major undertaking this summer, and we're still finding new places here and there. I just don't see how we could have put together a quality directory outside of our own city at the same time. That said, if this does take off locally (as we hope it does) then we'd definitely be open to working with interested parties in other cities to bring QuizNight.net to them. The infrastructure is there, it would just be a matter of finding people interested in doing the legwork, writing the reviews, and reaching out to quizmasters and players in their city. But for now our first priority is definitely Seattle.

Paul: We've got a long list of ideas that somebody brought up, and then we said "That's a 2.0 feature." That list has gotta be a lot longer by now than the stuff that actually made it onto the site. At this rate the 2.0 version is gonna be the biggest Web site in the history of the world.

How long had did you play pub trivia before getting the idea for QuizNight.net?

Paul: Brian and I had been playing for about 6 years. He's been doing it even longer than I have. We used to play at the DeLuxe on Capitol Hill, before they stopped doing it.

Brian: A friend talked me into trying the quiz night at the George and Dragon, back, I think, in 1998. We eventually migrated over to the DeLuxe and were regulars there for an embarrassingly long time. I met Paul through a semi-regular poker game we both used to play. At some point, I mentioned pub trivia, and offered up a sample question that we had missed the last time we'd played, something along the lines of "Who is the only Native American currently serving as a US Senator?"

Paul: Which at the time would have been Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado.

Brian: So yeah, after that, Paul was on the team.

Erik: I've been playing for two or three years. In the beginning I couldn't find people to play. None of my long-time friends are into this. So, I've met some cool people playing trivia. In fact, I first met Brian and Paul at the Hopvine.

I'm well aware that you're a really good team. What are some of your tips, tricks, and strategies for putting together a solid trivia team?

Paul: Oh, we get our rear ends handed to us often enough, believe me. Trivia isn't really something you can study for -- how do you study for a test when the potential subject matter is "all knowledge"? I think you have to think a certain way to really do well: you have to be enough of a dilettante to seek out a wide variety of information, and the interesting bits have to have a way of sticking in your head. If I'm not careful I can find myself blowing an entire evening clicking around Wikipedia reading about the history of the British monarchy, or new developments in astronomy, or some other crazy thing.

Brian: Tips and tricks? I wish I knew. I've heard it said that reading "this day in history" pages on the Web can help, but I can't think of a single instance when that's helped me. Once, several years ago, knowing that one of the upcoming week's theme rounds would be on serial killers, I actually bought and read a couple of books on the subject. The end result was a mere one point that we otherwise wouldn't have earned, and several weeks of me not being able to sleep well at night. Trying to study just isn't worth it. Really, I think the only thing you can do is try to diversify your team as much as possible. Invite anyone and everyone you can think of to come play -- young, old, friends, family, whoever -- and see who takes to it.

Erik: I've never attempted to put together an "all-star trivia team". It's great to win, but you're out to socialize. Trivia + beer. That's a winning combination.

You're pretty even-handed in your quiz descriptions on the site. What makes a pub's quiz stand out for you?

Brian: Thanks. It's not the difficulty level, believe it or not. We've encountered some really difficult quizzes and some fairly easy ones -- they all create different comfort levels for their participants, which is great. The places that stand out for me are the ones where the competition is tight -- where you have three or four teams going into tiebreaker questions at the end of the night for first or second place. (And yeah, if we happen to be one of those three or four teams, all the better).

Paul: I would say that a standout quiz night is one with a good mix between regulars and casual teams; one where the outcome is competitive, so you don't routinely have one team running away with it; one where the questions have clear, unambiguous answers and the quizmaster gives out the standings frequently; and one where the atmosphere encourages mingling between teams and meeting new people.

Erik: Announcing the standings after every round adds drama and gives teams an opportunity to check their scores.

What are your trivia pet peeves, with fellow players and with hosts?

Erik: Hosts: Arbitrarily changing rules during a quiz. Players: Either "calling a friend" or exceeding the team member limit. Pub trivia is supposed to be fun, so it goes against the spirit of it to complain about such things. Nobody ever does. Although, with $100+ at stake, I can certainly understand why you would.

Brian: I dislike ambiguous questions, the sort where the problem is not so much knowing the correct answer as figuring out which correct answer the quizmaster expects from you. On the flip side, I also dislike it when players feel the need to vigorously defend their wrong answers. I suppose it's fair to quietly protest, if you really think you know more than the host on that subject, but when it gets to the point of derailing the evening for everyone else, you're probably taking it all too seriously.

What are your favorite trivia questions that you've heard while researching the site? Which ones were the most tantalizing? And which seemed downright mean?

Erik: Fado had a culinary round. That was a sure way to take my team out of competition. It's a legitimate category I suppose, but it's not a common one. I see the irony here, but pubs are not exactly renown for their exotic cuisine. Pouring a good pint of Guinness on the other hand...

Brian: I can't really think of any favorites. I certainly have some favorite categories, but even then there are good questions and bad. As far as cruel, there was an entire round of multiple choice album title questions at the Celtic Swell. My heart leapt when she announced the category, but by the end of the round I was practically in tears from frustration. I felt like I absolutely should have known at least eight out of the ten questions, and would kick myself when I heard the right answers, but my memory just failed me.

Erik: Oh, I wish I was there that night.

Brian: Sorry, Erik, they were heavy metal albums. You'd have been guessing right alongside me.

Paul: As I recall, we lucked into the right answers on most of those. That's another tip: know what sounds plausible and what doesn't.

Erik: When in doubt, go with the obvious. Don't overthink too much. Also, with a good trivia question you can sometimes figure out the answer with the slightest bit of knowledge of the subject. Listen carefully to how the question is worded. Sometimes, there's no explanation for knowing the answer, but there it is. Sent down from the trivia gods. I'm sure some supernatural force is involved.

Brian: Unless, of course, the question involves arithmetic. That's another cruel category of question. I like math, I'm not half bad at math, but beer and arithmetic just don't mix.

Brian also notes: We're more than open to hear from people regarding the site: submissions of places we don't yet know about, updates or corrections, or just questions or comments. Best email address for that is brains@quiznight.net.