It helped that, using contacts from Atlanta, Warner was able to land Warsteiner as a sponsor of that first Govnr's Park night. Coors Brewing Company took notice of the new phenomenon and offered to sponsor Trivia Face Off as well, dispatching its reps to tout the concept. Within a few months, TFO had spread to ten locations, then a mini empire of 25 to 30 rooms across the metro area.
It also helped that TFO, which Warner runs through his Excessive Entertainment company, is quite simple to grasp. A DJ or host reads off several trivia questions that are also posted on a television screen, and then a song is played. By the time the song ends, a runner for each team has to take the answer sheet up to the DJ, who then tallies totals for each of three rounds as the questions grow increasingly difficult. At the end of the game, there's a bonus round with a huge point promise and the possibility of a last-minute forty-point swing that can shoot your team into one of the top three positions.
Jim J. Narcy
The geeks behind the Geeks: John Dicker and Joel Peach.
Jim J. Narcy
The godfather of Denver trivia: Alec Warner.
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"Writing the trivia is the hardest part," says Warner, who draws from a massive archive of facts he's compiled over the years. "You have to keep the content fresh and not make it so hard that people can't get the answers. It's a balance."
You also have to make sure that people don't cheat. Since different bars will use the same quiz on the same night, Warner tries to make sure start times aren't staggered so that a player can learn the answers at one quiz and then attend another. But that doesn't always work. About three years ago, one guy stuck around a Boulder quiz long enough to get all the answers for the third, highest-point round, then sped to a later quiz in Louisville, where he joined a team of friends that had already won the first two rounds. They nailed the third round, too. At the time, TFO was offering $1,000 to any team that played a flawless game, and they demanded the prize. But Warner was suspicious and called the DJ running the Boulder room, who confirmed that a man on the winning Louisville team had played a TFO game in Boulder that night. Warner refused the man the prize, citing the "no outside reference materials" rule. With an unmistakably American sense of justice, the man pointed out that because playing the same game in two places the same night wasn't specifically prohibited, he couldn't be expected to have known that. Warner told him to get lost. The man filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, called all of TFO's sponsors to complain and, of course, put in a call to Tom Martino, the Troubleshooter, who went after TFO with his signature mustachioed fervor. Eventually, Coors stepped in and paid Tom Martino Guy to shut up and go away.
"You get so many Cliff Clavins out there, you really have to dot every iand cross every t," Warner says. "Needless to say, that man is no longer allowed at any TFO nights."
But while such banishment would have seemed like a trivia death sentence a few years ago, future Tom Martino Guys need not fear. Because while TFO currently operates in 45 establishments and intends to launch an interactive, web-based bar-versus-bar format soon, new trivia entrepreneurs are cropping up all the time, staking their claim to a Denver pub-quiz scene that grows larger by the day.
Q. Should John Dicker be on Ritalin?
A. Yes. Though we will accept "Most likely," as well.
John Dicker and Joel Peach are having a hard time finding the right venue for the next Geek Bowl. Last January they hosted the inaugural event a week before the Super Bowl at the Oriental Theater (see story). Thirty-eight teams showed up — more than 200 people — and the action-packed event dragged on for an exhausting six hours before a team was finally crowned champion and the brain-dead masses were able to leave. This time around, Dicker and Peach, the founders of Geeks Who Drink, are going to trim the fat off the Geek Bowl, whittling it down to a more manageable length, but they're going to need a much larger venue to do so: Since January, the number of Geeks Who Drink rooms has doubled. There are now nights in Fort Collins, Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs and Gunnison, and some of those are capable of drawing close to 38 teams every week.
"Some people wouldn't hesitate to call what we do a cult," says 28-year-old Peach.
"Isn't this just 'trivia night'?" the Geeks ask on their website, www.geekswhodrink.com. "Hell no. The difference between a proper pub quiz and 'trivia night' is roughly the difference between your mom's cooking and The Sizzler. Most so-called 'trivia nights' are structured in a way as to render them indistinguishable from a dartboard or a foosball table. That is, something to enjoy if you like darts or foosball but otherwise totally forgettable. Generic questions, no interactions with the audience punctuated by ten-minute pauses between questions. Ask a question, play a few songs. Boring, boring, boring. Geeks Who Drink uses different media (soundbites, songs, printed handouts), theme rounds and creative genius to entertain, challenge and engage the crowd."
