We’re back, baby, and we’re better than ever!* Fall Brawl II kicks off on September 13th, and we can’t wait to see you nerds onscreen again. Sign-ups begin today! You can register here. We had a whopping 50 teams vie for the title last year, and despite our ever-so-slight return to “normal”, we know there are at least a few dozen who still prefer the virtual format. For the others of you who have returned to live quizzing, worry not….you’ll have the opportunity to do both.
For those unfamiliar- your team plays weekly in a private 45-minute Zoom session with a JGT-certified host, giving you a chance to interact with friends near and far while playing your favorite brand of trivia. Sessions are available Mon-Thurs between 7 and 10:45 PM Eastern.
Other details-
SCHEDULE: Season starts the week of September 13th. 8-week regular season followed by 2 weeks of playoffs/consolation games. 9 games guaranteed to all teams.
LEAGUE FORMAT: Depending on how many teams we end up with, it’ll either be broken into divisions with “head-to-head” matchups each week, or kept as an overall seeding format with a tournament bracket for the playoffs.
PRICE: $425 per team, with $25 of that going to charity (PPERC). $200 deposit due by 9/13, balance due by 10/4.
Yes, we are fully vaxxed and back to doing in-person events! Whether it’s your wife’s birthday or your company’s annual getaway, we’ve got you covered. Just fill out this short form and we’ll be back in touch within 48 hours. Let’s party!
2020 was, in many ways, the year when everything went horribly wrong. There’s no need to rehash it. You LIVED it. But a few things went really right too. And one of those things was taking our weekly trivia cult out of the bars and into each other’s living rooms. It all seems so “normal” now, but at the time it was frightening, bizarre, and somewhat random.
Last March, as Carl, Art, and I discussed what an “Online quiz” should look like and how it should play, Carl said something that quickly directed the focus: “The most important aspect of this is people hanging out with their friends. Everything else we decide should revolve around that.” And so instead of a ton of teams playing at once, or a bunch of technical bells and whistles, we focused on small, intimate (as intimate as it can be on a computer), gatherings with a single quizmaster and a single team.
It worked. Carl went from a guy hosting once a week at Birra to becoming the backbone of the whole operation. (Yeah OK and the brains too. Whatever. I’m STILL the beer belly of this damn thing!) J. Michael went from weekly regular to beloved host. Chip and Blake stepped in and quickly garnered weekly regulars. Every time we faced a hitch in scheduling, Erin or Mike would step up big. The whole thing just kind of…came together. And after each quizzo season Carl and I would have the same discussion: how many can we expect for the next season? And every season we underestimated.
As summer turned to fall which turned to winter, we kept getting teams willing to sign up again. And there was a certain magic to it. The Narcotyzing Dysfunktion, a team that had played weekly at the Bards in the mid 2000s when they were in grad school at Penn, got the band back together despite living all over the United States. Jeremy and Sharon of There’s No I played from Tokyo while working overseas. Tiffany of Synchronized Trampoline drank some sort of red concoction out of a Mason jar every week. Beth of Duane’s World mocked my pronunciations online instead of in person. The Drunk Parents lived up to their name. Not Last Place seemed to always finish JUST AHEAD of last place.
We quizzed through the madness of 2020, the eerie silence of March and April, through the protests, riots, the nightly “fireworks” and explosions of last summer, the daily madness of a deranged President, through an election, an attempted insurrection, and through a year+ that we might like to forget but a year that may well define our lives. And while I can’t speak for you guys I can speak for myself: it kept me sane at times I thought I was losing it, it made me smile when things were grim, and it made me laugh when absolutely nothing else was funny. It kept a roof over my family’s head, and it made me realize that we’ve got something here that is a whole lot bigger than bar trivia. And for that I just want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. -JGT
Some thrillers in the semis, and we’re down to our Final Four…and you’re welcome to play along. Doing it a little differently this time. If you wanna play on Sunday night at 7 PM, just sign your team up here. You’ll join us in the zoom with the four teams actually competing. We’ll set you up on playbigquiz and the whole works, with the winning non-finalist team winning some Philadelphia Phoenix tickets! Just sign up here. It’s free to play (though you’re welcome to tip) and if we have enough teams signed up we’ll do a 50/50 raffle for PPEHRC.
Congrats to our four finalists! Covid Isn’t Real Continued their incredible run with a 43-41 win over the Very Stable Geniuses. Meanwhile, the Underground Bard held off the Sons of Sam, 45-43. Boyz II Menehune lose in Overtime AGAIN, getting stunned by Au Bon Pandemic after the two teams finished tied at 42. And the Cool Cats and Kittens continued their hot streak with a 46-40 over FFSF. We’ll determine a champion on Sunday night, and we hope you’ll join us!
A shocker in the Sweet 16, as #16 Covid Isn’t Real stunned Quarantine Spirit, 48-46. Their victory has sent shockwaves through the quizzo community, and left things wide slam open in our Elite 8. It’s truly anybody’s ballgame. Here’s the Vegas odds for each team to win it all:
Cool Cats and Kittens 5/1: Averaged 48 PPG in the regular season and have stormed through the playoffs so far. Their path is about to get a lot bumpier though, with a match vs FFSF this week.
Sons of $am 12/1: Our #4 seed has had a tremendous regular season and seem poised to go to their first finals. But first they’ll need to get past Underground Bard, who knocked them off in the Elite 8 of the World Cup last summer.
Boyz II Menehune 14/1: Not their best regular season, but after finishing 3rd in the Winter Warz this team is hungry for their first title.
Very Stable Geniuses 18/1: 3rd place finishers in Fall Brawl, the Geniuses have what it takes. Will this be the season they break through?
FFSF 20/1: A team that seems to improve just a bit each season, FFSF is a team on the rise. They got a taste of the big time in Fall Brawl with a 5th place finish, and this time they’d like to do even better. But they’ve got to get through Cool Cats in the Elite 8, which is a brutal matchup.
COVID Isn’t Real 22/1: Coming off their SHOCKING upset of Quarantine Spirit, is this a team of destiny? Perhaps, but first they’e got to get past Very Stable Geniuses, no easy task.
Au Bon Pandemic 24/1: Don’t let the #30 seed fool you…they were an 8-seed in last year’s Summer Slam and missed the Finals of Fall Brawl by a tiebreaker.
Underground Bard 30/1: You may be surprised to see them ranked this low. They certainly would not be, but most of the team will miss the finals if they make it that far due to a stage performance.
Best of luck to all of our final 8 contestants and we hope to see everyone on Sunday night when we air the finals live on Facebook!
Here they are, our scores with one week left to go in the regular season. Those brackets at the bottom are starting to get interesting. SLTS takes the top spot back over, and a couple of new teams hop into the Top 14: FFSF the Jawns, while Super Spreaders and Pop Fit drop into the hoi polloi. One final week to play before the playoffs, might try to make this one a bit tougher so we can see if we can make some of those numbers bounce around.
Congrats to the Cool Cats and Kittens, who become our third different team in three weeks to take their turn at the top of the leader board. A tough week 3 quiz saw quite a bit of movement in the rankings. Want to see where your team ranks? Go here to find out. And remember you can check “Bracket” at the bottom to see where your team would be if the season ended today.
The Oscars are on April 25th, and we’re ready to celebrate. J Michael will be your host for our first annual Ultimate Oscars Pregame Quizzo. Questions about the past 91 years of the best films of all time (and, well, some bad films that somehow snuck into the mix). Furthermore, Oscars is a great party night, so we’ll have Bartender Dan (below) teaching us how to make a couple of Oscars specific drinks. Here’s how that will work; you sign your team for the quiz ($40 gets your whole team in for the quiz) then a few days before the quiz, we’ll send you an email with your zoom invite and the ingredients for our Sunday night drinks. And we’ll wrap the whole thing up just in time for the Oscars to begin. Hope you’ll join us!
Quite a bit of movement on our leaderboard after a tough Week 2 quiz. That includes a spectacular collapse for the Super Spreaders, who went from our Top Score to out of our First Fourteen (the teams that would have a first round bye if the season ended today). Congrats to Quarantine Spirit, who have taken over the top spot. And remember, you can click on brackets at the bottom to see what the tourney would look like if the season ended today. (Shout out to Carl for making that page happen…really freaking cool).
April Madness is here, folks, and things have worked out quite nicely. We hit our goal of 48 teams, all of them vying for the prestigious tourney title. Here’s everything you need to know:
WHO: 48 of our most illustrious teams. Well, actually 49, 48 of whom will make the tourney.
WHAT: The second annual April Madness Tourney.
WHEN: March 29th-May 23rd.
WHERE: On Zoom.
WHY: Why not?
HOW: 5 weeks to accumulate points, then we seed based off of those points. All regular season games will be your team in zoom with your quizmaster. Top 16 teams will get a first round bye, the next 32 teams will have a first round game….then 16 of them that win move into the next round. The 16 that lose start the losers bracket. Of the final 32, the losers in that first round will also go to the losers bracket. So everyone is guaranteed at least 7 games.
HOW DID IT LOOK LAST YEAR?Here’s the bracket from last year’s tourney. This years will be even better, since we’re actually basing seedings on something, so we’ll have a fun regular season before we get to the tourney.
WHAT’S UP WITH PAYMENT: Pretty simple, half of payment is due on April 1st, the other half on May 1st. (Cost is $350 total per team for the season). You can venmo payment to @jgtquizzo or paypal it to johnny at johnnygoodtimes dot com.
WHERE CAN WE SIGN UP FOR THE REGULAR SEASON QUIZZES?Here.
IS THERE A CHARITY COMPONENT? Yes, $10 of each teams fee goes towards the Poor People’s Army’s ongoing struggle to house families.
WILL CARL BE THE DE FACTO LEADER OF THIS LEAGUE, WITH JGT JUST A DELUSIONAL FIGUREHEAD: Yes.
ANY “EXTRAS”? Yes, I am still working on putting an All-Star game together, and if my idea comes to fruition it’s gonna be awesome. Hope to have it locked up in the next week. Also, put it down in your calendar: we’ll be doing a giant movie quiz on April 25th, before the Oscar’s begin.
As part of our weekly Sunday night charity fundraisers, this week we are fundraising for one I am particularly inspired by. The Anderson Monarch baseball program is, quite simply, the best of its kind in the nation. If you don’t know about it yet, I highly encourage you to read this.
The baseball quiz is free to play, we’ll have prizes from Shibe Sports, and 100% of tips go to the Monarchs. If you want to sign up, you can do so here. Quiz starts at 7 pm, teams are up to 8 players each, and quiz should take about an hour. Hope to see you on Sunday!
WHO: Anybody who wants to get their posse together and have one of the most fun Saturday nights of their year.
WHAT: Quizzo Bowl XV, the longest running quizzo event of its kind in America.
WHEN: February 9th. Doors at 7, Event at 8.
WHERE: World Cafe Live, 3025 Walnut Street
WHY: Because you want to have an awesome night out with your friends dressing up and listening to Hawaiian music and playing trivia and winning prizes and engaging in downright tomfoolery.
HOW MUCH ARE TICKETS: $25, same as they’ve been for the past 10 years. ($30 if you wait until the day of).
WHERE CAN I BUY THEM: You can buy them online here. I will also have a few more left on me next week at my weekly quizzes.
WILL ALL THE QUESTIONS BE ABOUT HAWAII? No, Hawaii is the theme but this will be a general knowledge quiz: I’d expect a few Hawaii questions but not a ton.
HOW IS IT DIFFERENT THAN A REGULAR QUIZZO? In every way. We’ll have comedy, we’ll have live music, we’ll have vaudeville, we’ll have video rounds, music rounds, and even a round being drawn by one of my favorite local artists, we’ll have prizes to multiple bars in the area. And who knows what else? Past Quizzo Bowls have War Pigs on steel drums, 250 people singing Here I Go Again On My Own in unison, and even a freaking wedding engagement.
HOW MANY PLAYERS CAN I HAVE ON MY TEAM? Youcan have up to 8 players on a team. If you have fewer than 6, shoot me a line and I’ll see if I can team you up with another squad.
WHAT IF IT’S JUST ME AND A COUPLE OF FRIENDS? No problem, we’ll team you up with a larger team. Just shoot me a line at johnny at johnnygoodtimes dot com and I’ll see what I can do.
SO SHOULD WE GO? Yeah, you’re damn right you should go. What are you waiting for? Get the crew together, get your tickets, and let’s party on Saturday!
Philly Mag is a magazine written for Lower Merion moms, who as a demographic don’t play a lot of quizzo. So I don’t think Philly Mag’s assessment of quizzo as “Overrated” will really affect my bottom line a whole lot, but I do think it’s a bit of a low blow. For one thing, I was asked by a Philly mag staffer (who shall remain nameless, but is a good friend of mine who runs a certain local food blog. But again, no names) asked me to help give him some overrated/underrated ideas, which I gladly did. Then, after spending my time (free of charge, mind you) sending them ideas, quizzo gets trashed in their overrated piece?
Apparently par for the course for Philly publications. A few years ago, Philadelphia Weekly asked me to help rate their top 50 bars. I gladly did so, only to pick up the issue and that in that very same article they had listed Fergie‘s as the best quizzo in town. Was everyone who makes editorial decisions for local publications raised by wolves? Manners, people, manners.
But that’s not what really bothers me about this. What really bothers me is that the assessment of “Overrated” doesn’t make any sense. Overrated how? Is quizzo overrated because of the non-stop media coverage? The numerous corporate sponsorships? The people rioting over it in the streets? Furthermore, how does anyone on the Philly Mag staff know if it’s overrated? I don’t think they have quizzo at (Insert Flavor of the Month Scenester restaurant here), where the draft beers are $8 and the passenger pigeon terrine is “to die for”, so I’m not sure what they’re basing it on.
Quizzo is what it claims to be. A simple way for friends to have an excuse to drink a couple of cold ones at the bar on a Tuesday and hang out for 2 hours. How can that be overrated? If you’re gonna say that I’m overrated, or Irish Jon is overrated, or what have you, then you at least try to have an argument. But I’m not sure how quizzo itself can be construed as overrated. That’s like saying that beer is overrated or a night on the town is overrated.
Furthermore, your magazine is called Philadelphia magazine, and you’ve never run a piece on quizzo (that pic of me in Philly mag a couple of months ago was awesome, but the article was about the Phillies, not about quizzo), which has gone from a small Irish bar tradition among friends to a multimillion dollar national phenomenon in the past 20 years, and which started for all intents and purposes right here in Philly. That would make it different from some of your overrated things like cheesesteaks and Rocky, which you’ve written about, oh I don’t know, every single month for the past 35 years.
But that’s not what really pisses me off. What really pisses me off is that they have both Cole Hamels and the Palestra as “Rated”. Cole Hamels is the most underrated World Series MVP in history (he got booed earlier this year AT HOME) and the Palestra is half-full for most games despite being the coolest basketball arena in the country. I know most of you don’t get a chance to watch sports while you’re drinking French 75s at Swanky Bubbles**, but then goddamnit all hire somebody that knows something about sports. I know a guy, and as much as he rails against it, he loves passenger pigeon terrine. Furthermore, he was raised by wolves.
