Faculty members team up to capture national trivia title
Dr. Kevin Kern, professor of history, helps to coordinate a team of trivia mavens, many of them from UA, who gather at Damon’s Grille in Stow on Tuesday nights to compete in a national trivia contest. On Feb. 27, the team won the national McCarthy Cup, an achievement chronicled in this Beacon Journal article. UA Live talked with Kern afterward:
UA Live: Tell us about your team.
Kern: Usually there are 12 to 15 of us on a given night, and it’s really an all-star team, with many of them from UA. I mean, we’ve got Robert Jeantet from Modern Languages there; he won on “Jeopardy” a few years ago. Other members are:
- Bob Barrett from Geography,
- Laura Gross from Theoretical and Applied Math
- Mike Levin, Martin Wainwright and Wade Wilcox from History,
- Brett Riebau, director of financial reporting, and
- alumna Jessica McFall, who also is a student at the School of Law.
UA Live: Did you have a game-day strategy?
Kern: I’ve heard of some teams memorizing the list of chemical elements and when each was discovered. We’re way too lazy to expend that kind of energy on it. I might glance at the New York Times’ Bestsellers List because they often ask questions about that, but otherwise, we do embarrassingly little prep work.
UA Live: Any subject areas where the team struggled?
Kern: We used to be a bit weak in the area of natural sciences and geography. Then one day I was participating in an event in the concourse of the Arts and Sciences Building, and I was recounting with someone one of the questions we had missed the night before. Bob Barrett happened to be walking by, and he knew the answer. He’s been with us ever since, and he’s really helped to plug that hole.
UA Live: The team assembles in a tavern to play. Should we be concerned the use of performance-enhancing beverages?
Kern: Actually, given the effect of certain beverages on reaction times, we should probably be more worried about our choice of drinks “dehancing” our performance. But your question raises a larger point about the use of the Internet to find answers. We’re very proud of the fact that we do not use books or computers to help us with the answers. All the McCarthy Cup competitors are supposed to abide by that rule, but we know of some that haven’t in the past, and they have been caught.
UA Live: What about the winner’s check and trophy?
Kern: Well, there’s no check, but we do get to keep the rotating trophy (right) for as long as we hold the title. We’re going to put our team name on it for posterity’s sake; it will join those who have won from prior years.
UA Live: What’s next for the team?
Kern: Oh, we’ll keep playing—after all, we have a trophy to defend now. We welcome anyone who wants to join us. We’ll have more information on our team Web site. Also, Rob’s Café on campus has Buzztime trivia, and I encourage people who are curious about the game to go there ask for a box to try it out.