What happens when Bruce Willis crashes a Christmas Party, only to see Jay-Z perform his version of a Broadway show tune?
A Die Hard Knock Life.
Lines such as these earned Patrick Wiginton a reputation at Linda’s Bar and Grill, where he hosted trivia for three years before the cherished Chapel Hill joint closed in 2024. He still gets recognized on Franklin Street as the “Linda’s trivia guy,” a role he fulfilled proudly as the bar filled up each week.
He’s now brought his cheeky wordplay and sharp clues to Chapel Hill restaurant and bar Four Corners, one of three finalists for INDY Week’s Best of the Triangle 2025 trivia nights in Orange and Chatham counties.
“I hit the sweet spot where it’s difficult, but it’s accessible,” Wiginton said.
For dedicated hosts, trivia is a craft and commitment. Where they’re successful, regulars return each week, loyal to their chosen venue’s host and quiz style.
“Any team can walk into a trivia night for the first week because they want something to do. It takes a good host for a team to want to come back the following week,” said Jeren Hernandez, co-owner of Hammered Trivia, a North Carolina company that hosts trivia in 40 bars and restaurants from Carrboro to Wilmington.
Hosts set the tone, keeping players on their toes and making them want to come back for more.
Every Wednesday night at Carrboro’s Haw River Tap & Table, Hammered Trivia host Natalie Thompson sits down with her reliable pickle sour and a soft pretzel. She knows one of her favorite teams, the Thundercats, will arrive before the clock strikes seven. Since she made her hosting debut at Haw River in May, Thompson has formed friendships with several teams, enticing them with engaging questions that take her hours to prepare.
The Thundercats are loyal to Thompson and Haw River, returning each week to decipher between Pokémon characters and drag queens or identify band name origins of Vampire Weekend and Lynryd Skynyrd. The Thundercats said they love Thompson’s trivia and have tried other Chapel Hill bars, but they always come back to Haw River.
“We like how relaxed it is here,” said team member Casey Clayton, a graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill.
One of the Thundercats’ most memorable rounds was a Thompson original: Yankee Candle scent or Pinnacle Vodka flavor? Vanilla Cupcake, a candle. Cucumber Watermelon? That’s vodka.
“I’ve made relationships that have turned into some friendships, and that has been just so amazing, and I just didn’t think that would happen just by going to trivia and hosting once a week,” said Thompson, who has helped Haw River secure an INDY Week nomination.
Haw River is up against Lanza’s Cafe in Carrboro and Four Corners as the Orange and Chatham County finalists. Each spot has its own style and its own loyal triviagoers.
With just a few scattered teams in 2021, Thursday nights at Lanza’s are now standing-room only, thanks to hosts Jake Diana and Clayson Shumway, who alternate each Thursday night.
“Ten minutes to go until we start, the whole room swells out and swells up,” Diana said.
As a child, Diana staged trivia games for his friends, mimicking the charisma and charm of his idol Bob Barker, the iconic “The Price Is Right” host. Decades later, he channels that same energy with punchy questions, keeping teams engaged with questions of just the right difficulty. He said he loves seeing the regulars, bantering back and forth with the crowd and sometimes supplementing questions with an a capella rendition of a musical theater song or flexing his muscles to the crowd.
Aside from the personality Diana brings, his quiz nights are bolstered by data science skills that he’s honed as a PhD student at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he studies exercise psychology. Diana has hundreds of data points on a colorful scatterplot, tracking every question he’s asked with its perceived difficulty and percentage of correct answers. Questions are put into four quadrants: Easy Peasy, Missed Opportunities, Tricky and Stumpers. As the trivia night continues, he looks at the average scores and rewrites questions if he needs to make them easier.
“It’s sort of fun to find that balance of trying not to alienate the entire room and find a fact that’s super pure, but not give it away,” Diana said.
Shumway keeps his own bank of questions, a list of gems he collects from Wikipedia deep-dives and YouTube scrolling. He groups the best facts into categories for Thursday trivia nights, and he sneaks his favorites into attendance questions for the undergraduate economics class he teaches at N.C. State, stumping his students with obscure U.S. presidential facts or Rocky Mountain geography.
Wiginton has his own method as well, saving a spreadsheet of the hundreds of questions he’s asked since he started at Linda’s, alongside the average scores and dates. One of his favorites is from 2022: How many NCAA football championships has the Alabama Crimson Tide won? Zero, as the NCAA doesn’t award football titles.
“What makes a successful trivia night is that anybody can go in there, have a decent shot of getting the correct answer and doesn’t feel frustrated at the end of the night,” Wiginton said.
While some hosts like Wiginton, Diana and Shumway spend hours preparing questions and tinkering with spreadsheets, others focus purely on the presentation.
After hosting trivia for more than a decade, Hernandez launched Hammered Trivia in 2023 alongside his co-owner, Thor Dollar. Four Hammered Trivia writers create question sets each week, and each venue’s host supplements the content they are given with an original category.
Hernandez said any person can walk up to a microphone and read a question, but engaging with the crowd is what enhances a trivia night.
“It’s understanding how to embrace who you are, not be afraid to share who you are, but also, embrace the teams that are there,” Hernandez said.
Crystal Roberts, a trivia host with the national company Geeks Who Drink, shares a similar sentiment. Roberts gets her questions pre-written, but said she brings a “host of the party” vibe to her quiz nights at Compass Rose Brewery in Raleigh.
“It really is about having that passion for learning, being able to build a community with the people that you’re seeing every week,” she said.
From crafting scatterplots to befriending the teams, the formula for a truly great trivia night isn’t just tough questions. It’s personality, preparation and a host who can turn a weekday night into a friend group’s ritual.
The three finalists for INDY Week’s Best of the Triangle trivia night in Orange and Chatham counties will find out Oct. 1 who takes the crown, and the winner will go on to compete in the Triangle-wide contest in December. It’s based on a popular vote, so each host’s connection with their teams could make or break the competition.
Until then, the only answer that really matters is who’s coming back next week.
