Spiff

Spiff ordered the nachos again. Not that any of us should have been surprised. He wears the same shirt every week, though I remain fairly certain it isn’t the exact same shirt. I imagine his closet: a line of pressed red polos and blue jeans hung over wooden hangers waiting to be chosen, washed, rehung. He comes to the same bar at the same time every week to play pub trivia alone. If possible he sits in the same place, sipping an Orange Crush. He always orders the nachos. A few teams have asked him to join them. He has always refused. I’m not sure if he’s aloof or shy. But it is safe to say he is a creature of habit. He is also our great pub trivia nemesis. I have never spoken to the man.

Our group, on the other hand, is quite a bit more social… and flighty. When we can’t get together, we skip weeks at a time. We joke with the host, make him repeat every question. We worry more about our team name than our final score. One week we’ll be “Reptar Returns” or “Doug Funny’s Quailmen”, the next “The Flying V’s (quack quack quack)”. Our table has hosted school teachers, baristas, lawyers, engineers and professional gamblers. Pub trivia is a great equalizer. Here, more than most, the game is not about what you do, it’s about what you know. And despite our inconsistencies, we win as often as anyone.

It was halftime and I had already let the team down. I had known for a fact that Frank Robinson’s first job as a manager was with the Baltimore Orioles. I was so certain, in fact, that we wagered five points—the maximum—on the answer. The worst feeling in the world of pub trivia is, by far, knowing an answer with absolute certainty, convincing a table full of your friends to put their collective fate into your hands, and getting it absolutely wrong. Frank Robinson, much to my dismay, managed the Cleveland Indians first, becoming the first Black manager in MLB history.

A special kind of shame fills you when your sure thing turns out to be wrong. But shame is part of the game. One might be well read, or a genius scientist, or a pop culture whiz. But everyone has blind spots, and any question might expose one of them. No one likes to be exposed.

But that’s why you have teammates, and mine were killing it. Constitutional law, anatomy, Simon and Garfunkel, they made each question seem easier than the one before. By the time one of my teammates started singing Flo-Rida, I thought tonight had the chance to be something special. I looked at Spiff staring into the dregs of his orange soda. He had fallen hopelessly behind without a team to help fill the gaps in his knowledge.

At the midpoint we were trailing by 3, but by the time the last question rolled around, we were a point clear of the field. Like the great Nickelodeon game show, “Double Dare”, however, pub trivia comes down to a final bonus round that can, and usually does, make the preceding events almost meaningless. In this particular bar, you can wager any point value between 0-15. If you answer correctly, that number gets added; answer incorrectly, however, and you lose those points. Needless to say, some big swings are possible, and we only led by one point.

Here was the question: “Which Asian country is home to the bestselling brand of liquor by the case”. Now, sometimes you know the answer for certain, in which case, you can bet 15 without much fear. Other times, you can figure out the answer through deductive reasoning. Often, in those cases, you should still bet 15 if you think you’ve got a good chance at getting it, especially if you’re team is way behind. This time, however, we were pretty stumped. We guessed every country from India to Japan to New Guinea (Not an Asian country). We even floated the correct answer for a while (S. Korea). In the end we settled on India as our answer, but we also knew that was more of a wild swing than a well-reasoned guess. Now we had to decide how much to wager.

As it turns out, betting the maximum is often the correct strategy. Whether it’s because we know the answer, we need to make up some serious ground, or our opponents are so likely to get the question right, usually we end up muttering “eff it” as we scribble a half intuited answer beneath our wager. This time, however, we thought better of it. We were so unsure of the answer, and there were so many possible guesses, we decided betting zero was the right course of action. Obviously, the hope was that all the teams below us would fail to answer the question correctly and provide us with the win.

As the host read off the final scores one by one, we held our breaths. He worked his way up the list, from last to first. Team after team had missed the question, would our strategy pay off? This must be what the participants in “Miss America” feel like, I thought to myself. We had entered the round with 58 points; third place had a paltry 47 so we just needed to beat one more team. “And in second with Fifty-Seven points…” We knew what that meant. We had done it, and by a single point to boot. By the slimmest of margins, our bet had worked. I stood to give everyone high fives.

Celebrating a bar trivia win might be the most awkward, uncool kind of celebration there is, but damn it still feels good to win. Emerging from the bar a winner is as close as many of us will ever come to the high professional athletes must feel when they walk from the field of play victorious. For me, it’s all there: the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat.

We tipped our server and burst into the open night.

 

Halftime question:

Match the game with the catch phrase (no cheating):

1.       The Colored Card Game

2.       The Royal Game of India

3.       The Game of Unspeakable Fun

4.       Skill Game Where You Are the Doctor