By Mary Windsor, Staff Writer

Published in print Apr. 8, 2015

The top of a basketball hoop is ten feet high, The Hundred Year War lasted 116 years and Christopher Cockerill the hovercraft in 1955.

These are the types of answers that surface at trivia nights held in Greensboro at coffee shops, pubs and bars on any given day of the week.

Teams might have a name like Les Quizerables or Tequila Mockingbird, where groups of any size work together to find the answer to a vaguely worded question.

The teams range from newbies to diehard regulars, and even league members. They shield their answer sheets and speak in whispers during the hour-long sessions.

Alice Walters feels right at home in these dimly lit bars.

Walters has been attending trivia nights along the east coast for the past 25 years.

She’ll go to Jake’s trivia on Wednesday nights and The Green Bean’s trivia on Monday’s, her favorite being Jake’s Billiards.

“There’s just something about knowing something that doesn’t apply to your day job. I feel this sense of, I don’t know, pride,” said Walters.

“It’s rewarding,” she continued, “Trivia is a fun way to exercise your brain and meet new people, while also getting out and getting to know your community too.”

Walters grew up in Washington, D.C., where her father worked as a curator for The National Museum of American History.

Through her father, Walters developed a passion for facts and learning new things, even things that were useless to her everyday life.

When she first moved to Greensboro, Walters searched for a familiar place to meet people with shared interests and stumbled across trivia culture.

Trivia added a certain element to a night out with friends.

It gave friendly competition and learning to trust their knowledge on random subjects while being able to hold a conversation on something other than what’s going on in life.

“It was easier back then to show up to a place and meet people and have your own team,” said Walters.

She continued, saying, “But now people come with their friends or a set group of people. It’s like a tradition and people really bond over answering obscure questions or having to work together under social pressure.”

Most trivia nights have banned smart phones from being used during their question rounds due to having Internet access, which provides answers at people’s fingertips.

“Back when I started playing trivia, cellphones weren’t a problem. My Nokia couldn’t tell me the answer in two seconds. Texting was barely an option ten years ago,” Walters said laughing.

Now most people respect the trivia honor code and teams become their own police when someone pulls out their phone.

“It’s just more fun without any outside sources,” Walters asserted.

Walters takes trivia seriously, and keeps up with current events and past events using gaming apps on her phone and occasionally reading up on random trivia during her free time.

“Trivia is a part of everyone’s life whether they realize it or not,” Walters said.

“We all carry around tiny bits of information that we don’t think about until given the right opportunity and wording,” concluded Walters.