Here’s a piece of trivia for you.
Mark Mason’s book “Question Time: A Journey Round Britain’s Quizzes” traces the origin of the pub quiz — more commonly referred to as a “trivia night” in the United States — to 1976 in the United Kingdom, when Sharon Burns and Tom Porter realized that the activity could attract more people to their local watering hole on quiet nights. Their company, Burns & Porter, eventually launched massive pub quiz leagues throughout the U.K., supplied questions for BBC game shows and published three books of quizzes for pubs to start their own games.
There’s not nearly as much history on the record about when pub quizzes took off in the States, but in tracking the very recent history of trivia nights on the East End, all roads appear to lead back to the barroom of Sagaponack’s Townline BBQ. The barbecue restaurant’s packed-to-the-gills weekly trivia night, which still fills the place today, is hosted by East Ender Paul Johnson. The affable, witty, brainy Johnson found so much success at Townline BBQ that other businesses reached out to him about hosting similar trivia nights.
Today, Johnson runs Think Inc., a prolific trivia company that hosts trivia nights all over the East End, including both the North and South forks and Shelter Island. Johnson now employs nine quiz masters to satisfy demand and volume of trivia nights spread across the region, held in dozens of venues: Kidd Squid in Sag Harbor, Birdies Ale House and Union Burger in Southampton, the Montauk Library, the Ram’s Head Inn and Salt on Shelter Island, Kizzy T’s in East Hampton, One Trick Pony in Westhampton Beach, the Riverhead Brew House, Floyd Memorial Library in Greenport, and on and on. Even trivia hosts who aren’t involved in Think Inc. often mention Johnson as an influence or inspiration.
But if you ask the ever-humble Johnson, he’s just a guy with a lot of stuff floating around in his head.
“The trend is interesting because I’ve been hosting for quite a while now,” he says. “It’s probably close to 15 years and it’s gotten so popular in the last two or three. After COVID, everyone wants a reason to go out. It’s a fun evening, it’s low-impact and it’s a nice, fun way for these venues to make money.”
For love and trivia
Surprisingly, Johnson doesn’t even consider himself very good at trivia, but can easily trace his love of the game back to his adolescence.
“There was this girl that I was dating, and “Jeopardy” always came on twice [a day]. I would always watch the first episode, then the second episode, I would make sure to watch with her because it was a repeat of the one I just watched,” he says with a laugh. “She thought I was the smartest person ever! There’s no reason for a 15-year-old to know some of the things I did. People find intelligence attractive, I guess.”
Sean Galligan, though, has always been a “trivia nerd.” Galligan, the head brewer at Greenport Harbor Brewing Co., hosts trivia every week at the brewery’s Peconic location.
“It’s a blast,” says Galligan, who attributes his love of trivia to — wait for it — ”Jeopardy” and crossword puzzles. “I always liked trivia and game shows and all those together led me to become the trivia nerd I am today.”
Tom Loncar, a sales manager for a software company, has been running trivia for about a decade. He started off hosting at 668 The Gig Shack in Montauk during the off-season months. Today, he hosts regular trivia nights at Bird on the Roof in Montauk, but will soon be taking a break, as he’s about to become a dad.
“I think I have a depth of useless knowledge,” Loncar says with a laugh, “and I love games like board games, or sports — any sort of game. “So I think just the component of games and competition and love of knowledge comes together.”
Maggie Harrigan, known around the North Fork as the whip-smart “Maggie the Barber,” has hosted trivia at Jamesport Vineyard, Tradewinds Brewing and now The Branch in Mattituck.
Harrigan initially started going to Greenport Harbor Brewing’s trivia nights with her friend Chris de Reeder, who wanted to start up a trivia night and thought Harrigan was the perfect person for the job. While Harrigan was pretty good at it and enjoyed the trivia nights hosted by Galligan, she does not consider herself a trivia expert at all.
“After a couple weeks [attending Galligan’s trivia night], Chris is like, ‘Oh, the reason I’ve been coming is because I want to do one at Jamesport, and I wanted to see how they did it,’ ” she recalls.
“I do enjoy it a lot, but mostly when I’m doing well,” she says with a laugh. Harrigan does admit she has a lot of knowledge, but if she doesn’t know an answer? “Well, if not, Google does!”
Loncar also used to frequent Johnson’s trivia nights at Townline BBQ, which he greatly enjoyed. And Galligan proudly proclaims that he was “the second-ever solo winner when I played at Birdies Ale House in Southampton!”
Fun for all
Anyone can participate in trivia, which is one of the reasons Johnson thinks it’s become so popular. He’s also a big proponent of making trivia accessible and fun for everyone at any age (Johnson’s oldest participant in a Think Inc. trivia night was 98), making sure his questions aren’t stressful or too difficult.
“I think everyone should just come with friends and have some fun,” says Loncar. “I try to make [quizzes] for everybody. There’s stuff on there that everyone will know.”
Galligan believes his trivia is more challenging than most other trivia nights, but he tries to keep it accessible, which keeps people coming every week.
“Everything has to be ‘gettable,’ ” he says. “But in terms of the whole trivia night itself, it’s a friendly vibe. People come by and have a good time. They don’t think it’s too hard. It’s good vibes all around.”
Galligan also recommends coming with a team comprising different age ranges. “It pays to have a team where a lot of age demographics are represented,” he says. “One question might be about 1960s movies, and another is about ChatGPT. So if people come with their family, they do very well.”
Most trivia nights cover a variety of topics, from sports to pop culture to niche categories like the Muppets.
“It’s wide-ranging,” says Loncar. “There’s stuff on there that everyone will know. Maybe a teammate might know an answer [for a more niche question].”
Harrigan thinks one of the reasons trivia has become so popular is because it’s an activity for friends to enjoy together. “Sometimes you go out to dinner, or you go out a lot with the same people and run out of things to talk about,” she says.
Quizzing the masters
Putting together a trivia night is no small feat.
“I come up with round ideas first,” Harrigan says. “Questions come afterwards. I try to come up with creative rounds … sometimes I’ll know a random fact and try to base a trivia round around that fact. There will be a question in there I’m super-proud of and nobody will like it! I will say that Sean [Galligan] is much better at it than I am,” Harrigan quips. She also notes that many of her questions have hints baked in, so that anyone can figure out the answer.
Johnson tries to come up with a variety of questions and incorporates multimedia into his trivia nights. There are six rounds in total, with three rounds of questions. One will be general knowledge, one focuses on current events and one is a specific topic. There are then two activity rounds, such as “identify the monument” or “identify the board game,” followed by a final “audio round,” where participants need to identify theme songs, movie clips, instruments, languages and more.
Loncar bases his trivia around a loose theme.
“Sometimes I think, ‘Oh, that would be fun to do,’ or in researching other trivia questions I’ll come up with a fun fact,” he says. “Again, part of it is the useless knowledge I have.”
Galligan comes up with four rounds, with 10 questions each. Each round has a theme.
“We did a spring round, but it didn’t only have to do with the spring season,” he says. “We also had [questions about] spring rolls. This is kind of where the crossword nerd in me comes in.”
While Galligan, Harrigan and Loncar all have day jobs, Johnson considers himself lucky to have made trivia his career.
“I’m very grateful every day that I get to ask people silly questions for a living.”
