Trivia Vagabond: The Hopvine (2/13)

A good rule of thumb for playing trivia: When in doubt, go with your first answer. It saves arguing and cuts right through potentially endless cycles of self-doubt.

Unfortunately, Tuesday night at the Hopvine, that rule of thumb failed us. Twice. And left our team, I Am Anna Nicole's Babydaddy, in second place.

"What philosopher is associated with deconstructionism?" Our gut answered quickly: Baudrillard. Wait a second, said our brain, I think it's Derrida. Our teammates voted gut. We were wrong.

We were also wrong about the only state with a flag not shaped like a rectangle. "Maryland!" said gut. "Ohio!" said brain. Gut: 0 for 2.

(We mention this because some people who know us as quiz hosts think we must be super trivia player geniuses, when really the only reason we know anything about the St. Lawrence River is because we looked it up in Wikipedia.)

Here's what you need to know about the Hopvine's quiz:

It's held the second and fourth Tuesday of every month. It starts at 8:00. It costs $3 per person to play, and the winning team takes home the pot. Second place (as we know all too well) wins a coupon good for a pitcher of beer. Third prize is you're fired. Or maybe candy.

The quiz itself is five rounds of nine questions each. The host, KwizMeister Patrick, grades the answer sheets himself between each round. There are no round themes -- topics ranged from the current house majority leader to the Pleiades to Bel Biv Devoe to "Punk'd is to Kutcher as Candid Camera is to what?" If you've got a liberal arts degree, you'll likely do well.

(That'd be "Funt.")

The winning team got $111, which means 37 people were playing the quiz Tuesday night. It's not a large space, though; the pub seemed fairly full, though we're sure plenty of people were there for the food and alcohol. We enjoyed the Urbino pizza, which won't satisfy NYC or Chicago pizza snobs but was pretty good for pub grub. We ordered cider, but they were out, and they don't serve hard liquor, so we settled for Diet Coke. (We didn't notice the wine menu until after the waitress stopped asking us if we wanted anything, or we'd have had a glass. Perhaps the lack of alcohol explains our loss.)