Business & Tech

Think While You Drink

Quizzo extraordinaire Scott Baker has developed quite a following for his pub trivia game Tuesday nights at the Green Parrot.

It’s 7:59 p.m. on a Tuesday night at the Green Parrot.

Patrons line the bar, their elbows touching. The high-top tables are full of people who are engaged in excited chatter.  After all, it’s Tuesday night and they’re out. What’s not to be happy about?

Customers continue to shuffle in, high fiving their friends (soon-to-be teammates) and waving hello to the man of the hour: Scott Baker.

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Yes, ladies and gentlemen, if it’s Tuesday night at the Green Parrot, it can only mean one thing: Quizzo.

Baker has been running the Green Parrot’s Quizzo night basically since the pub opened more than two years ago. At this point, he’s on a first-name basis (or rather, a team-name basis) with many of the patrons, several who come from all over to participate in the trivia game.

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“I’ve been playing Quizzo for years. I’ve been all over playing trivia. There is no question about it – his is by far the best,” says Wrightstown resident Mike Dacey, who comes at least once a month. “He makes it a thing.”

By “a thing” Dacey means that Baker is like an emcee, comedian, host, and ringleader all wrapped into one. Oh, and he can sure come up with some good trivia questions.

Here’s how it all works.

The game begins at 8 p.m. You can play solo or with a team of up to five players. There are four rounds of trivia, with the third round based on a theme.

There are a total of 45 questions and the whole thing takes about two hours.  Be sure to get there at the beginning, though, or you’ll loose out on valuable points.

Questions run the gamut from sports, to history, geography, pop culture, television, current events and more. You name it, Baker will ask it in trivia form.

Best of all it’s free and, even better, there are prizes. Good ones, too. Like Phillies tickets and gift certificates for your next visit to the pub.

But there is one very important rule: no phones can be visible during play. (As you can imagine, some sneaky players are tempted to do a quick internet search for the answers. But that’s not allowed and Baker enforces the rule.)

Baker, the brains behind the trivia, writes all of the questions himself. “For the most part, I keep it pretty basic,” he says. “I want questions that some people get, some people don’t."

He says he keeps cocktail napkins handy in his backpack and car so that if he’s on the move and hears an interesting anecdote, he can transform it into a killer Quizzo question.

The trivia crowd at Green Parrot tends to be mostly younger people, so Baker prepares his questions with that in mind. He also does Quizzo Mondays at Sandy's Beef and Ale in Langhorne and on Thursdays at Cheeseburger in Paradise.

On an average Tuesday, 20 teams will show up to the Green Parrot to play. They all come up with their own team names, which as you can imagine, becomes a creative exercise.

At Quizzo night this past Tuesday, team names included such titles as Bert and Ernie: F is for Fist Pumping, the Brain Trusts, the Purple People Eaters and Congressman Weiner’s Wingman.

Baker says team names ebb and flow with the headlines of the day. For example, this week, several team names referred to Amy Winehouse, the English singer who died last weekend.

But don’t be fooled.  Despite the playful names and boisterous atmosphere, Baker admits Quizzo is serious at times. “It gets very competitive,” he says.

Sometimes the bar area gets so full that players have to set up camp on the patio, where Baker’s microphone is not as audible. He said in those circumstances, players will take turns coming in to hear the questions and will return to their table to think about the answers.

Patrons say they enjoy the activity, which certainly beats staring blankly at your bar mates or, even worse, staying home.

Domenic D’Andrea and friend Mike Frawley say they come to Quizzo at the Green Parrot pretty much every week.

“It’s an excuse to see my friends and be a nerd about trivia,” Frawley says.

D’Andrea says he likes Baker’s style. “He’s very good. He asks varied questions.” While D’Andrea and his teammates have won the top prize several times, the main reason they go is just to have fun.

And that’s just Baker’s goal. “If you’re out at a bar, you should be having fun. No one wants to come to a bar and sulk,” Baker says.

Nope, if it’s Tuesday night at the Green Parrot, there’s no sulking. Just a lot of happy people thinking and drinking.


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