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Above: Concentration, teamwork and some luck are elements of winning in Trivia Smackdown. The game is played Sunday nights at the Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire St. Below: Andy Morton moderates Trivia Smackdown at the Bottleneck. Morton said the game's atmosphere was laid-back, but could get crazy, adding that he once lit the questions on fire.
Trivia Pursuit
Bottleneck game promotes obscure knowledge and drunken revelry
STORY BY LEAH SHAFFER PHOTOS BY J. E. WILSON
The lights go on and host Andy Morton, Lawrence junior, grabs the microphone and rattles off a trivia question in the form of an answer to Team Taft-oMatic.
"Technically, this is considered the first bathtub of the White House." Morton said.
Team Taft-o-Matic is stumped. Finally, one of its members gives an answer.
"Is it the pond out back?" one member offers.
The rest of the audience laughs. Oddly enough, Taft-o-Matic's answer is not far from the truth. According to Morton, the Potomac River is considered the first bathtub of the White House.
This question is just another typical one for a game of Trivia Smackdown, played at the Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire St., each Sunday night. However, the game itself is hardly typical. Resembling a sort of drunken team version of jeopardy, Trivia Smackdown has for been a Sunday night ritual for the past two years for hardcore trivia junkies. Teams can vary in amount from two to 10 people.
"It's something to do on a Sunday rather than the same old, same old," said Anne Marie Kriss, Overland Park graduate student. Kriss and Team Robot member, Brian Collin, are regulars at the game.
"I like the atmosphere," said Collin, a KU alum. "You get to go out and do something."
Trivia Smackdown begins at 8.50 Sunday nights at the Bottleneck. Players pay $5 to participate. The money is then pooled and given to the winning team.
Every week, Morton and Murin come up with 14 categories of questions to beevil the regular teams. Morton said that coming up with the obscure trivia was sometimes no easy task.
"Sometimes it takes a couple of hours, sometimes days," Morton said.
To play Trivia Smackdown, a team selects a category and tries to answer a question for points. If the team does not know the answer, it has the option of "smacking down" another team with the question. If the smacked down team does not know the answer, then the other team gets the points. The unanswered question will then be open for the rest of the teams to answer and receive those points. In the end, the team with the most points wins the money.
ing game," Kriss said
However, what makes teams return week after week is not just the lure of money, but the appeal of the truly humorous and bizarre trivia.
"It's intellec-
"It's intellectual stimulation," said Team Robot mem b ber Karen Hodgson, a KU alumnae. The intellectual stimu lation comes in the form
of question categories with names such as "Name your vice," "1950s slang," "Coen Brother Films," "Beer" and "Historical Rhyme Time."
Historical Rhyme Time is a category of questions involving how. However, the answer must be i
ever, the answer must be in rhyme. For instance: "What is the 24-hour festival of Newton cookie fillers held at the site of a 1961 failed military invasion?" Answer: "Bay of Pigs Day of Figs." Or, "What was Hitler's Minister of Propaganda's Hamsters?" Answer: "Goebbel's Gerbils."
Once the first round of questions is
pleted, individual players get a chance to win money if they can answer more questions than co-host Murin. So far, the money pot for this game has grown to $199. Because if Murin wins, they just keep adding money to it.
keep adding money to it.
When asked to describe his mental strategy for winning, Murin said, "I just go up there, light a cigarette, grab a beer and hope for the best."
Morton said his favorite question categories varied from week to week.
During one game, the hosts made a Smackdown category with questions so hard that a team could win a pitcher of beer for answering just one. Morton said one of the questions was, "What was Snuffleupagus's first name from Sesame Street?" The answer was "Aloysius." No team was able to answer that question or even a single question in the round.
"We try to have book-smart questions backed with useless knowledge," Morton said.
round. Morton said the most bizarre event to occur during the Smackdown was when Murin mooned the audience.
"And, one time, I set the questions on fire," Morton added.
Both Murin and Morton plan to keep hosting Trivia Smackdown as long as it draws a crowd.
"It's a cheap way to spend a night, and you learn things," Morton said.
"And, you can win money," Murin added.
Contact Shaffer at 864-4810
.