The DC area only has one trivia competition worth competing in: Wonderland Ballroom’s Monday night quiz. With a top prize a generous $100 off your bar tab, first place is a guarantee of a free night out.
What makes it the best?
- With a top prize a generous $100 off your bar tab, first place is a guarantee of a free night out. Other bars offer $25 or $50 off a tab. But for a group of 4 or 5 friends, this barely covers a celebratory round of drinks.
- Every week is a new group of hosts. As a result, each week you have new questions, new interests and new DC overachievers trying to make their rounds as clever as possible. Last week, each of the seven rounds dealt with a different continent. I’ve also seen a picture round of celebrity mug shots, a music round where you had to guess the son from the final lyric and a round of classic brainteasers. However, the questions at Wonderland tend to be incredibly tough. Brush up on your world geography, Shakespeare, 90s sports trivia and Simpsons knowledge.
- A team names contest. Each week the team with the funniest (read: ridiculous), wins a consolation prize. The winning names are nearly always a pun on a current event. Let’s just say, Obama’s stimulus package, got plenty of play.
- The beer selection. Wonderland has a revolving line-up of excellent beers, including my favorite Hefewissen
Of course, there are other trivia nights in the DC area. If you don’t want to make the treck to the green/yellow line to catch Wonderland’s version, you can check out this second-rate games.
- Ri Ra/Tuesday /Clarendon – The host is annoying (he sings the music round!) and the questions are not nearly as clever as at Wonderland.
- Ireland’s Four Courts/Monday/Clarendon – This trivia has a corporate feel. Players are sprinkled throughout the bar, and questions are announced over the PA. The questions are like someone raided an 8th grade standardized test
Check out this article in OnTap magazine for an extensive listing of area trivia nights.
2 Comments
Agreed. I hate RiRa’s host, and you can’t hear anything there.
Wonderland is pretty nice, for sure, but sometimes you don’t know what you’re getting week to week since the hosts change. While it’s not listed many places, Union Jack’s of Ballston’s trivia night on Mondays averages almost over 300 people and is quite amazing in that they actually reserve seating for regulars and supply them name plates and current standing sheets. I don’t think there’s any place in the city that actually keeps a database of every team’s scores for every round, for every single night like they do. It’s actually pretty intense. Perhaps someone from here can check them out for comparison sometime.