Trivial pursuits
A WINNING QUIZ TEAM NEEDS FRIENDS WHO KNOW AN AWFUL LOT ABOUT A LITTLE
The best pub trivia teams are not necessarily made of the smartest people in the room. They’re also not the biggest teams, nor do they have the youngest or the oldest players.
The most successful teams, in my experience, are made of friends who know a lot about a little, who have varied interests, who consume different news and podcasts, read books, listen to the radio, and who know someone who follows cricket, Formula 1 and watches reality TV.
To truly succeed in a trivia competition, like in parenting, you need a modest village.
The term itself gives clues to the ingredients required. Trivia is defined as “details or information that are not important”.
That may seem harsh. Knowing that Bluey is actually a female dog, for example, or that the collective noun for teddy bears is a ‘hug’ could be useful in the right setting.
But trivia is the kind of information it’s not vital to know, so many people do not.
You need to gather a team of folks who live for random facts or who have been in a position to collect some.
I’ve been a member of a successful pub trivia team for more than a decade. We’ve scribbled a lot of notes, had a lot of guesses rewarded, debated and ruled out more correct answers than we’d be willing to discuss, won some odd prizes, and had plenty of fun.
That fun is the reason we keep looking for venues (even after one memorably asked us to leave), but the reason we sometimes win is down to our eclectic, frivolous knowledge.
One member of the team is a walking sports encyclopaedia, one knows ’80s ballads better than Molly Meldrum, one watches whatever documentaries happen to be on that night, and another studies the music charts like she’s about to face an exam (which, in a way, she is). We each have our own ‘special subjects’ and interests, which add to our collective collection of random facts, figures and hints from which to draw.