Revenge of the Nerds

Whatever, it's working. Geeks Who Drink currently has thirty rooms and an estimated 1,200 to 1,500 players a week. Dicker and Peach have started approaching potential sponsors, preaching the logic of advertising to beer drinkers drinking beer in a bar with concentrated eye space, and offers are beginning to trickle in.

"A lot of these companies try to be all things to all people, make it palatable for anyone, anywhere," Dicker explains. "We know that our product is not going to go over too well at more conservative suburban bars or whatever, but that's not what we're about. We're about pouring our heart into this thing, making it as cool as it can possibly be from every angle. We want people to come into the bar and be swept up in the quiz."

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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Tobin Hays, creator and owner of Buzzwordz (slogan: "Killing the weak brain cells"), takes the opposite approach. He agrees that people appreciate the social interaction of trivia nights — otherwise they'd stay home and read Trivial Pursuit cards — but thinks trivia does not have to dominate the evening.

"Some trivia nights they have music blasting, they're shouting into the microphones, which is fine for your trivia crowd, but not everyone in the place is playing trivia, so you need to be inclusive with them as well," Hays says. "With ours, if you're there to play trivia, you're going to have a great time. If you're not, you can go on about your evening and have a great time as well."

Hays started his company in January, after deciding not to transfer to Albuquerque when his job as a Quiznos fulfillment services manager went south. "I was in the corporate world for twelve years, and I needed to start my own thing," he says. "I kept trying to think of what I could do, and they always say to do what you love. And at the time, I was playing trivia three nights a week, and I thought, 'Well, why not this?'"

Hays, who'd played a version of pub quiz while in college at Texas Tech in the early '90s, was a regular at the Squire Lounge on Thursday nights, which Dan Clarke has been hosting for years. He approached Clarke, and although Clarke — who's been running a few rooms since 1999 out of pure love for the game — wasn't interested in going into business, he said he'd be happy to share his expertise.

"Every room that I do is just my thing," says Clarke, who also runs nights at the Uptown and Blake Street taverns. "I fell in love with it when I was living in Belfast in the late '80s and just wanted to do it here. But I didn't want to become more entrenched in it. I'm happy with what I'm doing right now; it's basically a one-man op where I can put 100 percent into my room and not worry about others. But I helped Tobin get Buzzwordz off the ground because I appreciate what he's doing. Basically, he uses my format and we share questions and stuff like that."

Clarke let Tobin run his room at the Downtown Tavern, where Tobin was able to hone his trivia skills, learn to write better questions and perfect the template for what he wanted to do. Once he felt comfortable with the product, he began to push his business, cold-calling bars or visiting them in person to preach the gospel of his trivia. Buzzwordz currently offers fourteen trivia nights, with a healthy mix of Denver bars and suburban rooms where Tobin's unobtrusive style of play goes over well (www.buzzwordz.net has a complete list). Scruffy Murphy's on Wednesday is the most popular evening, with a recent evening drawing more than fifty players.

"Business has been great on the nights he's been there," says Craig Hostrup, manager of Scruffy Murphy's. "We try to keep it just in the main room, but occasionally we've been spilling over into the second room. The nice thing with Buzzwordz that I don't see in town very often is that there are more sort of thinking questions, reasoning. If you don't know the answer necessarily, you can usually think your way through it, as opposed to just flat-out not knowing the answer. People seem to enjoy that element of it."

And if you don't like that format, there are always other games. "I don't think that I could have picked a more competitive city to start this business in," Hays says. "There are certainly a lot of competitors — some are good and some are bad — but competition in this city is good. It keeps us on our toes."

Q. Can You Ever Have Too Much Trivia? A. Ask Alex Trebek.

Trivia is no longer a trivial business in Denver. Between Trivia Face Off, Buzzwordz and Geeks Who Drink, there are close to ninety trivia nights in the metro area. And that figure doesn't include the occasional room run by some trivia fan who encountered the game in his U.K. travels and decided to put on his own night back home, like Dan Clarke.