Little Bitch Boy

It’s Thursday night again at West Chester Golf & Country Club. I notice Margot and Todd are playing with their usual gang, just not in their usual seats.

Todd and Margot are my most regular of regulars; at least one of them is there, representing, every week. Early in our hosting days, their team was a regular winner, week over week over week over week. But as we’ve grown trivia out for a broader audience, they’ve resorted to playfully resentful Team Names like “Music Round Mo-Rons” and “Who Cares”.

We’re collecting answer sheets from the first round, so it’s the first we’re learning the contenders for Best Team Name. This is a busy time for me – I’m programming my hosting app with all the logistics for the night – so TJ always gets the pleasure of hearing all the jokes first.

I pick my head up from my laptop and TJ is beet red, eyes full of tears. He hands me an answer sheet and says “You’re gonna like this one. It’s from Todd.” I read it:

“LITTLE BITCH BOY”

That’s . . . new.

I go through the scoring . . .
“And tied for first place, with ten points each, First the Tea Now the Beer, and . . . “

gulp.

“Heh.”

I think it’s the first time I’ve ever stammered to say a team name. There are kids here tonight. But I manage to say it.

The entire bar breaks. Everyone is cracking up and pointing fingers. I’m laughing so hard, I break too. I say in hysterics, into the microphone, “Guys, if only you knew who it was. Oh my God.” I know I’m not supposed to do that.

I am fanning my face with my hands trying to collect myself. People are screaming at me “You can’t say that and not tell us!” Then a voice breaks through like a Roman hero “SHOW YOURSELF”.

And we all sit in silence for what feels like ten minutes.

Then Margot quietly gets up to go to the bathroom. I connect eyes with her to make sure we’re OK here. And I say into the microphone “There she is showing herself now”.

whisper.whisper.whisper.

People are scanning the room.

And then quiet whispers turn to laughter and then to howling, “Todd’s a little bitch boy!”

By the end of the next round, we gave them the Bonus Team Name Point because people couldn’t stop laughing every time I said it. A handful of our more competitive players let us know they didn’t care for that decision, including . . . my beloved Speed Racer.

. . . But I know something Speed Racer doesn’t know . . .
. . . Something they all don’t know . . .

Margot’s been having a particularly tough year. She’s been spending most of her days 11 hours out of state supporting a family member, but again, she still comes. Almost. Every. Week.

On her way back from the bathroom, she stopped to talk to me. I ask her how she’s doing, and she shows me a particularly insidious text thread of an aggressor sending her text. . . after text. . . after text. . . increasing in volatility. Never a response. A wall of texts from this person.

And at the bottom, I see:
 “Whatever, of course you won’t answer, Todd is a little bitch boy anyway.”

Fresh off the heels of her last 11-hour drive. She didn’t stay home. She came. She wrote her pain on a piece of paper. And handed it to a woman with a microphone for the whole room to shout it back to her like a battle cry.

And Margot quietly went back to her seat to revel in their well-earned victory.

And Little Bitch Boy will live on in infamy.

Want to stay up to date on our most recent post? Click here to view all blogs, or use the Blog link on the footer of any page!

Bhutan

I’ve read my standard operating procedure to the gang and we’re just waiting on one more table to arrive. I had picked the questions I was about to read over a week ago, and I hadn’t reviewed them since. But looking at them now, I see I included:

“Name the Buddhist kingdom that was both the last nation to begin broadcasting TV in 1999, and the first nation to entirely ban tobacco in 2004. --Bhutan”

My heart sank. I don’t know what I was thinking when I approved that, but that’s just too hard for a round that only has 4 questions. I don’t think any team is going to get that. Think of poor Jamesy!

I start thinking through how quickly I could feasibly replace that question. Siiigh. . . I don’t think I could feel good about switching to an unvetted question this late in the game. I’d rather it were a little too tough than introduce an accuracy error with a poorly researched question.

We make it through the first round. To my surprise, two teams actually got Bhutan correct – and they let it be known when I read the answers! The average score for the round was 7.7 out of 10, which is pretty good. I laughed at myself for how silly it was to stress over the question in the first place. Sometimes, there are just gonna be tough ones.

When the last place team came up to pick Picture Round, they came up smiling ear to ear “ah man, you guys got me with Bhutan. I knew it was Boo – Bu – something!”.

Hang on. I got them with. . . everything. They’re in last place. Was that one a bridge too far?

There goes my heart again, down into my stomach.

When the night was over, we made our rounds like we always do. We had two other teams bring that question back up. From one table slowly replaying their family exploding near-miss to us, to “did anyone even get that question right?”, I blew it on that one.

That question was three weeks ago. Last week, the near miss team lead the entire bar in a 2-part rendition of Hold Me Now by the Thompson Twins, complete with “warm my cold and tired heart” backups. And two weeks ago, the “did anyone even get that question right?” team came in first place.

Bhutan be damned!

Want to stay up to date on our most recent post? Click here to view all blogs, or use the Blog link on the footer of any page!

Employees Only

Back in August of 2025, around our 82nd hosting, I wrote a . . . carefully . . . worded letter to several members of the board. The gist of the email was:

“We’ve been hosting for 2 years here, we don’t get any compensation for it,
we feel like employees rather than members, and it feels absurd that
the people profiting off of us are the people most visibly put out by us.”

To be 100% honest, I don’t really know what I was asking for . . . all I knew was, I was tired of feeling like a burden to the wait staff when I would ask for help with things beyond my control. Like that nagging 7:05 “check check check” into a microphone that should have been set up by someone else twenty five minutes ago before the first guest got there.

Cut to our 100th hosting . . . I emailed the woman who sends out the flier to bill it as “Our 100th Hosting!”. My husband brought balloons. We got to our seats and there was a fun strobe light disco ball thing. Some of our regulars had brought some nice gifts for us – flowers, books commemorating the past 100 nights of hosting. And yet, at 7:05, there I was, still trying to get that damn microphone to go through to the Grill Room.

By 7:45 we’re moving into picture round, right on schedule. “Alright, the picture round that was selected was Everyday Phrases Dingbats. I have to run upstairs and make copies and then I’ll hand it out, so just sit tight for 5 – 10 minutes and we’ll get right back to it”. I run upstairs to the copy machine. The door was locked.

Hrm.
It’s never been locked.

Not knowing what to do, I ask the bartender if he has keys. He comes upstairs and tries to find another office that might be open that can get us to the copier.

No luck.

He marches me right through the kitchen. My 4” stilettos clomping through the kitchen drew some attention, needless to say. So the chef got involved. And another server. The four of us standing in the kitchen, on the busiest night of the week, trying to devise a way to get me to any copy machine we could get our hands on.

At a loss, the server calls the manager and asks her to come back. The manager’s car was in the shop and she had actually Ubered home. The server insisted, and the manager agreed to come back. But, dissatisfied with how long the wait would have been . . .

Well . . .

Let’s just say the manager arrived greeted by three employees and one member coming out of the copy room, copies in hand. Between us, a busted door handle.

I don’t know if anyone ever got in trouble for the damage, but I will forever appreciate that blurred line between employee and member.

Want to stay up to date on our most recent post? Click here to view all blogs, or use the Blog link on the footer of any page!

We Are

Back from our January hiatus, our first hosting this year is our 97th at the club. It is the 97th time the microphone wasn’t ready for me, and I had to fumble through “check-check-check-check-check” for what felt like 20 minutes before launching into my standard “Hello everyone. We aarrre playing trivia tonight”. The batteries ran out in the middle of question round, as always. Pretty standard night. As was hosting 98.

On our 99th hosting we met the club’s new GM, Gustavo. With question round underway, he came over and wanted to take a look at the full set list. “That one is way too easy” he said, pointing at the sitting duck of the night. “Anyone who walks out with a zero in any round is not walking back in next week”, I said with probably a tinge of annoyance that I had to explain my process to someone. He pulled his head back a bit. His eyes went to the screen, then back to me, “oh, is that what this is?”. I gave him a nod, he gave me a fist bump, and he walked back out to the lobby. Yea . . . I think it would be fair to say I liked Gus from the start.

Week 101 was . . . a doozy. My husband usually helps me host. We carry an average of 10 teams per week, and with all the structural details, having a second person keeping an eye on if people put their team names on the answer sheet, or if they ranked correctly, really helps things keep moving. On this particular night, our babysitter was sick and had to cancel on us, which meant, my husband would be staying home with our three year old.

Wanting to stay home with them as long as I could, I drove to the club a bit later on this evening. I got to my table and unpacked my backpack. Fuuuuuuuck. I don’t have my laptop. The bar is packed, inside and out. It was the first day of nice weather of the season so I mean, it was loud in there. I’m 10 minutes from start time and I don’t have any of my material. I was worried if I drove home, I’d lose my spot in the lot and end up being 20 minutes late getting the night started.

In a total tizzy, I let management know I might be starting late – I had to go home and get my materials. Gus offered to drive me so as not to lose my spot. He took me home – we had a pleasant conversation about how trivia has been going. He said it’s gotten so busy they actually started a no-take-out policy on Thursday nights so the kitchen can focus on the guests at the club. That’s pretty cool.

I ran in the house. My laptop wasn’t on the charger. Ugh. It’s in my car, which is now at the club. I run back out and tell Gus. He tells me to check everywhere in the house and I tell him I did. He tries to reason with me, but, long story short, he drops me off at my car and he brings his back down to the employee lot. And as he’s walking up, he sees my car . . . heading back . . . towards my house. The motorized equivalent of the walk of shame. He stands there in the grass, pantomiming the most overexaggerated “WHAT THE HELL” you’ve ever seen. I playfully hide my face in my elbow as I continue home. I grabbed my laptop from my office in the basement, where it should never be, and yet, there it was playing Bluey.

Back at the club, 3 minutes late, parking is a breeze. I hurry past the host stand, not wanting to talk about it. And on my table, the microphone that’s never once been ready at 7:00 PM, is primed and ready to go. As far as the audience knows, it’s the most seamless start to my night. And at a table for one, I calmly get started:

“Alllright guys, weee are gearing up to play trivia tonight so if you're playing,
come on up and grab three answer sheets and a pencil.”

Want to stay up to date on our most recent post? Click here to view all blogs, or use the Blog link on the footer of any page!

Hantavirus & Chill

Tonight’s team names were abysmal: “Too tired to think”, “IDK”, “I Just Don’t Care”, etc.

“Quizzly Bears” was my favorite. They were a new team – had never played with us before. They got a zero on the second round which always gives me anxiety to announce. But they did pick a bountied Picture Round and used it well – they got themselves back into the middle of the pack. So, it seemed like they were a lock for the bonus team name point.

I’m reading the answers to Picture Round . . . “Number 7 is Karl Malone and that’s” - a hand touches my arm. I glance over to see Quizzly Bears mouthing “Thank you” and giving me a polite wave as they leave for the night. And just like that, my only bonus-worthy team name was in the parking lot.

I finish reading the Picture Round answers. I look at TJ and say “well, who do we give the team name point to now?” And eventually, we agree to just not announce the team name point and hope no one notices. I was . . . not slick about it when announcing the scores. I mean, this is a violation of the highest order, and it feels like everyone noticed and said nothing.

“And tied for first place, with 29 points total, 10 this round each, Hantavirus & Chill, and Who Does #2 Work For”. Cue the long awkward pause where I usually announce the winning team name.

The cross-table banter picks back up as we head into Music Round. Hantavirus & Chill is announcing loudly, as they have been all night, that they just needed to beat Ted and Brienne, specifically.

Music Round is tense. The theme is probably the easiest one I’ve ever written, but the artists are a bit harder. Brienne turns in Who Does #2 Work For’s sheet and says “Welp, we lost!”. But there is a clear winner at the end, so I announce the scores:

“In second place for tonight, with 36 points total, 7 points that round, Hantavirus & Chill! And in first place for tonight, with 37 points total, 8 points that round, Who Does #2 Work For!“

and the back corner of the bar. erupts. A usually very collected Chip is standing on the footrail of the bar shouting “WHO GETS THE TEAM NAME BONUS?”. Phil and the rest of the team are piling on.

Crap. They noticed.
I was just trying to close out my night and announce the winners and my audience called. me. out. Hard.

The bystanders are now reveling in the absurdity. From the barstool closest to me – “You seein’ this, Red?” – our existential non-participants chuckle. I’m glad they’re enjoying it. For me, it felt like 20 minutes went by with me just looking around for someone to tell me what to do.

And then the advice came in hordes.

Ted’s team frantically starts throwing out other candidates that could have been the best team name of the night. April yells “What about Tilapia Fingers?!?” And I have to explain . . . into a microphone . . . “Oh, yea, uhh . . . Perkins didn’t write a team name on the sheet, so we just called him that.” April loses it. “OH MY GOD, THAT’S GOOD!”

Brienne is yelling “THEY HAVE MORE THAN 5 PLAYERS – DISQUALIFIED!”.

I look over at TJ who is looking at me, head cocked sideways with a mischievous smirk like “come on, you know what to do.”

“And tonight’s bonus team name point goes to . . . Hantavirus & Chill”

“HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO WIN TO WIN?” an exasperated Ted yells.

I fumbled through the bonus round. No teams left – the bystanders remain locked in. I didn’t have a Picture Round prompt, so it was only a question prompt, and a music prompt.

Both teams got the Question Round answer wrong; Hantavirus & Chill wagered their full allowance, but Who Does #2 Work For only wagered 3 of their points. It all comes down to Music Round.

In keeping with the Music Round theme of “Musical Misters”, the Music Round prompt was a song called 🎵Hey Mister DJ🎵 by Zhane, Both teams wagered their full allowances. Hantavirus & Chill wrote “Hey Mr. DJ”. Who Does #2 Work For wrote “Mr. DJ”.

Close enough!

And as I packed up my laptop for the night, Phil came over and bought me a drink.

Want to stay up to date on our most recent post? Click here to view all blogs, or use the Blog link on the footer of any page!

Speed Racer

Last Thursday, we had to bring our three-year-old to the club for Trivia Night. Adding a third member to our posse meant upgrading to a bigger table, so we hosted from the first high top by the bar – the prime seat!

Seated directly next to us at the bar was Speed Racer. Speed Racer is a regular, a longtime member, and the kind of person who has already chatted up half the room before the first question drops. Throughout the first round, I could hear Speed Racer excitedly telling her husband all the answers to all the questions. Sometimes, she’d peek over at us and mouth the answers to us for confirmation. By the time I read the fourth question, she had a perfect score and was beaming with pride.

I tallied up the answer sheets. Eleven answer sheets came in, but none from Speed Racer. I hadn’t heard her final answer, so I casually approached her and her husband and asked, “Gun to your heads, in what major American city were the coconut treats known as Irish potatoes developed?” “Boston”, they settled on. So close.

Back at my table, I prepared to read the scores. Had she ranked them appropriately, Speed Racer was tied for first place, but she didn’t truly rank her answers, which is a crucial part of the scoring. I had a tough choice to make. I decided – she wouldn’t be allowed to win. And I read the scores aloud. “And tied for first place . . . and Speed Racer Who Isn’t Playing but I Can Hear All Her Answers from Here”. I quickly looked over at Ted’s table – they laughed confirming, “that tracks”.

Round two, still no answer sheet from Speed Racer, and now tied for fifth place out of twelve teams. I read her score again as “Speed Racer Who Isn’t Playing”. I announced the selected picture round – “Celebrities by Height”. Speed Racer gleefully asked for a score sheet. And this time, I got to announce her score as “Speed Racer Who is Now Officially Playing”.

Speed Racer finished four points behind first place, in sixth place. And no one was upset.

Want to stay up to date on our most recent post? Click here to view all blogs, or use the Blog link on the footer of any page!

Paparazzi

The year is 2025. I am hosting Thursday night trivia at the West Chester Golf & Country Club. The music round lineup is:

• Thomas Dolby – 🎵She Blinded Me with Science🎵 (1982)

• Ray Charles – 🎵Hit the Road Jack🎵 (1960)

• UB40 – 🎵(I Can’t Help) Falling in Love with You🎵 (1993)

• Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians – 🎵What I Am🎵 (1988)

• Lady Gaga – 🎵Paparazzi🎵 (2009)

The night is over – I’ve cleaned everything up, closed out my bar tab, and I’m walking to my car. In the parking lot, I hear 🎵boom-bup-boooom-bup-bup🎵 – I recognize it instantly as the bassline to 37-year-old “What I Am” by Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians. The person parked next to me turned it on as soon as he had gotten in his car. He gave me a wave and a nod as he drove off.

He had to stop at the parking lot exit to wait for a passing car from the overflow lot. The passing car had their windows down and as it passed, I could hear a woman emphatically singing at the top of her lungs 🎵Baby, you’ll be famous, chase you down until you LOVE me🎵. What a night!

A good round of trivia is fun. Sometimes it’s just an excuse to have a drink after an exhausting day at the office. But when it’s done really well, it becomes something totally different. People lean into the hard questions. They test ideas out loud. They disagree with friends without devolving into anarchy. They offer up longshot answers knowing they might be wrong, and knowing that’s okay.

From the hosting seat, I get to watch it unfold. Curiosity without judgement. Confidence built in small moments. A room full of people thinking together – a kind of collaborative cognitive sandbox. It’s beautiful. And it’s the reason this website exists – because trivia nights like this don’t happen by accident.

If you’ve played my trivia before, you’re probably puzzling over the theme of that Music Round. It was acrostic, so there’s nothing to find without knowing the prompt:

The first letters of each of the artists spell out the answer to the question
“What is the word defined as a duel between three people?”

Want to stay up to date on our most recent post? Click here to view all blogs, or use the Blog link on the footer of any page!