How To Win Trivia Night At Brick Oven Pizza Kapolei
On Mondays, from 7pm-9pm, Brick Oven Pizza Kapolei hosts a trivia night that’s managed by DJ Trivia Oʻahu. It’s popular! More than 10 teams, some as large as 11 people, turned out for this week’s competition.
What: Trivia Night
Where: Brick Oven Pizza Kapolei
When: Mondays, 7pm-9pm
Important: It’s free to play, but arrive early. Tables fill up!
As a former trivia night host myself, I checked it out. I return with 5 tips on how to get the best score—which my team did not, but maybe next time!
First, here’s how it works.
DJ Trivia Setup and Rules
- The contest consists of four rounds of five questions each.
- The questions appear on TV screens in the bar.
- You get about two minutes to answer each question.
- The value of the questions in each round increases as the game goes on. Questions in Round 1 are worth 5 points, but in Round 4 they are worth 40 each.
- Each round has a theme of sorts, but the questions within the round can be about practically anything.
- Of the five questions per round, the first four are multiple choice. The fifth is called a Double Down.
- For a Double Down, you have to write in your answer. But first, you have to decide whether you want to answer at all. If you’re right, you double your score. But if you’re wrong, you lose all the points you gained in that round. If you don’t answer, your score stays the same.
- The team with the most points at the end of Round 4 wins $30 in bar credit.
- Brick Oven is all ages, and so is trivia.
Now, to the tips:
1) Listen for hints
After asking each question, you’ll hear a song play. These songs sometimes contain clues about the correct answer to the question.
For example, one question asked who was the lead singer of Judas Priest from 1996-2003. We had no idea.
But, one of our team members recognized the music the DJ played—a Tim McGraw song! One of the answers was Tim Owens. We picked it and we were right.
We were TEAM BEERMAN — our cousin had a “Beerman” (spoof of “Batman”) t-shirt on.
2) Bring a big team
Some trivia nights limit the size of the team you can have. Brick Oven’s trivia does not. One team had 11 people! (Not that we were understaffed, we had 7.)
It’s a trivia truism—the more people you have the higher the chance that one of their brains will conjure up the answer.
3) Nail the Double Downs
The Double Down questions aren’t easy, but with so many teams playing you’ll fall too far behind if you don’t get them right. Unless you have absolutely no idea even what to guess, you should try to answer.
4) Staff your team with experts on music, movies, and sports-but especially music
At least five questions were about music, especially the all-important final Double Down. Plus, because the song clues are so helpful, someone who knows music really well almost has a superpower. The sports and movie questions were a little obscure—so you probably need big fans of each to win.
5) Practice!
The winning team at Mondays trivia plays five nights a week, we were told. At time of writing, DJ Trivia runs trivia nights Sunday-Thursday, at three different locations each night. The other nearby location is Wednesdays, at the USCG Hideaway Club at Barbers Point.
And a final tip that won’t help you win but will help you have a better time—don’t take it too seriously! The dictionary definition of trivia is: “Pieces of information of little importance or value.” Whether you know a question or not is also of little importance or value—it’s not an intelligence test.
