What to expect from The Big Quiz Thing in Philly March 1

Alex Trebek, but funnier. On a dance floor. 

Noah Tarnow
blog.bigquizthing.com

The Big Quiz Thing

On Jan. 28, City Paper sent two current interns, Ryan Hughes and Kelan Lyons, to The Big Quiz Thing at World Café Life, which returns to WCL March 1. Boston magazine once said of BQT," "Picture a funnier Alex Trebek holding court on the dance floor of Studio 54, and you’ll have a close approximation of the shtick at the Big Quiz Thing.”

Here's what our interns thought.

Ryan: At my first and only Quizzo experience, we had specialists on our team. We had a pop culture expert, a history expert, a music expert, a general knowledge expert and others. But we didn’t have such resources at The Big Quiz Thing. We just brought a bunch of smartasses —likely suicide in any serious quiz game.

Kelan: As we settled in to compete, choosing our all-male team’s name turned out to be hardest part. After an extensive argument, our team settled on “Big Ben’s Boys.” Senior quizmaster Noah Tarnow guided us through the game’s six rounds, which ranged from standard question-and-answer. to lightning rounds to multimedia portions that tested our cartoon and music knowledge.

Ryan: Early in the game—as a result of my lack of pop-culture knowledge — I was hard-pressed to answer a single question on my own. But luckily, The Big Quiz Thing gives you a second chance. Just when things seemed hopeless, Tarnow introduced a new rule: the smartass-answer rule. At Tarnow’s table at the front of the hall was a little box with more than 100 stickers that read “smartass” on them. If you didn’t know an answer to a question, you simply made your best sarcastic, snarky, smart-ass comment you could muster, and then slapped that sticker on the answer. If Tarnow liked it and it got some chuckles from the crowd, you got the point value for that question as if it were right.

Kelan: In the first round, Tarnow asked the audience to recall what non-entertainer was on the cover of Rolling Stone in February 2014 (Pope Francis). Some smartasses wrote “Miriam Webster” on the answer key.

Ryan: We no longer needed to try to give a crap about a right answer. We just had to summon our inner smartasses. Our first big streak of smartassery began with the “antonym album cover” section, where different contemporary album covers came on the screen, the original names replaced by their antonyms. Radiohead became “Televisionfoot” and Sex Pistols became “Masturbation Rifles”.

Kelan: “Taylor Swift’s Red album became “Seamstress Slow’s Blue."

Ryan: This is where our shining moments came into play: the album antonym “Be Cognizant of the Ovaries” didn’t sound like Nevermind the Bollocks to us — more like “Ignore Penises.” We crushed the smartass competition and won that category’s prize — an outdated pop-culture board game that had apparently been sitting in Tarnow’s apartment for years.

Kelan: We went through four more rounds, knowing that we had no shot at winning. Teams like “Quizzard of Oz” and “My Therapist Told Me to Go Out” were killing us after every round, and the nearly perfect “I’m Here So I Won’t Get Fined” was at least 20 points ahead of us.

Then, Tarnow read off the big screen behind him: "According to the kid from Jerry Maguire, what weighs eight pounds?" The four of us looked at each other and decided to go for the smart-ass points.

A few minutes later, Tarnow was reading our answer on the stage in front of everyone.

“According to Big Ben’s Boys, the little kid’s dick weighs eight pounds.”

The 10 teams around us erupted in laughter. Awards were handed out at the end of the night for those who broke the top 10. Our 46 points paled in comparison to the winning team's — “I’m Here So I Won’t Get Fined — 79. We didn’t even glimpse the top 10 or win memberships or movie tickets.

But our two phallic jokes led us to the win the award for biggest smart-asses of the night. And that’s a crown that we’ll all wear proudly.

Ryan: Now, the question begs to be asked: Is it possible to take home the gold with only premium-quality smartassery at The Big Quiz Thing? Instead of studying pop-culture and obscure historical facts, can we train by honing our wisecracks instead? Time will tell. The Big Quiz Thing holds its next round on March 1. Same place. Game on.

The Big Quiz Thing will be back in Philadelphia on March 1 at World Café Live. Tickets are $8 here.