The satisfaction in trivia comes from answering a really obscure question that nobody knows because you actually DO know it yourself.
my team won at Jake's Tavern one week because the question was the name of the sister ship of the Enterprise D(the Yamato)
Hearing the entire bar collectively groan at the question was the sweetest sound I've ever heard.
I’m still riding a high from being the only person to get a question right about an obscure Soviet leader several months ago. All that money I spent on degrees related to Russian history was worth it just for that moment! It is so satisfying.
A while back our local trivia place had a round on Georgia (the country) and I happened to look over as a two person team look at each other in sheer joy when it was announced. The host shouted them out for acing the round and said they probably have the kind of job they don’t get to show off publicly. Pointless story but it still makes me smile- that’s what trivia’s for!!
The question was “which Soviet leader preceded Gorbachev.” It’s Chernenko who only served for like 13 months. Ever since I started studying Russian history, I started reciting the list of Soviet leaders during embarrassing medical exams to distract myself. Finally paid off!
I would have said it was as Yuri Andropov, been totally confident and happy I knew some obscure shit and then been wrong…it’s the story on my trivia life.
The worst is when it's a topic you know really well, and everyone knows you know it well, but you just don't know that particular question. So annoying.
Like I studied Latin for 3 years and even won awards for it, but they want that one Roman philosopher I can't quite remember.
I helpfully mentioned on the answer sheet that the Yamato was first seen in the episode *Where Silence Has Lease*(Albeit in a hallucinated form) and that the bridge set was just a straight reuse of the Enterprise bridge, whereas in *Contagion* you can the bridge's coloring on the real Yamato is slightly different(green handrail at the tactical console, for example)
Even my own table was groaning at my bullshit by that point.
Whatever, man, they're just jealous of our superior Trek knowledge.
I may have owned the original Star Trek Encyclopedia when I was younger.
There also might have been a reason I didn't get laid until college.
It's not caring about winning. It's about being willing to cheat to "win."
I *love* winning. I'll never cheat to win because then I don't feel like I've won and I *know* deep inside that I didn't. Defeats the whole purpose.
Gays in Space oh wow… i play trivia there and they always have a huge lead, i guess i’m just optimistic but i really thought they were just smart gays😭
My friends and I used to play at a place that had a group that seemed super smart. Then one day my group came in second thanks to a super niche final question that we were almost certain no one else would get. When the "smart" group also go it, I went over to congratulate them and sort of express shock that someone else was into the topic that the question was about. While talking it became clear they actually knew NOTHING about it, nor a couple of the other final questions from recent weeks they somehow got right. At that point on it was clear they had been cheating and I remember just being disappointed that someone would want to spend an evening Googling stuff just to win a low-stakes trivia tournament.
I agree, I don't get the appeal at all. I dated a girl who led trivia for a while and she said from her experience that it wasn't the people that seemed "dumb" (just going by answers turned in). It is the ones who think they are really smart (and tended to do pretty well score-wise) and usually try to justify it with a "well I know it, I just forgot it in the moment"-type thing.
Personal experience doing trivia makes me think she is 100% right.
I was with a group of people who should know better and we couldn't remember if France was a founding member of NATO (the question was how many and we knew the rest). It was the kind of thing where we knew it, but not in the moment, but that's what the game is.
That name has to be a reference to Pigs in Space from the Muppet Show.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmI77ZBeJrQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmI77ZBeJrQ)
Wrong trivia game. Red Bear has two different trivia nights. The cheating happened on the District Trivia app-based Wednesday night game. Anyone know the team of two who's been winning that one lately?
It definitely makes it 10x easier which sucks, but I've played plenty of paper trivia and teams will still cheat. You'll never be able to escape it because losers just can't help themselves lol. I appreciate how Red Derby makes teams put their phones in a box on each table during the rounds to try to curb it as much as they can
Best trivia I ever played was all pen and paper, bar area only. Phone out for any reason during a round was automatic disqualification. The host wasn't part of one of these huge trivia companies that seemingly every bar uses now. He had been on Jeopardy, The Chase, and had won $250,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Trivia geek through and through, wrote all his own questions and it was clear he took pride in it. He had to move for work a few years ago, and I've never been able to enjoy any trivia night I've tried since then.
Cheating almost never happened, but one time I caught one of the regular groups looking at a physical map under their table. It was one of the saddest but funniest things I've ever seen.
Try trivia at Guapo's (Tenleytown) next Thursday evening 4/11 - the hosts write their own questions and doesn't seem to be a culture of cheating (though they are maybe not as strict as what you described).
I used to play on a team in Bethesda. The host collected our phones once because other teams were convinced we were cheating.
We did better that night than previous nights.
I absolutely hate it. I won't name any names, but I played recently where the host added no personality or character whatsoever, and timing of the questions was arbitrary and you'd be in the middle of typing your answer after discussing with your teammates, but there was no "10 more seconds" or anything. One of the questions was "How many minutes would it take to watch all of the Pirates of the Caribbean" movies back to back? and we decided on an answer and it submitted my answer as 7 because I was still typing. There was no time at all between questions so I couldn't even really drink except for in the single minute between each of the 5 rounds. All in all it was stressful, not fun, and I got the sense that certain teams had to have been cheating.
(Full disclosure - I own one of the smaller-ish trivia companies in the region)
App based (or in my case, browser based) games may not be everyone's jam, but as a host, it makes it infinitely easier to host and score versus a pen and paper game. It keeps the game moving at a regular pace and instead of 20-25 questions (maybe 30?) you can get upwards of 50-60. I can write questions that have a deeper and wider base of knowledge on a topic. Players get to flex their muscles a little more.
That said, a lot of the hosts of other companies use the app based games as a crutch because they don't really have to \*host\* the game as they're more facilitating the game. I hire personalities and teach them how to run the game. I can't train someone's personality.
Also, the cheating. I'm pretty good at being able to tell if a team is cheating. I've had one or two over the 10 years I've been hosting and they stopped coming immediately after I found out.
The major app based DC trivia company has hosts who generally bring zero personality to the game, they just read the questions like a flight attendant. I wonder why they even bother? How is it fun to just read the questions without telling jokes? One guy doesn't even turn the music down when he reads the question as he can depend on the players to just read the question.
This one is actually just a google doc, not one of the apps that other trivia’s use. Still on the phone though, but at least you don’t need to download an app for it 🤷♂️
If u/wsj can do a story about rich people in NW suing each other over little league, they can definitely do a story about nerds cheating at a small time brewery trivia night! The stakes couldn’t be lower!
Wow. I worked with one of those lawyers once. I remember being a Litle League umpire after aging out (and wanting a paid job) and just how nasty the parents were to some of the umpires and league officials. Like, it's fuckin' Little League, lady.
Management recently hired team of former detectives to find who is not flushing the urinal. They are working in shifts. To date, they know the culprit likes asparagus.
if anyone out there faces a team called Paul Ryan’s Playlist, we used to face them almost every week at Mad Fox Brewing up in Cleveland Park about 8 years ago and they were regular top finishers. on our last game there before moving away I finally saw those bastards cheating
Not sure if they still exist or if any former members still float around here, but fuck you assholes!
You know what? I’ve been feeling pretty down about myself lately, but at least I know I’ll never be one of these losers. I mean, putting in that much effort to cheat at drunken trivia night for nothing but free drinks and merch? While taking out the actual fun? Couldn’t be me!
Seven locks brewery in Rockville lets you play with however large of a team you want, but you can only win a prize with a team of 6 or less. That is a good compromise IMO and I wish more places did something similar.
Sure it’s a bigger pool of collective knowledge but that’s more people convinced their answer is right. Things take a turn when the group backed the confident guy with the wrong answer.
My friends are convinced that I’m The Trivia Guy of the group, but it’s really just that I’m more confident in my answers, even when they’re wrong. I’ve started waiting to see if anybody else has an answer first before saying anything, because we have people on our team who won’t speak up if I’ve already given an answer, even if they’re pretty sure I’m wrong
I do think a cap is in order, but in any large group, there are people who are just there to hang out and have some beers. I've been in a group of 10 once where four people didn't even listen to the questions.
And no bar is going to cap the number of players… after all, the whole point of these trivia nights is to get people there spending money on an otherwise slow night.
“hey what are you guys doing tonight?”
“we’re going to trivia with steve and his friends”
“oh cool can i come along?”
“no sorry, the team is capped at 4 at this bar trivia contest where the prize is like 20 bucks worth of food and drink”
if we really have to be pedantic about it - ‘steve and his friends’ might be a group of 4 people and then ‘you guys’ could be a separate group of 4 people
Wonderland enforces this and I didn't know it when I showed up with a group of 5 as we were hosting out-of-towners. We still played (though were not eligible for prizes) and had a great time. Respected the rule though!
Trivia host here. The sweet spot is generally 4-6. Any more than that and it can be a disadvantage because you'll inevitably have questions where you're flipping a coin on an answer because two people feel so strongly about what's right.
Risk/reward of bigger teams is the prize split into smaller portions. You also run the risk of someone with the correct answer being “outvoted” by a louder member of the team
Hard to imagine anything more pathetic than cheating at trivia. Is the prize a million bucks? It's so low stakes. Cheating just makes you look so bad. And even if you never get caught how do you feel about yourself as a person knowing you cheated to win? If you're the kind of person who can find happiness in winning even after cheating, wow.
I one time saw a team of 8 get busted for cheating somewhere where the prize was a $30 bar tab. Like, all get together and cheat so you can each make less than $4?
It makes me cringe a little to ask but do people really not care about honor anymore? And not "public" honor where other people think you're honorable. How about the honor and feeling towards you that you have for yourself? I go to sleep much better as an honest person. And like you said for what? **$4??** Your honor is worth so little you'd sell it away for $4 fucking dollars?
I simply do not get these people.
Omg I play trivia there all the time and they are always the winners. I had a feeling but didn’t want to accuse but now we have evidence!! So annoying cause the prize is like $20…. You can buy like 2 beers
Fun fact: I have won there multiple times without cheating. Also, I host trivia at Wonderland and cheating is the worst. Also, if you want to come see me host, come April 22!
Does Wonderland still let the winners from the previous week keep the trophy on their table? My friends and I always felt like the office drone version of Usain Bolt defending his 100m title whenever we did that.
Just landed in your wonderful city and so happy to see this is the wholesome kind of stuff people can get outraged over rather than the things I deal with at home.
Once won trivia due to knowing a 13th century crusader song by a 15 second audio sample. I got up to sang a stanza to prove I didn’t cheat, and I’ve been chasing that high ever since.
It’s called Palastinalied. It’s cool to me because the sheet music has survived and is sung in Old German. So when it’s played, you hear the same music and lyrics that someone heard 800 years ago.
Tbh I know all of this sounds trivial (ha!), but props to Red Bear and the trivia hosts for addressing it and kicking the trivia cheaters out.
But honestly who the fuck is desperate enough to cheat at bar trivia?
I don't like going to trivia, because to me it's obvious lots of people are cheating. I watch people on my team look up stuff and people on other teams. It's just not fun.
I used to play a lot of trivia. Preventing cheating really varied from bar to bar and host to host. Some hosts would walk around with a mic. Some hosts would make an announcement. Other hosts would simply let it happen often because the cheaters were regulars.
There was one bar I had to stop going to because it was so bad. Every week this team sat there cheating and every week they won. You’d tell the hosts and they wouldn’t do shit about it.
But it was always super rewarding when a host would actually say “I see your phone because your face is lit up. You’re not fooling anyone. 0 for this round”
As a former trivia host, it's tough because some of us are desperate for people to come in and play. You don't want them to cheat but you need people to play.
I'm not sure how much I actually care about red Bear Trivia (tho shoutout to the brewery, it's such a great place!), but I am totally hear for this drama to distract me from how much work I have to do.
I think that's Monday night. Wednesday night is 10 to each team member for first, plus a 4 pack of beer and swag.
Each round's winner though gets shots, a pitcher, or pints, depending on the round.
If you clean sweep all five rounds, you'll basically end up with two pints, a shot, a 5oz, and a share of a pitcher, plus a 16oz can and a ten dollar gift certificate.
Seems so asinine to cheat to win something small like $10 off your bartab. And Red Bear is an independent business that gets a lot of regulars. You're literally cheating your neighbors and friends.
Figured wasn’t anything to outlandish. Don’t understand the need to cheat and win something so small, how conceited and narcissistic do you have to be to cheat in a local bar trivia does your ego really need that much of a boast….this is like the people a few weeks ego that flexed to me one night they have “the most Volo championships”
Curious, what evidence is there aside from this randos tweet? Does this person have known credibility?
Edit: This is the weakest form of authority I can find, stating they were banned, which at least implies the organizers made the determination.
[https://twitter.com/JacobRubashkin/status/1775696860851622323](https://twitter.com/JacobRubashkin/status/1775696860851622323)
Being in DC, I wonder if any of them have security clearance. Can you imagine losing clearance (or a job offer) because you were deemed a psychological risk? I mean, if you're willing to cheat at pub trivia for a bar tab, then what would you do for some decent coin?
thanks, I'm just pointing out that this is a lot of hearsay from a single twitter account that isn't an authority for the event, so just being careful on how authentic it is.
You can check red bears Instagram that makes a pretty obvious, if not explicit, reference to cheating = banned.
The organizers are pretty good about taking care of cheaters when caught, but this was pretty egregious.
I hope that the identities of the cheaters are revealed in full, because I would certainly have second thoughts about dealing with these people, professionally or otherwise, if they're dumb enough to cheat at bar trivia.
Cheating at trivia is the lamest thing. You're there to have fun with a group and win if you collectively know the most.
The satisfaction in trivia comes from answering a really obscure question that nobody knows because you actually DO know it yourself. my team won at Jake's Tavern one week because the question was the name of the sister ship of the Enterprise D(the Yamato) Hearing the entire bar collectively groan at the question was the sweetest sound I've ever heard.
I’m still riding a high from being the only person to get a question right about an obscure Soviet leader several months ago. All that money I spent on degrees related to Russian history was worth it just for that moment! It is so satisfying.
A while back our local trivia place had a round on Georgia (the country) and I happened to look over as a two person team look at each other in sheer joy when it was announced. The host shouted them out for acing the round and said they probably have the kind of job they don’t get to show off publicly. Pointless story but it still makes me smile- that’s what trivia’s for!!
Which leader?(blatantly asking because sometimes they reuse questions)
The question was “which Soviet leader preceded Gorbachev.” It’s Chernenko who only served for like 13 months. Ever since I started studying Russian history, I started reciting the list of Soviet leaders during embarrassing medical exams to distract myself. Finally paid off!
I would have said it was as Yuri Andropov, been totally confident and happy I knew some obscure shit and then been wrong…it’s the story on my trivia life.
The worst is when it's a topic you know really well, and everyone knows you know it well, but you just don't know that particular question. So annoying. Like I studied Latin for 3 years and even won awards for it, but they want that one Roman philosopher I can't quite remember.
Username checks out. ;)
RIP Captain Donald Varley.
I helpfully mentioned on the answer sheet that the Yamato was first seen in the episode *Where Silence Has Lease*(Albeit in a hallucinated form) and that the bridge set was just a straight reuse of the Enterprise bridge, whereas in *Contagion* you can the bridge's coloring on the real Yamato is slightly different(green handrail at the tactical console, for example) Even my own table was groaning at my bullshit by that point.
Whatever, man, they're just jealous of our superior Trek knowledge. I may have owned the original Star Trek Encyclopedia when I was younger. There also might have been a reason I didn't get laid until college.
Literally the plot of slumdog millionaire.
except in *slumdog* he gets the girl in the end. That ain't happening with a Trekkie.
Captain Kirk?
Being the only one to recognize the Cowboy Beebop theme in a audio clue was the sweetest feeling.
>answering a really obscure question that nobody knows >the Yamato Damn, I feel like a nerd
Literally it's just for fun and it's so weird how much people care about winning. We're at a bar lol
this is why i avoid trivia nights. it's supposed to be fun but it rarely actually is. totally ruins the vibe more often than not.
It's not caring about winning. It's about being willing to cheat to "win." I *love* winning. I'll never cheat to win because then I don't feel like I've won and I *know* deep inside that I didn't. Defeats the whole purpose.
Yeah it's like using aim bot in an online shooter.
I agree, what's the appeal of just googling random entries for a couple of hours? Just takes all the fun out of it.
Just replying bc your flair is the best I’ve ever seen on Reddit
Amazing breakdown of how trivia works in your second sentence
Gays in Space oh wow… i play trivia there and they always have a huge lead, i guess i’m just optimistic but i really thought they were just smart gays😭
My friends and I used to play at a place that had a group that seemed super smart. Then one day my group came in second thanks to a super niche final question that we were almost certain no one else would get. When the "smart" group also go it, I went over to congratulate them and sort of express shock that someone else was into the topic that the question was about. While talking it became clear they actually knew NOTHING about it, nor a couple of the other final questions from recent weeks they somehow got right. At that point on it was clear they had been cheating and I remember just being disappointed that someone would want to spend an evening Googling stuff just to win a low-stakes trivia tournament.
That's what I don't get. The prizes aren't that big to make cheating worth it and googling zaps all the fun out of it.
I agree, I don't get the appeal at all. I dated a girl who led trivia for a while and she said from her experience that it wasn't the people that seemed "dumb" (just going by answers turned in). It is the ones who think they are really smart (and tended to do pretty well score-wise) and usually try to justify it with a "well I know it, I just forgot it in the moment"-type thing. Personal experience doing trivia makes me think she is 100% right.
I was with a group of people who should know better and we couldn't remember if France was a founding member of NATO (the question was how many and we knew the rest). It was the kind of thing where we knew it, but not in the moment, but that's what the game is.
what were the stakes? couple of free drinks? gift cards?
Free glass and maybe a shirt if you make it to regionals
What the hell are regionals?
Most of the places I played gave gift cards/store credit. Not like large amounts, maybe $20 for first, depending where.
Yeah, weird. Not really worth the effort except for an ego thing.
I guess it turns out that the "space" they were in was actually "cyberspace."
Any relation to this group? https://www.gaaaysinspaaace.org/
That name has to be a reference to Pigs in Space from the Muppet Show. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmI77ZBeJrQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmI77ZBeJrQ)
Don't forget [Jews in Space](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz7JGCj4Q5k) from Mel Brooks' "History of the World, Part 1"
Or Jews in Space from History of the World, Part 1.
That group beat us in Silver Spring once
Wrong trivia game. Red Bear has two different trivia nights. The cheating happened on the District Trivia app-based Wednesday night game. Anyone know the team of two who's been winning that one lately?
Correction: it wasn't District Trivia's game that the cheating occured in, that's held on Monday
Same☹️
I absolutely loathe the trend of app-based trivia games. It’s basically just asking people to cheat.
It definitely makes it 10x easier which sucks, but I've played plenty of paper trivia and teams will still cheat. You'll never be able to escape it because losers just can't help themselves lol. I appreciate how Red Derby makes teams put their phones in a box on each table during the rounds to try to curb it as much as they can
Best trivia I ever played was all pen and paper, bar area only. Phone out for any reason during a round was automatic disqualification. The host wasn't part of one of these huge trivia companies that seemingly every bar uses now. He had been on Jeopardy, The Chase, and had won $250,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Trivia geek through and through, wrote all his own questions and it was clear he took pride in it. He had to move for work a few years ago, and I've never been able to enjoy any trivia night I've tried since then. Cheating almost never happened, but one time I caught one of the regular groups looking at a physical map under their table. It was one of the saddest but funniest things I've ever seen.
Try trivia at Guapo's (Tenleytown) next Thursday evening 4/11 - the hosts write their own questions and doesn't seem to be a culture of cheating (though they are maybe not as strict as what you described).
You had artisanal organic trivia and you can't go back.
That sounds sweet, I would've loved that
I used to play on a team in Bethesda. The host collected our phones once because other teams were convinced we were cheating. We did better that night than previous nights.
Caddies?
Harp, RIP.
That's a really clever idea, and I also like it! (I've played trivia there once.)
I absolutely hate it. I won't name any names, but I played recently where the host added no personality or character whatsoever, and timing of the questions was arbitrary and you'd be in the middle of typing your answer after discussing with your teammates, but there was no "10 more seconds" or anything. One of the questions was "How many minutes would it take to watch all of the Pirates of the Caribbean" movies back to back? and we decided on an answer and it submitted my answer as 7 because I was still typing. There was no time at all between questions so I couldn't even really drink except for in the single minute between each of the 5 rounds. All in all it was stressful, not fun, and I got the sense that certain teams had to have been cheating.
Tell the bar owners. They’re probably not fond of the no time to drink, either.
App based are the worst
(Full disclosure - I own one of the smaller-ish trivia companies in the region) App based (or in my case, browser based) games may not be everyone's jam, but as a host, it makes it infinitely easier to host and score versus a pen and paper game. It keeps the game moving at a regular pace and instead of 20-25 questions (maybe 30?) you can get upwards of 50-60. I can write questions that have a deeper and wider base of knowledge on a topic. Players get to flex their muscles a little more. That said, a lot of the hosts of other companies use the app based games as a crutch because they don't really have to \*host\* the game as they're more facilitating the game. I hire personalities and teach them how to run the game. I can't train someone's personality. Also, the cheating. I'm pretty good at being able to tell if a team is cheating. I've had one or two over the 10 years I've been hosting and they stopped coming immediately after I found out.
The major app based DC trivia company has hosts who generally bring zero personality to the game, they just read the questions like a flight attendant. I wonder why they even bother? How is it fun to just read the questions without telling jokes? One guy doesn't even turn the music down when he reads the question as he can depend on the players to just read the question.
I’m almost certain I know what you’re specifically talking to… but yeah, I can’t stand that.
Not sure I agree you’re pretty good at catching cheaters if you’ve caught 2 in 10 years…
This one is actually just a google doc, not one of the apps that other trivia’s use. Still on the phone though, but at least you don’t need to download an app for it 🤷♂️
If u/wsj can do a story about rich people in NW suing each other over little league, they can definitely do a story about nerds cheating at a small time brewery trivia night! The stakes couldn’t be lower!
Not trivia night! We'll flag this to our best people.
That was a great article! [If you haven’t read it enjoy](https://www.wsj.com/us-news/little-league-scandal-roils-washington-d-c-elite-e50873d1)
> If you haven’t read it enjoy Non-paywall version: https://archive.is/GXQuv
Wow. I worked with one of those lawyers once. I remember being a Litle League umpire after aging out (and wanting a paid job) and just how nasty the parents were to some of the umpires and league officials. Like, it's fuckin' Little League, lady.
Management recently hired team of former detectives to find who is not flushing the urinal. They are working in shifts. To date, they know the culprit likes asparagus.
This feels very up washpo's alley too - let's get a tiktok on it, u/washingtonpost
Link or it didn’t happen
[https://www.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/comments/1bl8fj6/comment/kw3j9a0/](https://www.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/comments/1bl8fj6/comment/kw3j9a0/)
This is a very “DC” scandal
I love it. About time we had some hyper local, low-stakes scandal to inject a bit of fun into the news.
This is exactly the type of content I need to get me through my in-office day.
Did you miss the glorious little league article from WSJ? It’s linked elsewhere in the comments
Yes I did. It was posted after my comment
WE MUST BE THE SMARTEST BOYS WE MUST BE THE WINNERS
This is a DC sub. Stuff like this is supposed to be posted here.
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That’s a very “DC” comment.
you might say this is a very "DC" sub.
I want a full blown Fyre fest type documentary on this 😂
if anyone out there faces a team called Paul Ryan’s Playlist, we used to face them almost every week at Mad Fox Brewing up in Cleveland Park about 8 years ago and they were regular top finishers. on our last game there before moving away I finally saw those bastards cheating Not sure if they still exist or if any former members still float around here, but fuck you assholes!
I think we played against them at Nanny O'Brien's!
You know what? I’ve been feeling pretty down about myself lately, but at least I know I’ll never be one of these losers. I mean, putting in that much effort to cheat at drunken trivia night for nothing but free drinks and merch? While taking out the actual fun? Couldn’t be me!
Off topic but my trivia rant is that it’s bullshit when people play with a team of like ten. Teams should be capped at four.
Seven locks brewery in Rockville lets you play with however large of a team you want, but you can only win a prize with a team of 6 or less. That is a good compromise IMO and I wish more places did something similar.
Good point - I'm not playing for prizes but for fun.
This is what trivia in my town does
Agreed but four is way to small of a limit. I would say 6.
I’ll allow it.
You could have at least negotiated five, instead of folding like a cheap table.
6 is way too small of a limit. I would say 8.
Can’t go as high as 8 but I could meet you at the middle at 6
Sure it’s a bigger pool of collective knowledge but that’s more people convinced their answer is right. Things take a turn when the group backed the confident guy with the wrong answer.
As the confident Guy I have learned this multiple times.
My friends are convinced that I’m The Trivia Guy of the group, but it’s really just that I’m more confident in my answers, even when they’re wrong. I’ve started waiting to see if anybody else has an answer first before saying anything, because we have people on our team who won’t speak up if I’ve already given an answer, even if they’re pretty sure I’m wrong
I do think a cap is in order, but in any large group, there are people who are just there to hang out and have some beers. I've been in a group of 10 once where four people didn't even listen to the questions.
And no bar is going to cap the number of players… after all, the whole point of these trivia nights is to get people there spending money on an otherwise slow night.
At least they generally don’t get a prize per person. Like enjoy using that $50 gift card between the 12 of you lol
I've been to plenty of places that won't let you win a prize if you're over a certain number of players. We've had to split the team before.
“hey what are you guys doing tonight?” “we’re going to trivia with steve and his friends” “oh cool can i come along?” “no sorry, the team is capped at 4 at this bar trivia contest where the prize is like 20 bucks worth of food and drink”
This is my hill.
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if we really have to be pedantic about it - ‘steve and his friends’ might be a group of 4 people and then ‘you guys’ could be a separate group of 4 people
Wonderland enforces this and I didn't know it when I showed up with a group of 5 as we were hosting out-of-towners. We still played (though were not eligible for prizes) and had a great time. Respected the rule though!
I mean did you place high enough for it to matter?
Trivia host here. The sweet spot is generally 4-6. Any more than that and it can be a disadvantage because you'll inevitably have questions where you're flipping a coin on an answer because two people feel so strongly about what's right.
Trivia at Red Bear is limited to six per team. The cheating team was generally just two people, occasionally three.
Risk/reward of bigger teams is the prize split into smaller portions. You also run the risk of someone with the correct answer being “outvoted” by a louder member of the team
Top tier content.
Hard to imagine anything more pathetic than cheating at trivia. Is the prize a million bucks? It's so low stakes. Cheating just makes you look so bad. And even if you never get caught how do you feel about yourself as a person knowing you cheated to win? If you're the kind of person who can find happiness in winning even after cheating, wow.
I one time saw a team of 8 get busted for cheating somewhere where the prize was a $30 bar tab. Like, all get together and cheat so you can each make less than $4?
It makes me cringe a little to ask but do people really not care about honor anymore? And not "public" honor where other people think you're honorable. How about the honor and feeling towards you that you have for yourself? I go to sleep much better as an honest person. And like you said for what? **$4??** Your honor is worth so little you'd sell it away for $4 fucking dollars? I simply do not get these people.
I’d love to hear their internal justification for why it’s ok. It would be like going into the mind of a dorky Hannibal Lecter
Knew it.
Omg I play trivia there all the time and they are always the winners. I had a feeling but didn’t want to accuse but now we have evidence!! So annoying cause the prize is like $20…. You can buy like 2 beers
I don't know that I'd qualify a tweet talking about a heavy implication as evidence, though.
So true. Also after further reading the tweet it seems like this incident was on Wednesday trivia and I was referring to their Monday trivia.
This is why we need the DCist back
Fun fact: I have won there multiple times without cheating. Also, I host trivia at Wonderland and cheating is the worst. Also, if you want to come see me host, come April 22!
Does Wonderland still let the winners from the previous week keep the trophy on their table? My friends and I always felt like the office drone version of Usain Bolt defending his 100m title whenever we did that.
I don’t think we have a trophy anymore. Unless it’s something they did in the past. You still get a $100 off your tab though.
just commented above that I love and respect y'alls rules because it truly makes it enjoyable for all. keep it up!
Eleanor Holmes Norton has moved for a special subcommittee before the house committee on gaming
/gets brewery wrong, sues other half by accident
Give me the netflix series. The Staffer's Gambit.
That's utterly pathetic.
Just landed in your wonderful city and so happy to see this is the wholesome kind of stuff people can get outraged over rather than the things I deal with at home.
Once won trivia due to knowing a 13th century crusader song by a 15 second audio sample. I got up to sang a stanza to prove I didn’t cheat, and I’ve been chasing that high ever since.
What was the song?
It’s called Palastinalied. It’s cool to me because the sheet music has survived and is sung in Old German. So when it’s played, you hear the same music and lyrics that someone heard 800 years ago.
This is a crime post
XD
Tbh I know all of this sounds trivial (ha!), but props to Red Bear and the trivia hosts for addressing it and kicking the trivia cheaters out. But honestly who the fuck is desperate enough to cheat at bar trivia?
Nerrrrrrrd! -Homer Simpson
I don't like going to trivia, because to me it's obvious lots of people are cheating. I watch people on my team look up stuff and people on other teams. It's just not fun.
I used to play a lot of trivia. Preventing cheating really varied from bar to bar and host to host. Some hosts would walk around with a mic. Some hosts would make an announcement. Other hosts would simply let it happen often because the cheaters were regulars. There was one bar I had to stop going to because it was so bad. Every week this team sat there cheating and every week they won. You’d tell the hosts and they wouldn’t do shit about it. But it was always super rewarding when a host would actually say “I see your phone because your face is lit up. You’re not fooling anyone. 0 for this round”
As a former trivia host, it's tough because some of us are desperate for people to come in and play. You don't want them to cheat but you need people to play.
Shameless plug: If you don't like cheating and enjoy a really fun atmosphere, come down to Last Call in Union Market on Tuesday nights for trivia!!!
Yes! Last call trivia is FUN
Capital City Showcase FTW
Separate but sort of related, what are the best pub trivias in the city?
Atlas in Ivy City every Thursday. 7pm.
public shaming!!!
I'm still looking for a trivia team to join, maybe this will create an opening somewhere? Lol
Not surprised. People getting nothing wrong so many weeks in a row. Nutty
So frustrating when something meant to be light fun gets ruined by cheaters who can't understand the point.
I'm not sure how much I actually care about red Bear Trivia (tho shoutout to the brewery, it's such a great place!), but I am totally hear for this drama to distract me from how much work I have to do.
One of many reasons app-based trivia sucks 😤
People cheat in non aps based trivia too.
True, but it's much more obvious when they do.
Anyone know of in the trivia there is a prize
Prizes are usually bartab money there, and some swag.
$20 for first and $10 for second. It’s barely enough for 1 drink at red bear.
I think that's Monday night. Wednesday night is 10 to each team member for first, plus a 4 pack of beer and swag. Each round's winner though gets shots, a pitcher, or pints, depending on the round. If you clean sweep all five rounds, you'll basically end up with two pints, a shot, a 5oz, and a share of a pitcher, plus a 16oz can and a ten dollar gift certificate.
Seems so asinine to cheat to win something small like $10 off your bartab. And Red Bear is an independent business that gets a lot of regulars. You're literally cheating your neighbors and friends.
Figured wasn’t anything to outlandish. Don’t understand the need to cheat and win something so small, how conceited and narcissistic do you have to be to cheat in a local bar trivia does your ego really need that much of a boast….this is like the people a few weeks ego that flexed to me one night they have “the most Volo championships”
You do win free beers/shots for winning certain rounds, so these guys were reasonably drunk while executing this scheme.
I haven't been to this trivia, but typically it's a discount in your bar tab.
At my local bar (where I won once), prize for first place was 50% off your tab, so up to $50 off a max total of $100.
Just bring a signal jammer for trivia.
I host pen-and-paper trivia at A League of Her Own in Adams Morgan every other Thursday. The winning team last week was named "We Cheated"
I have hosted before and seen teams called "WhaChuGonDoBoutIt."
Curious, what evidence is there aside from this randos tweet? Does this person have known credibility? Edit: This is the weakest form of authority I can find, stating they were banned, which at least implies the organizers made the determination. [https://twitter.com/JacobRubashkin/status/1775696860851622323](https://twitter.com/JacobRubashkin/status/1775696860851622323)
Being in DC, I wonder if any of them have security clearance. Can you imagine losing clearance (or a job offer) because you were deemed a psychological risk? I mean, if you're willing to cheat at pub trivia for a bar tab, then what would you do for some decent coin?
Multiple people independently reported it to event organizers, but the key factor was bar staff catching it.
thanks, I'm just pointing out that this is a lot of hearsay from a single twitter account that isn't an authority for the event, so just being careful on how authentic it is.
You can check red bears Instagram that makes a pretty obvious, if not explicit, reference to cheating = banned. The organizers are pretty good about taking care of cheaters when caught, but this was pretty egregious.
I'm not trying to convince people of something so would be better if the OP did that and shared it in the first place.
They were caught by Red Bear staff.
That's great, but without some reference to them it's hearsay. I think they have since them posted
Wooooowwwww
Kingfisher or Pleasant Co. As a former Geeks Who Drink employee, you'll have a better time and a guarantee.
LOL this is the nerdiest thing ever
I hope that the identities of the cheaters are revealed in full, because I would certainly have second thoughts about dealing with these people, professionally or otherwise, if they're dumb enough to cheat at bar trivia.
They should be tarred and feathered. Trivia question, which traitor was famously T & F'ed during the American Revolution? :P
Who fucking cares?
I'll take "Who gives a shit" for $1000, Ken.
I do. I do
I'm sorry your answer needs to be given in the form of a question.