The host announced the final category: this day in history. Laura Watkins, 2006 graduate, took a swig of her Newcastle and decided with the three guys on her team to bet all of their points. They were far behind the other 11 teams playing at the Brick, 1727 McGee St. in Kansas City, Mo., that Friday night, and had nothing to lose.

“On what show was John Lennon’s death first announced?”

Watkins was worried. Under pressure her memory is horrible, she says.

Then it hit her.

“Just from a time I randomly vegged out in front of VH1 for like, 20 hours, I remembered it was announced on Monday Night Football,” Watkins says.

Because of Watkins’s ability to retain this seemingly useless piece of information, her team was the only one to answer the question correctly. They won first place.

Watkins is one of several dozen regular trivia players in Lawrence. She plays almost every week in different bars around town. Watkins says she enjoys trivia because she’s naturally competitive and learns interesting, random facts. But the main reason she plays is to spend time with her friends, she says.

So if you’re stuck in Lawrence over spring break, avoid the usual get-drunk-and-stand-around routine, and give trivia a try — you just might learn something useless.

What is trivia?

Trivia first took off in the United States in 1927, although the term wasn’t coined until the 1960s. The publication of a series of popular quizbooks called Ask Me Another, filled with questions like “what is a Bunsen burner?” and “how do kangaroos carry their offspring?” got Americans hooked on quizzing themselves.

Trivia in Lawrence is set up in a system similar to the one used on Jeopardy!. Teams select categories and answer questions for points. One team can challenge another team if they think the other team won’t be able to come up with the answer. If the other team fails, the original team receives double the points. If the team being challenged answers the questions correctly, they receive double the points.

The points are also doubled in the second round, and at the end comes a final question, for which teams know the category and must make a wager before they are asked the question. The team with the most points wins.

Smackdown in L-town

Several bars around town host trivia nights. Andy Morton hosts what is arguably Lawrence’s most popular trivia night, Smackdown! Trivia at the Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire St.

“There are a lot of people that just remember the strangest things,” Morton says. “Where else are you going to be able to vomit up all of that knowledge?”

Jon Nicklas, Overland Park senior and a regular trivia player, says that people who are into trivia are usually relatively smart people who like to learn eclectic information that can come in handy during conversation.

“For some reason, I like knowing obscure facts,” Nicklas says.

The best moments in trivia are when the answer hits you like a bolt of lightning, says Dan Pierron, Olathe senior, who plays and hosts trivia regularly in Lawrence.

Pierron’s love of trivia began with Trivial Pursuit when he was a kid. He participated in scholars’ bowls in high school and now plays at bars for fun. During school breaks, he usually doesn’t miss an episode of Jeopardy!, he says.

Some people might be naturally more inclined than others to soak up trivial information, says Ray Hamel, a former trivia writer for the New York Times and co-author of The New York Times Trivia Quiz Book. He says that the ability to recall trivia is a talent that people are born with.

“I’ve known people who try blunt force memorization of facts,” Hamel says. “Trivia people want to know what they know — studying takes the fun out of it.”

Both Hamel and Morton, the trivia host, have experience on the other side of the trivia aisle as well: they have to write it. Hamel says that most of the puzzles he writes begin with a basic theme and he then formulates questions related to that theme. Most of the questions come straight from his own trivia-filled memory, Hamel says. He then fills in the last few pieces needed by looking online or in a thesaurus.

Morton has to write 100 new questions each week for Smackdown! Trivia, an event he has hosted for seven years. “Do that math,” he says. Sometimes it feels like a chore for Morton, and other times he has no trouble creating the 12 categories and questions to fit them, he says.

Morton says that sometimes he intentionally tries to irk people with the categories he creates. His favorite example? Full House questions.

Trivia is a creative effort; hosts come up with categories like “celebrity pedophiles” and “famous cheaters” and teams who play trivia create team names like “the Fibonacci Sequins” and “the Amazing Racists”.

The winners of trivia usually earn a small cash prize, but they also walk out with enough tidbits of worthless information to add up to one bloated ego and several weeks’ worth of bragging rights.