The Americans, against all odds, found themselves in a position they scarcely deserved.
Their team, aptly named 4 Out Of 5 Cats, boasted Colby Burnett, the celebrated 2013 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions victor. Yet, their journey to the pinnacle of the Magnusson-Trebek Trophy—a transatlantic showdown pitting America against the formidable British champions for the Online Quiz League (OQL) title—was fraught with challenges. First, they had to overcome Neutral Milf Hotel, a team brimming with top-tier American quizzing talent.
Securing victory against Neutral Milf Hotel during the regular season, and thus claiming the OQL-USA crown, felt almost serendipitous, a stroke of luck. It was a day where everything aligned perfectly: the question set, the player lineup, and even the missteps of their opponents. Burnett’s impressive 7-for-8 performance offered a measure of sweet revenge against his former Geek Bowl teammates who had previously excluded him from their OQL superteam. However, the true revelation of that match was Dylan Minarik, a 25-year-old software engineer hailing from Milwaukee, who achieved a flawless 8-for-8 full house. Even with this ideal scenario, their triumph was razor-thin, a mere two-point margin.
If their U.S. title win felt fortunate, their ability to keep pace with Quiz Machine Kills Fascists, the reigning overall OQL champions led by British comedian and quiz TV personality Paul Sinha, seemed almost implausible. Quiz Machine had decisively defeated Neutral Milf Hotel in the prior season’s Transatlantic final. For the American team, replicating their luck for a second time in the same season appeared to be an insurmountable task.
And yet, there was Dylan Minarik, once again demonstrating extraordinary quizzing prowess.
Perhaps this is the opportune moment to clarify the context of these events and the burgeoning world of Trivia Online.
Trivia, as a subculture, often necessitates such explanations. Its addictive nature, the captivating personalities it attracts, and the intrinsically dramatic format of the Online Quiz League can easily lead enthusiasts, even after a brief immersion of a month, to forget that this world remains largely unknown to the wider public. It’s somewhat curious that I’ve become so engrossed in OQL, given its recent inception, the still-developing foothold of the trivia scene in American culture, and my own admittedly modest trivia skills. I suspect my inclination to befriend individuals of superior intellect is to blame.
To truly grasp the origins of trivia online leagues like OQL, we must journey back to 1959 Liverpool. The burgeoning pub quiz culture in the UK, fueled by the rising popularity of televised quiz shows, demanded a team-based format with genuine stakes that could easily transition from pub to pub. Thus, the Merseyside Quiz League was born, featuring teams with names like “British Railways,” “Derby Arms,” and “St. Robert Bellarmine’s.” The format they pioneered was ingeniously simple—a simplicity I will now attempt to articulate in three sentences:
A quiz league match consists of two teams of four players. There are eight rounds, and in each round, every player answers one question, totaling 64 questions. A correct answer to the original question earns two points for the team. If a player chooses to pass, teammates can answer for one point. If no one on the team answers correctly, the opposing team can steal for one point. Matches typically last about an hour, and the team with the highest score after eight rounds is declared the winner.
This format rapidly gained traction, spreading throughout the Liverpool area until the MQL became the world’s largest independent quiz league. A London chapter followed in 1990.
The “quiz cultures” of the UK and US are markedly different. While this format is deeply ingrained in British quizzing tradition, even avid American trivia enthusiasts might never encounter it in their lifetime. Jon Stitcher, a Liverpool-based former poker player who launched the Online Quiz League in the UK the previous year, and Steve Bahnaman, who introduced it to America, share a common ambition: to make this format increasingly accessible and popular on both sides of the Atlantic.
Stitcher, the 40-year-old chairman of the Wirral Quiz League near Liverpool, initially had more modest goals. He simply sought to provide his friends with a trivia online outlet during the COVID-19 pandemic. He believed the internet held the solution. He created a website, gauged interest, and successfully registered 28 teams for the inaugural season. Its unexpected popularity prompted him to seek someone to expand the format into America. Bahnaman, a Raleigh-based librarian and accomplished quizzer, emerged as the ideal candidate.
“I was the only American who expressed specific interest in joining the UK league,” Bahnaman recalled.
Bahnaman possessed extensive connections within the trivia community. Throughout the reporting of this story, his name surfaced so frequently that I began to perceive him as the linchpin of American trivia. He organized a sample match on YouTube featuring prominent quizzers. His initial objective was to register 16 teams for the first American season; he remarkably secured 54. Stitcher and Bahnaman synchronized their seasons and implemented a promotion/relegation system. At the conclusion of the first American season in January, they organized a Ryder Cup-style competition between the top UK and US teams, christened the Magnusson-Trebek Trophy in honor of Magnus Magnusson and Alex Trebek, revered quiz show hosts in their respective nations.
The Americans triumphed in the inaugural series of matches 8-3. A defining characteristic of American quiz culture is that while it’s less pervasive and lacks the social integration of its UK counterpart, those who are serious about it tend to be exceptionally skilled. However, the British team Quiz Machine Kills Fascists defeated Neutral Milf Hotel in the battle of national champions, effectively claiming the de facto OQL championship. For the second MTT, featuring 17 simultaneous matches on May 9, Quiz Machine retained their UK title. Yet, Colby Burnett’s 4 Out Of 5 Cats team ascended to the top American division, earning them a place in the final against Quiz Machine. Now, perhaps, the initial narrative begins to make sense.
OQL is still in its nascent stages, but it has already achieved a feat that has historically proven elusive: uniting top players from both countries in a single competition that appeals to quizzers of all levels. In just one year, the league has attracted nearly 2,000 players across the US and UK. Spending time within this community, one might concur with Dylan Minarik’s assertion that quizzing could become the next esports phenomenon. This ambitious goal necessitates a refined and efficient system—one that is easily understood by the general public, emphasizes teamwork while showcasing individual talent, is engaging to watch, and facilitates seamless competition between the world’s best players. (“Remember James Holzhauer’s dominance?” Troy Meyer, the top individual performer in OQL-USA Season 2, a four-time LearnedLeague champion, and a recipient of multiple Jeopardy! rejections, remarked. “I know at least ten people who are better than him.”)
OQL effectively checks every box.
When seeking to identify the preeminent quizzer in America, several names consistently emerge. Steve Perry, an ER doctor whose professional commitments preclude OQL participation, famously came within a question of winning Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? two decades prior, thwarted only by his phone-a-friend’s slow Google search. Another is Scott Blish, a part-time courier who narrowly missed being OQL-USA’s top individual player in both the first and second seasons, losing by a single question each time. His rival in both instances was Meyer of Neutral Milf Hotel, who, along with Blish and Perry, is one of only three individuals to have won the annual championship in LearnedLeague, a popular trivia online competition.
Meyer, 37, runs a record company in Tampa and bears a resemblance to film director Wes Anderson. He grew up in Cleveland in a working-class family he describes as “not intellectual at all,” yet he was captivated by Jeopardy!, viewing it as a portal to a glamorous and unknown world. When his grandfather gifted him a set of encyclopedias, he devoured them cover to cover, subsequently inundating those around him with a constant stream of newfound facts. He lacked trivia outlets in school, but Ken Jennings’s remarkable Jeopardy! streak in 2004 ignited a belief that dedicated effort could enable him to compete at that level. He left college early to pursue music, but the trivia aspiration remained firmly planted in his mind. Eventually, he discovered a community of like-minded individuals who wrote their own questions online, and he delved deeper into the scene, even meeting his wife on a Jeopardy! fan site.
Meyer’s two primary trivia goals are to appear on Jeopardy!, a dream yet to be realized, and to win the World Quizzing Championship, an annual sit-down exam spanning a vast range of international subjects. In 2020, he came incredibly close, finishing second to a quizzer from Singapore. To pursue these ambitions, he meticulously studies a rotation of 30 newspapers and magazines, ranging from Reuters to Bon Appetit and niche publications like HyperAllergic, extracting key information and compiling it into a spreadsheet that now contains 400,000 entries. He also creates note cards for each fact. To ensure knowledge retention, he employs Anki, a flashcard program leveraging “spaced repetition” to reinforce facts that might otherwise fade from memory. He dedicates 10 or more hours weekly to practice, a testament to his dedication, which explains why, when pressed about whether he was the best quizzer in America, he demurred but couldn’t truthfully deny it.
His Neutral Milf Hotel teammate is Victoria Groce, a 40-year-old trivia enthusiast who entered the elite ranks later in life and expresses her ambitions more directly.
“At this juncture,” she stated, “I am explicitly striving to become the best in the world.”
Groce works as an editorial assistant at a scientific journal in Pittsburgh. Her trivia journey is unique; while always a strong player, she wasn’t initially considered elite. She appeared on Jeopardy! in 2005 when her daughter was just seven months old, taking a red-eye flight to L.A., consuming an entire Red Bull in the green room, promptly defeating a 19-day champion, and then just as quickly losing her second match. Following that, she spent years in the trivia wilderness before discovering LearnedLeague. It wasn’t until 2014 that she began to explore more challenging trivia realms. She also adopted Anki, dedicated more time to study, and soon found herself recruited by stronger players on more competitive teams. This fueled her ambition. She now dedicates approximately two hours daily to her pursuit of becoming the world’s best.
By any metric, her endeavor has been remarkably successful. She secured third place in last year’s World Quizzing Championships, just behind Meyer. She also achieved fourth place individually in the last season of OQL-USA and an impressive fourth place in OQL-UK (players can compete in both leagues), demonstrating a remarkable breadth of knowledge that even Blish and Meyer couldn’t match. Bahnaman considers her among the best in America, though Groce places herself slightly below Meyer and Perry. Regardless of her self-assessment, her rapid ascent is a marvel to her peers. If one were to wager on who will be the world’s best in five years, Groce would be a compelling choice.
The fact that Groce and Meyer are teammates on the same OQL team poses a significant challenge to their competitors. It’s unsurprising that they effortlessly secured the U.S. title in season one. However, their second-place finish in season two, relegating them to the second-tier match at the Magnusson-Trebek Trophy, was unexpected. There, they faced a British team led by Iain Thoms, a world-class quizzer whose unassuming demeanor—occasionally punctuated by self-deprecating remarks after a missed question (“You bloody pillock!”)—masks his status as one of the UK’s most decorated trivia stars.
Thoms is a former Quiz League of London individual champion. Last year, in the Quizzing World Cup final between Scotland and the US, he faced Steve Perry in an incredibly tense sudden-death overtime. They both answered questions about Iguazu Falls, a Theodore Gericault painting, and the Brazilian stew Feijoada. But when asked to name the American queer theorist who authored Gender Trouble, Perry couldn’t recall the answer at the crucial moment. Thoms, however, revealed the Cup-winning answer: Judith Butler. It was a quintessential “How on earth did he know that?” moment under immense pressure.
“The joke in trivia is that you participate in all these tournaments, do all this preparation,” Meyer told me, “and ultimately, you lose to Iain Thoms.”
But not this time. Thoms delivered his typically strong performance, but Neutral Milf Hotel was on fire. The score stood at 24-11 after the third round, effectively ending the match as a contest. When Meyer and Groce are at their peak, they are virtually invincible, and America secured a comfortable victory in the second most important match of the tournament.
This brings us to the championship match itself. Colby Burnett, no stranger to pressure situations, was uncharacteristically struggling. After answering his first two questions correctly, he entered a cold streak, missing his next four and conceding two steals. In round five, he faltered on a question about a show featuring a girl who plays for her high school’s male varsity basketball team. He incorrectly guessed Hoops High. As soon as the question went to the British team, he threw his hands up, slumped back in his chair, and exclaimed, “No! I know it now, dangit!” (The correct answer was Hang Time.)
This outburst offended Paul Sinha, who, in a measured tone, remarked, “Colby, I don’t know you, but it’s not fair that you caused that much noise.”
“I apologize,” Burnett responded. “I was emotional, sir.”
This constitutes a significant conflict in the trivia world. Burnett, now 37, possesses a unique background within the American trivia community. He is black and was raised by a single mother in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, which he describes as “not the roughest neighborhood in Chicago, but it’s not nice.” It takes more than a stern reprimand to unsettle him.
Burnett had few friends as a child, but he had a natural affinity for geography. Lacking the means to travel, books became his sole window to the wider world. “My brother received a set of New World Encyclopedias in 1987,” he recounted. “However, my brother was a juvenile delinquent and never read them. So, they ended up in my possession.”
He spent his free time delving into encyclopedic rabbit holes (he recalls reading the entry for “speedball” in fourth grade), and this nurtured his love of trivia. It was an unconventional passion, but his mother fully supported it. “Her perspective was, well, I could have a chubby, socially maladjusted kid who reads books and watches Star Trek,” he explained, “or he could be out on the streets. Option one isn’t ideal, but it’s preferable to option two.”
He attended high school in the suburbs, and as a self-described “out-of-shape, uncoordinated kid,” the academic team became his natural outlet. There, he could express himself, forge friendships, and excel at trivia.
By 2012, he was teaching at his former high school and was selected to compete in the Jeopardy! Teacher’s Tournament. He won the $100,000 prize, and months later, he won the $250,000 Tournament of Champions. The winnings enabled him to purchase a new house for his mother. He continued to pursue trivia, teaming up with Meyer, Groce, and others to win two Geek Bowl national championships. But when they disbanded for OQL, he was the one left out. “Fine,” he thought, “I’ll create my own team,” and 4 Out Of 5 Cats emerged.
Sinha, playing against Burnett, was also having a difficult day. He averaged over 6-of-8 answers per match during the season—third-best in the UK league, behind Thoms—but started the championship match at a mere 1-for-4. In moments of such struggle, an undercurrent of anxiety pervades him. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2019, he lives with the fear of cognitive decline.
“I know that my skills will begin to diminish at some point,” he admitted. “I simply don’t know when that will be. Looking at my stats, no one would believe I’m experiencing an existential crisis.”
Sinha has built his career on his intellect. Growing up in South London, the son of a doctor and a nurse, he was a self-proclaimed “facts hound” who eagerly anticipated receiving the Guinness Book of World Records for Christmas. He attended “posh schools,” became a doctor himself, and then transitioned to stand-up comedy. His life took a turn in 2007 when he had the opportunity to join a team of comedians on a spin-off of the BBC show University Challenge.
“Because I had a medical degree, they assumed I’d be proficient in science,” he explained. “What they didn’t realize was that I was desperate to be on any type of television quiz show.”
His team was soundly defeated, and a lutist—yes, a lutist—condescended to him afterward at the bar. It stung Sinha to realize that in a room filled with white, middle-class individuals from similar backgrounds, he was the least knowledgeable. He left the bar determined to surpass them all, and within three years, he had achieved that goal. By 2010, he ranked 31st in the World Championships out of over 1,000 participants, and a year later, he secured his role on the popular quiz show The Chase.
Unlike many other quizzers, Sinha doesn’t rely on visual memory techniques; memory palaces are not his forte. Instead, he employs intricate mnemonic devices.
“I have some very peculiar associations,” he shared. “For instance, element 111 on the periodic table, one-one-one, is nicknamed ‘Nelson’ [as in Admiral Horatio Nelson] because he had one eye, one arm, and one penis. And if that were the case, you’d probably need an x-ray, and who discovered x-rays? Wilhelm Rontgen. Element 111 is Roentgenium.”
His husband, Oliver Levy, is also an elite quizzer and a teammate. Their conversations often revolve around trivia, such as “Do you think it’s worth knowing that yak’s milk is pink?” This relationship has broadened Sinha’s knowledge base, which frequently proves advantageous. Last season, he and Levy led Quiz Machine Kills Fascists to victory over Neutral Milf Hotel, making it appear deceptively easy.
But now, in the title match against a team considered inferior, the situation was becoming complicated.
In the broader Magnusson-Trebek Trophy competition, encompassing 17 transatlantic battles, the American teams were poised for a second consecutive victory, leading 9.5-7.5. As in the first encounter, it fell to Quiz Machine Kills Fascists to demonstrate that even if the Americans were collectively stronger, the single best team remained British.
They transformed a halftime tie into a four-point lead with a perfect fifth round. In round six, when Burnett incorrectly identified Hussain II as the current custodian of Christian and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, Sinha stole the point by correctly naming King Abdullah. By the end of the round, Sinha had an opportunity to solidify their lead but failed to name the country associated with the domain .sx, which Charlie Fritz promptly stole back (Sint Maarten). In round 7, Dylan Minarik entered a state of trivia brilliance, answering his two-point question, stealing Levy’s question, and rescuing Amanda Walker after a miss. Sinha salvaged the round by correctly identifying the Swedish band “First Aid Kit,” a piece of knowledge he owed to his husband.
Entering the final round, Quiz Machine Kills Fascists held a 43-40 lead and appeared on the cusp of victory. Any misstep could prove fatal for the Americans. They desperately needed a break, and it arrived when Oliver Levy missed one of the most challenging questions of the entire match, concerning a South African province called Northern Cape. The Americans couldn’t steal, but the margin narrowed to a single point. Disaster seemed imminent when Minarik faced a question he appeared not to know:
“What organ of the Soviet Communist Party presided over its day-to-day operations, while the Politburo was responsible for legislative affairs? The last five Soviet leaders all participated in this political organization.”
He was faltering, but he knew he had to guess—every two-pointer was crucial. He managed to conjure a word from his memory that had a chance of being correct: Secretariat.
Correct. The match hinged on the final four questions.
Amanda Walker gave the Americans a one-point lead by correctly naming Judi Dench as the older Iris Murdoch in Iris. This shifted the pressure to Quiz Machine’s third seat, Peter Ediss, who had been anticipating the next question with trepidation. Because questions are written in themed pairs, the second question can often be anticipated after hearing the first. The reader had previously asked for the surname of the American owner of the soccer club Manchester United (Glazer). Both Ediss and Sinha had suspected that the owner of Liverpool, also American, would be next. Astonishingly, neither of them knew the answer. Ediss was forced to pass, and while Ned Pendleton provided the correct answer for the Brits (Henry), it only yielded one point. The match was now tied at 46-46 with two questions remaining.
Charlie Fritz, the unsung hero for the Americans, was then asked to identify the periodic table element named after France. His voice trembled, but he knew the answer: Gallium. Minarik pumped his fist; Burnett exhaled. With that two-pointer, the Americans had completed a perfect final round and secured at least a tie. (There would be no tiebreaker.)
All eyes turned to Paul Sinha for the final question. Passing to a teammate was not an option; he needed two points to secure a draw and a shared title. Anything less would mean a stunning defeat.
“Go on Paul, you can do it,” Ediss* encouraged, a hint of tension in his voice.
The reader paused for silence. “Cormac McCarthy took the title of his novel No Country for Old Men from a line in which W.B. Yeats poem?” he asked.
Sinha furrowed his brow. His palm went to his forehead. A look of profound uncertainty washed over his face. Players have 15 seconds to answer, and each second ticked away. He stared off to the side, perplexed, as the Americans held their breath.
It was all a performance. Sinha not only knew the answer but had anticipated this exact question earlier in the match, following its themed pair about “The Second Coming,” another Yeats poem that inspired Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart. Among his many talents is a flair for the dramatic.
His palm left his forehead. He glanced up at the camera, began to speak, and then paused. Finally, with the clock nearly expiring, he sensed his moment.
“Sailing to Byzantium,” he declared, with only a trace of uncertainty in his voice.
Correct.
*UPDATE (8/27): The attribution of this quote has been corrected from Ned Pendleton to Peter Ediss, who was the actual speaker.
