NYC Trivia League 2024/2025
Background
Sunswick 35/35
Sunswick is a neighborhood bar and restaurant located at the corner of 35th Avenue and 35th Street (hence the name) in Astoria, Queens, right next to Kaufman Studios. Plenty of beer on draft and cans available, they sometimes have wine, rarely classified more detailed than red or white. They have a standard bar food menu, but I promise you the best thing on the menu is the corn tortilla quesadilla. Really has no right to be that good. There are four tv’s of dubious quality placed around the bar, they basically put on whatever you request, so if you want something just ask, they’ll change it if no one else has requested anything. We’ve gotten WNBA and college basketball up on the tv, other people have gotten reality cooking competitions and Marvel movies, they’re flexible. They’ve got events most nights of the week, like Bingo, Karaoke, Live Music, and Trivia (though we haven’t been to the other nights, just Wednesday night trivia).
The trivia is done through this organization. It’s a standardized citywide organization where you play on a mobile website. The nice part about this is you get live feedback, being scored after each question. So you constantly know your ranking on the night. It means more questions in less time, but if you do get nostalgic about pen and paper, then you can try another trivia elsewhere. This league also has the ability for you to register as a team and continually score in a citywide tournament season. And with a high enough score you can enter NYC Trivia League events like The King’s Cup: Trivia Tournament of Champions. In hindsight, we probably should have signed up for this given how many times we went. Reviewing the scores for the Winter 2025 season, we would have most certainly qualified (feels more like a motivational tool to get you to go to more trivia more often).
Prizes also vary from bar to bar. At Sunswick, provided that there are enough teams (at least around 8) the first prize is a $50 gift card to the bar, second prize is a $25 gift card to the bar, and third prize is a round of (often expired) canned beers for the team. If there are fewer teams then the prizes are shifted up an first place gets $25 and second place gets the round of (definitely expired) canned beers.
The structure of this trivia, are six rounds worth 50 points. There are:
Three themed question rounds
Rounds are themed around a word or theme usually
i.e. Theme is New Orleans - What book is Ignatius J. Reilly, an the overweight and unemployed thirty-year-old in?
i.e. Theme is Water - What is Kevin Costner’s character’s name in Waterworld?
A list round (turns out I had a lot of these written down, so enjoy)
Typically guess 8-10 of 10-12 things
i.e. Name 8 of the 10 highest grossing Meryl Streep films (not adjusted for inflation)
i.e. Name 8 of the 10 original Mortal Kombat characters
i.e. Name 10 of the 12 highest ranked Oscar Best Picture winners on IMDB (hint: they are all above an 8.5 and their release dates are 1972, 2003, 1993, 1974, 1994, 1975, 1991, 2000, 2019, 2006, 1942)
i.e. Name 8 of the 15 TV Shows that regularly aired (at least one season) on SNICK between 1992 and 2000
i.e. Name 10 of the top 12 most common high school mascots
i.e. Name 8 of the 10 spaces on a standard Monopoly board between In Jail / Just Visiting and Kentucky Avenue (the first red property)
i.e. Name 8 of the 10 official Disney princesses introduced between 1989-2021 (there are 13 in total)
i.e. Name the 8 five letter words that can be made from the word WORDLE, you can only use each letter once.
A music round
Usually it’s name the artist of a song they’ll play over the sound system
A picture round
A group of 8-10 pictures that you have to identify in some way
i.e. Name the NHL team that the pictured mascot represents
i.e. Name the Movie based on the still from their Live-Action Remake / Adaptation
i.e. Name the Person from the LGBTQIA+ Community
(I’ve put the answers at the end of this post, in case you’re curious, click here to see them)
I would rate this trivia at a 5/10 for difficulty. Winning scores were often in the mid 40’s, so there isn’t a lot of room for error. The closest I’ve seen to perfect was a 49… wasn’t us. That said, you only have to beat your competition, so it really depends on the bar. We’ve played at different bars with NYC Trivia League and we’ve found the competition varies greatly. If you tie for a prize spot, there will be a bonus final question that gives the prize spot to the team that is the closest to the answer. Questions like how much money did Spiderman: No Way Home earn at the domestic box office or the question below:
This is one where we missed out on second place because we (read: I) incorrectly thought that the CN Tower was shorter than One World Trade Center.
You can even play virtually with them if you just want to give it a go sometime.
Our Host Chase
Chase hosts trivia at Sunswick on Wednesday evenings starting at 8. Unfailingly always engaging and effortlessly charismatic, he is very friendly and makes trivia enjoyable. He isn’t a host that seeks the attention and tries to use the platform to do a tight 5 or heckle the participants. His contributions are more subtle. Perfect pronunciation, elongated enunciation, or masterful mimickery to just add that extra little flavor to the presentation. He always brought a cheerful smile and we appreciated his hosting. He’s also very nice about understanding bad spelling, giving us The Boston Team Party is very generous.
Also Savannah, our usual bartender, deserves a shoutout as well. She’s friendly and always helpful.
Origin Story
As one of her resolutions for 2024, Mattos made a goal to win trivia at Sunswick. We had tried a handful of times in the preceding years at multiple bars around Astoria, with no luck. At our first attempt of 2024, we won. $50 gift card for our next visit at Sunswick. Well Mattos was doing Dry January, and asked if we could save the gift card for February. We showed up the next week and won again. Then came the first week of February… and another win. So with $150 in hand… it felt like something greater needed to be achieved, than to just pay off our bar tab. I proposed we go for 4 digits and spoiler alert, we got there (with a slight caveat, we did have a legacy $25 gift card from a random attempt in August, 2023).
Now, at first I didn’t know we would go for this, nor did I think about writing a story about it. If I had, I would have collected and prepared the data better. I would have collected data on the number of points we got in total and per round, saved more questions (especially tiebreakers), recorded how many other teams there were and what were the differentials on the winner. I would have given out an MVP award to a player on our team who contributed the most consequential answers. But alas, life is not perfect, and so we have none of that data. I’ll provide what I have (and it’s still a good amount), but much of it will be anecdotal. Here’s our journey.
The Story
Thanks to Flourish for many of these visualizations in this section.
Participation
We went to trivia 32 times to win $1,000 in gift cards. 25 different people participated for us, for a total of 159 appearances. Our participants came from Astoria, broader Queens, Brooklyn, and Long Island. Not particularly surprising that it was mostly attended by local folks, given that it started at 8 pm on Wednesday nights and it’s not very interesting that the more appearances that were made, led to a larger contribution. Amy barely counts as Brooklyn, she started in Astoria first.
Most people just joined us for a round or two. And they generally did very well. Which reaffirms a belief that this bar just has (no offense to any of our competitors) easier competition than average. Given that our core crew is three couples, you can see that our gender balance (is quite even). More different women joined us, but men made more appearances, and contributed more to the winnings in the end. Even adjusted for the average, it still skews Male, with $6.43 for each male appearance and $6.14 for each female appearance.
Team Names
A key part of any trivia team is the name, and we had a pretty darn good time with ours. We like going with a pun or reference to the current events of the preceding days or week. Here are 31 of them (one we don’t have a record of), sorry for the scrolling thing, but it seemed more interesting than listing them all as plain text:
Greta and Margot are Kenough
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No Elmo, We Are Not Okay
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Super Bowl LVIII (Taylor's Version)
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Charlotte Cowles' $50,000 Shoebox
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Happy Leap Day Eve!
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Bene and The Gesserits
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Greta and Margot are Kenough 〰️ No Elmo, We Are Not Okay 〰️ Super Bowl LVIII (Taylor's Version) 〰️ Charlotte Cowles' $50,000 Shoebox 〰️ Happy Leap Day Eve! 〰️ Bene and The Gesserits 〰️
P. Diddy Kong Racing
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Caitlin Clark-Side Of The Moon
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DJ Grimes' Algorithm
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Hush Puppy Money
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The Tortured Trivia Players Department
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Justice for "Rickety" Cricket Noem
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P. Diddy Kong Racing 〰️ Caitlin Clark-Side Of The Moon 〰️ DJ Grimes' Algorithm 〰️ Hush Puppy Money 〰️ The Tortured Trivia Players Department 〰️ Justice for "Rickety" Cricket Noem 〰️
Sam and Anna Got Engaged!
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Publishers Clearing Ransom House Sweepstakes
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It Was My Birthday on Monday
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Long Island JTea
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Elder Scrolls IV: O-Bolivian
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Oxford Kamala
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Sam and Anna Got Engaged! 〰️ Publishers Clearing Ransom House Sweepstakes 〰️ It Was My Birthday on Monday 〰️ Long Island JTea 〰️ Elder Scrolls IV: O-Bolivian 〰️ Oxford Kamala 〰️
Ballz to the Walz
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Sistine Chappel Roan
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RIP Foodtown
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The Rules Were You Guys Weren't Going to Fact Check
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Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death - Patrick "Ellie" Henry
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Ronald McDonald
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Ballz to the Walz 〰️ Sistine Chappel Roan 〰️ RIP Foodtown 〰️ The Rules Were You Guys Weren't Going to Fact Check 〰️ Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death - Patrick "Ellie" Henry 〰️ Ronald McDonald 〰️
Something Spooky
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MUUUSSSSTAAAAAAAARRDDDD!
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Pete's Pentagonal Dry January
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Let Us Unfollow
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Stairs 2 - McConnell 0
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Mattos and the Lads
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~cold streak~
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Something Spooky 〰️ MUUUSSSSTAAAAAAAARRDDDD! 〰️ Pete's Pentagonal Dry January 〰️ Let Us Unfollow 〰️ Stairs 2 - McConnell 0 〰️ Mattos and the Lads 〰️ ~cold streak~ 〰️
We had too many people for one team once (max size is 6), so DJ Grimes’ Algorithm and Hush Puppy Money were on the same night. A fun team name was “It Was My Brithday on Monday” which wasn’t a reference to any of our birthday’s but for Chase to announce to the bar that it was his birthday.
Here were some of the names we didn’t use, often times because we found them too dark…
Rosalynn is going to the Peanut Farm in the Sky
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Alabama Embry-Bros
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Contemplating the Leap
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Mayday at Hamilton Hall
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Helene Helene Helene Hellleeeennnee
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Remember When DOGE Was Just a Coin?
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Even the Measles are Bigger in Texas
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Release Us From This Indentured Servitude
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DEI Hires
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Rosalynn is going to the Peanut Farm in the Sky 〰️ Alabama Embry-Bros 〰️ Contemplating the Leap 〰️ Mayday at Hamilton Hall 〰️ Helene Helene Helene Hellleeeennnee 〰️ Remember When DOGE Was Just a Coin? 〰️ Even the Measles are Bigger in Texas 〰️ Release Us From This Indentured Servitude 〰️ DEI Hires 〰️
Ranking & Team Size Histograms
I think the data here is biased, as I often aimed to get more players to improve our odds. We ranked in the top 3 every time but once.
Now there looks like a general slight correlation for our average rank based on the team size (the chart on the right). Our lowest average rank was the 6 person team, but it was also just our sheer largest team size, and there likely isn’t enough data at each level to come up with a definitive correlation. Regardless, because we’re here. I did Spearman’s Rank Correlation to see if there was a correlation. Basically this just ranks the two sets of data and looks to see if there is a correlation (getting closer to -1 or +1 indicates a negative or positive correlation respectively). The answer came out to -.02. So certainly not indicative of any serious correlation, but with only three data points at 2 & 3 players, and constantly finishing in the top three regardless, it just isn’t the answer that we can get to right now. My theory maintains that it’s more about the competition in the room, the other teams, than it is about us.
It’s at this point, I wish I had more data, about how many answers each player is actually contributing, and those always crucial differential questions that teams lose points on.
Prize Money
Our largest average individual contribution was a 3 person team getting 1st place in February (Sam, Will, and I).
We had an 8 game win streak between March 6th and May 29th. That really helped us get somewhere.
Twice there were not enough teams to do prizes for the top 3 (so our prize was devalued, e.g. $50 gift card prize became a $25 gift card prize) and once a team ahead of us was disqualified for having too many players.
At some point they stopped with the paper check style gift cards and instead started giving swipable plastic gift cards. We have $275 on those. $125 in the paper $25 checks. $600 in the $50 versions. There are no expirations or language that we can’t combine them… but we haven’t asked or checked with Sunswick.
Contribution
Turns out when you split the winnings multiple ways, individual contributions are much less… poor Alan at the bottom, getting third place the one time he came.
Network Diagrams
With these two visualizations, that are more fun than useful given there wasn’t a ton of variation in the team for most of it, you can see who played on the team together the most and who is connected. For much of 2024 we used Wednesday evenings as an open office hours of sorts, and tried to see whomever was available.
Spend
Looking up my credit card statements for Sunswick, I spent $1,108 over the course of the 32 attempts. Mattos additionally spent $170.79. According to my math and our number of appearances, that means our average spend per person was around $25. That makes sense, 3 beers or 2 glasses of wine. Sometimes we would buy dinner or snacks too. Other times we wouldn’t drink as much or at all (Mattos more than I). I’m going to estimate that our teammates spent an average of $20 per appearance. That means… we spent an estimated $3,180 at Sunswick over the past year or so. Now subtract $1,000 of gift cards, and $2,180 is the minimum incremental value NYC Trivia League brings (though there are potentially fees and other costs that we may not be privy to). We weren’t going to Sunswick before, heck we wouldn’t go to any bar that often. But there really is an intangible benefit of being a regular somewhere. I mean they remember my name and drink order. They do large pours for Mattos, and now we really like the coziness, the bartender, the food, the vibes, and we’ll certainly continue to go there over other bars at its similar level. What is that loyalty and preference worth?
Availability
Reviewing my personal calendar and availability. From when we started on 1/17/24, there have been 58 Wednesdays. I was busy / unavailable for 29 of them. I attended 28 times. So there was only one day that for whatever reason, we chose to not go to trivia at Sunswick. That’s pretty dedicated. One time we were scheduled to fly that evening out of LaGuardia, but after receiving some delay notifications we decided to go to trivia with our luggage and we would just leave directly to the airport. The flight kept getting delayed and we kept playing trivia, and eventually it was cancelled… so not only did we not have to wait at the airport for bad news, we also got second place.
And just for bragging’s sake:
Those shows were Josh Ritter, Cabaret (with Eddie Redmayne!), and Maybe Happy Ending (with Darren Criss). All of which I recommend, especially both Broadway shows. Here are the links to their Lotteries. Apply for Cabaret a week out and Maybe Happy Ending one day out.
Travel was mostly Connecticut, but also South Carolina, Utah, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Spain.
The restaurants that I went to for dinner and some of the work events (in order of how good they are): Daori BBQ, Don Angie, Jongro, l’Escale, Bad Roman, l’Escale, Calle Dao, and Catch.
Summary
Well we have $1,000 of gift cards to Sunswick. We hope to find a Friday evening to throw a party and spend them all that works for as many people as possible. By the end Mattos started a rallying cry of “Release Us From This Indentured Servitude”. She has been so released now. Looking forward to returning to Sunswick with no broader agenda.
How did we not take a picture of the final win?! Amateur hour…
Answers for the sample questions up above
New Orleans - A Confederacy of Dunces
Water - The Mariner
Meryl Streep films - Mamma Mia!, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, The Devil Wears Prada, It’s Complicated, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Into the Woods, The Post, The Bridges of Madison County, Death Becomes Her, Julie, & Julia
Original Mortal Kombat characters - Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Sonya Blade, Johnny Cage, Kano, Liu Kang, Raiden, Reptile, Goro, and Shang Tsung.
Oscar Best Picture winners with the highest ranking on IMDB - The Godfather, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Parasite, Forrest Gump, Gladiator, Casablanca, Schindler’s List, The Godfather Part II, The Silence fo the Lambs, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Departed
SNICK TV Shows between 1992 and 2000 - Clariss Explains It All, The Amanda Show, The Adventures of Pete & Pete, The Ren & Stimpy Show, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, The Secret World of Alex Mack, All That, Kenan & Kel, Space Cases, and Rugrats
Most Common High School Mascots - Eagles, Tigers, Bulldogs, Panthers, Wildcasts, Warriors, Cougars, Lions, Vikings, Knights, Trogans, and Mustangs
Monopoly board spaces between In Jail / Just Visiting and Kentucky Avenue - St. Charles Place, Electric Company, States Avenue, Virginia Avenue, Pennsylvania Railroad, St. James Place, Community Chest, Tennessee Avenue, New York Avenue, and Free Parking
Official Disney princesses introduced between 1989-2021 - Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel, Merida, Moana, and Raya
Five Letter Words that can be made from the word WORDLE - world, drole, rowed, older, dower, dowel, lower, lowed
NHL Team Mascots - Islanders, Flyers, Blues, Panthers, Penguins, Capitols, Blackhawks, Hurricanes, Sharks, Devils
Live-Action Remake / Adaptation Movies - Popeyes, Flintstones, Speed Racer, Dora the Explorer, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Borderlands, Uncharted, 101 Dalmatians, Addams Family, Alita Battle Angel
Spiderman: No Way Home domestic box office - $804,793,477
CN Tower in feet - 1,815′