Trivia Night Not So Trivial

When a lot of people think of the typical trivia event, they often imagine nothing more than a few people with nothing better to do gathering to ponder the extent of their knowledge of random, useless information.

Well, you’d be nothing less than dead wrong. After at-tending the Colgate Inn’s weekly Wednesday trivia nights twice, I’m already more than addicted.

The events draw people not only from all over campus, but from Hamilton as well.

The questions asked reflect this diversity very well, banish-ing boredom and ushering in true competition among people with decisive edges in all areas of study.

The atmosphere that the trivia night hosts manage to cre-ate sets the fun in motion and guarantees it through the night, keeping everyone engaged and giving all something to enjoy, even if the specific question subjects aren’t your forte.

Ironically, the fun begins with something rather trivial in itself: team names. Most people wouldn’t give much care or attention to this, but some groups have made the keen observation that each team’s point total is read af-ter its name, a fact they have exploited.

With phrases such as “The number of professors in this room I’d sleep with is: 30” punctuating the flow of the night, not only is another di-mension of fun added to the event, but also another layer of competition as rival teams strive to outdo each other with more clever and amusing names each time.

Next up we have the Colgate Inn food, which is provided to all tables in the trivia lounge with full wait service, featuring some shareable appetizers ideal for the nature of the event.

While it may seem superfi-cial, the simple availability of quality meals at trivia night actually draws more people, in-cluding me, as it couples dinner with trivia, making the night something more and enriching the social aspect.

Trivia night is not just a dinner or answering a bunch of questions, it offers an es-cape from humdrum weekday schedules and evenings, allow-ing stressed or just plain bored Colgate students to break the monotony, get back in touch with friends and celebrate the grand achievement of overcoming hump day. Reflec-tive of its audience, the trivia night staff puts on a widely varied spread of questions, ranging from popular culture to geography to writing out the number with the longest Roman numeral form between “I” and “M.” It was 888, or DCCCLXXXVIII, to give you an idea of how involved this gets, and also to showcase an-other commendable aspect of the program: not every ques-tion requires you to be an en-cyclopedia of memorized facts, but sometimes only to possess a certain skill, such as knowing how a number system works.

The trivia tables are a great place to show off your knowl-edge and talent, aiding and im-pressing friends while marvel-ing at their skills, allowing for a genuinely new sense of respect to develop among teammates in attendance.I would also like to mention an interesting aspect of these nights which I just recently noticed upon attending last week’s session, and that I should have antici-pated after hearing team names like the one mentioned above: many professors are generally present at each event.

This makes the competition significantly more difficult, but it also provides a casual and relaxing medium for their interaction with students, who may get the chance to ask a quick question, check the date for something or even just say hello and have a short chat.

Just last week I saw my FSEM professor at trivia night and I got to say hello and talk briefly. I then recalled an ap-pointment I had with my Link later that same night.

Next week I’ll definitely be going back, hopefully with a better team name.

Contact Christian Quattrociocchi at [email protected].