[nat sound of Luna’s Pub and Grill]
Whether winning my elementary school’s geography bee or crushing my friends in Elle’s Song Association, memorizing obscure tidbits is not a foreign task for me. So naturally, when news broke that Luna’s was hosting weekly trivia matches, I decided to step up to the plate and put WNUR News on the campus trivia map.
But still, to maximize my chance of achieving victory, and learn a little more about the game, I phoned in some expert advice.
Monica Thieu is an assistant neuroscience professor at The University of San Diego who has researched trivia and competed on “Jeopardy!”. She says accomplished trivia contestants don’t just recall facts. They remember and utilize the experience of learning them.
MONICA THIEU: One thing that I noticed that seemed to come up pretty regularly is that a lot of people had what I’ll call ‘Slumdog Millionaire moments.’ So they would know not only the answers to trivia questions, but they would have these, very detailed memories about the time that they learned that fact or some experience that they had that was very specifically limited to it. So, in the movie Slumdog Millionaire, Dev Patel’s character wins at the end. And they think, ‘how could you possibly know all this stuff?’ and then you discover through his life, he encountered all the answers to these questions. It really seems that people who are good at trivia seem to have brains that for whatever reason, make these kinds of memories stick a little bit better.
In addition, cramming pages of niche dates and figures may not be effective preparation. Rather, according to Mccormick fourth-year Lucia McConnell, who frequently plays trivia, generally keeping up with popular material serves as a more effective study strategy.
LUCIA MCCONNELL: The preparation that goes into trivia doesn’t take place in the short period of time immediately leading up to a game, but rather just like generally paying attention to things that happen. You want to gradually accumulate important information based on what you know about what kinds of questions are asked.
Now armed with effective strategies, I spent two days preparing for an upcoming luna’s showdown. Before going to bed, I would scroll through top events on news and entertainment pages, noting down important people and developments. In addition, I tracked situational cues that were present when I learned key facts, be it the room I was sitting in, or what I was thinking about. This aimed to boost my episodic memory, the ability to recall information about an experience.
Last night, I traveled to Luna’s with a few friends to see if my effort paid off. And ultimately?
[nat sound of trivia night.’
It largely did, as we finished 4th place out of 14 teams. We held second place for the majority of the game. But blundering in the final “ABBA” themed round meant, unfortunately, the loser had to fall.
But no matter the score, Weinberg fourth year Justin Dynes says that trivia nights only improve over time, especially when more friends get involved.
JUSTIN DYNES: If you go for the first time, there are likely a lot of regulars there. A lot of the time there are like teams of 30 plus year olds and this is really what they do. They love trivia, they go every week and they’ve been practicing for a while. So it’s easy to get discouraged if you get like 15th on your first try. But that’s not that big of a deal because you generally just get more familiar with it over time. And then the big piece of advice I give to people who want to get into restaurant style trivia is to make it more than just trivia. So make it a social occasion as well, hanging out with friends. And even if it doesn’t go well, you can still look back at the night and say, ‘Well, at least I got to talk about this and hang out and spend time with the people I care about.’ That’s kind of, I think, the more rewarding part of the, let’s say, hobby than just winning or doing well.
Ultimately, I know that if I want to improve for next time, I’ll have to immerse myself even more in pop culture, history, and everything in between. Success at Luna’s is anything but trivial.
For WNUR News, I’m Vidyuth Sridhar.
