The Case Against Evolution

It started out so innocent.

Stephen and I were just two guys having a light conversation at an engagement party. We knew each other through our wives/fiancés, so our interaction up to that point had been limited to a handful of social occasions over the past couple of years.

Stephen is a laid back guy with an easy smile, he seems very genuine and open to talking about anything. He loves sports, still plays basketball, and plays all three major fantasy sports. He is an attorney, but I don’t think we’ve ever talked about work. (And for those who read my ring shopping story, Stephen is the prudent friend who recommended Saul.)

So although I expected more than small-talk with Stephen that night, I wasn’t expect anything earth shattering.

Until of course, he shattered my earth.

Stephen told me he had recently discovered a trivia website that was full of interesting questions from various subject matters with a user friendly interface that made it very fun to play. After giving me a couple of example questions, he asked if I play in any organized trivia games.

I told him that I occasionally went to a Tuesday night trivia game at State Restaurant & Cafe in Lincoln Park.

Stephen’s eyes lit up. He was familiar with the game.

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I wasn’t surprised. As far as I know, State hosts the biggest trivia game in the city. 250 people fill the restaurant every Tuesday night and play in teams of up to eight. It is free to play as long as teams get there early enough to secure a table – which typically means arriving at least an hour and a half before the 8:00 start. The winning team gets $800, second place gets $200, and third place gets some sort of free/discounted party at the bar. There is also a $100 prize for winning the lightning round – which is where teams get 90 seconds to list as many movies in which a particular actor/actress has appeared. There is also a raffle for some pretty good door prizes (including a Wii.) And one of the food specials is a $5 burger (and their burgers are very good.) (And that’s coming from a burger snob.)

The rules and scoring are straightforward. The game is split into six rounds with eight questions per round – plus the lightning round. Teams must submit their answers on a sheet of paper at the end of each round. Correct answers worth one point. The highest score at the end wins. A small basket is put in the center of each table for people’s cell phones to prevent cheating.

I learned about trivia night at State from a former co-worker/trivia-buff named Chris. Chris moved to Chicago from D.C. a couple of years ago and immediately sought out the best trivia games in the city. Chris loves trivia. Chris would get us to answer trivia questions at work. Chris met his fiancé at a trivia night in D.C.

Observing Chris taught me a few things about what it takes to be a successful trivia player. First, not only is Chris able to retain an incredible amount of random – and often useless – information, but he is also able to use his database of random knowledge to deduce answers to questions he doesn’t necessarily know. And on the days leading up to trivia night, Chris would scan news websites to prepare himself for potential questions, and once in a while, he would even peruse IMDB.com to study the filmographies of various actors in preparation for the lightning round.

Another co-worker (Tom) soon became Chris’s protégé. Tom and Chris would study the news together and go to trivia together every Tuesday and even race each other on the daily crossword puzzles. I tried the crossword puzzles with them a couple of times, but found myself spending a half hour on a puzzle that would take them 10 minutes.

I didn’t go to trivia every Tuesday, but whenever I went, our team had eight people, and together we covered a fairly wide range of knowledge. Chris was always our best player, and was consistently able to answer questions in every category (including once knowing the first and last name of the runner up on a particular season of The Bachelor.) And whenever an answer was in doubt, we would usually go with Chris’s guesses – even though he would never insist upon it.

And when it came time for the lightning round, we would just give the answer sheet to Chris and let him write. The rest of us would call out movie titles whenever he slowed down, but for the most part, he wrote almost continuously for the entire 90 seconds, only occasionally pausing for a few moments to think.

It was impressive to watch.

One night the actor in the lightning round was Mel Gibson. While Chris was writing on our answer sheet, I jotted down some Mel Gibson movies on a separate sheet of paper to call out when he slowed down.

After one minute, this was my list:

Lethal Weapon 1-3

Ransom

Braveheart

(that Revolutionary War era version of Braveheart)

What Women Want

I assumed that “What Women Want” would be my contribution to our list, but looked down and saw that Chris had already written all of my movies, plus at least 15 others. I was amazed. (I’ve been in several conversations about movies that took place in Chicago and met nary a man who knew – or would admit to knowing – “What Women Want”)

But even more amazing than the number of movies we got that night, was that we didn’t win the round. In fact, we never won the lightning round.

We never won the grand prize either. Actually, we never got any better than a couple of fourth place finishes.

Chris eventually started going to a smaller trivia night closer to his apartment in Bucktown. His team has already won once, but I have yet to go.

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Stephen knew about trivia night at State. He said he had some friends who went every week, but that he had never gone. I asked him why not.

He hesitated for a moment and said, “Eh, I don’t know.”

He looked like he wanted to say more, so I asked him, “Are you working too late?”

“No, not really. It’s not that. I don’t know.”

I let it rest. “You should go sometime, even if you don’t like trivia, it’s worth it just for the burger.”

We were about to move on to another topic of conversation, when all of the sudden he asked, “Well, you know how they have a movie round every week?”

“Yeah. Of course. My friend Chris is like a human movie database, but we’ve still never won it.”

“Well, I know why you haven’t.”

That caught me a little off guard, so I waited for him to continue.

“You know how they make you put your cell phones in a basket?”

“Yeah.” I feared what was to come.

“Well, these guys print out the IMDB pages for the most famous actors, and then bring them all to the game. So whenever a name is called out, they just pull out the sheet and copy down the movies.”

I was shocked. And then I was disgusted. After a few moments of silence I said, “I can’t believe that people would cheat on the movie round at a local trivia night!”

I thought about Chris. I thought about Chris diligently studying his news and sports and movies during the day. I thought about Chris who never once even considered cheating.

Stephen continued, “And you know how they have a sports round?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, they’ll just print out the standings and statistical leaders for the majors sports, and they’ll bring printouts of league records too.”

I was shocked. But maybe I had also been naïve.

If a team is actually willing to use cheat sheets, they can easily get away with it. State is a huge place and its wait staff is far too busy to keep tabs on whether people are hiding bags full of notes under their tables. The basket for cell phones simply establishes an honor code, it doesn’t actually stop anyone from doing anything.

I had to ask, “So I assume these guys have won?”

“Oh yeah, they’ve won a lot. And they’ve got like five of those free parties.”

“But you’ve never played with them?”

“No, I don’t want to be a part of that.”

I guess the question that has remained on my mind since that conversation is, “Why would anyone want to be a part of that?”