In Pursuit of Trivia : Jobs: Writers for a Carlsbad company that makes interactive trivia contests don’t sweat the small stuff. Some don’t even care for it.
Anthony Spies loses at Trivial Pursuit.
This should make anyone who has ever been frustrated trying to win those colored pie slices take heart, because Spies earns his living by thinking up trivia questions.
Aided by a stack of reference books and a milk crate full of newspapers, Spies conjures up about 40 questions a day for NTN Communications. The Carlsbad-based firm produces and markets an interactive trivia contest played in more than 750 sports bars, bowling alleys, hotels and other venues nationwide and abroad.
Spies is one of about 20 “general knowledge question” writers for NTN, and his “office” is a room the size of a walk-in closet with a view of airplanes landing at Palomar Airport.
He tires of explaining what he does for a living to people who thenask him a trivia question, patiently waiting for an answer.
“People just naturally assume that I’m a trivia lover, but I’m not THAT interested,” said the 26-year-old Fullerton native who has been writing trivia questions for four years. “I can’t even remember them after I write them.”
As he leans his chair back on two legs, his worn sneakers pushing against the table, a blinking cursor on the blue field of his computer monitor beckons for a question. He needs to be prolific since each question pays $3.50.
Question: “Which was the last (National Basketball Assn.) player to win the All-Star MVP in his home city?”
Answer: Michael Jordan, 1988, in Chicago.
What started as a 12-hour-a-week job while studying communications at UC San Diego turned into a full-time job he somehow hasn’t escaped. He doesn’t plan on a trivia career, but then again he hadn’t planned on doing it for this long.
“I want to try to get into advertising, I think,” Spies said. “That’s the best answer I can give right now. It might change next week.”
About 10,000 contestants plop down every day in front of computer pads and television monitors at local establishments, answer NTN trivia questions and play other interactive games. Scores are tallied at the Carlsbad headquarters and, for some games, prizes such as cars and trips abroad are awarded.
“If you like trivia, you shouldn’t write it because you’ll never want to play it again,” said Debra Weiss, producer of several game shows that the 9-year-old company produces. “It’s like an electrician that doesn’t wire his own house.”
The writers, most of whom work at home and transmit their questions via modem or by computer disk, are from a broad range of backgrounds, from housewives to pilots.
Denise Grace, a housewife-turned-trivia-writer, has a knack for music questions and wants the company to put together a rock music trivia game similar to the sports trivia game that NTN now markets.
“I got that sort of stuff on the tip of my tongue,” the 38-year-old Grace said. “Stuff like latitude and longitude eludes me, but I know who plays guitar for Nirvana.”
Weiss, who began as the firm’s first trivia question writer seven years ago, deals with consumer complaints about questions and hires the writers.
Trivia geniuses, however, need not apply.
“I hire people who say ‘I love to write, I’ll write whether you hire me or not,” Weiss said.
“Are they strange?” Weiss said. “You only start realizing they are strange when you talk to them and they say things like, ‘Did you know that elephants and pigs are the only animals that can get a sunburn?’ ”
Vague questions can be troublesome, said Weiss, who handles customers complaining about questions and answers.
“Things like, ‘When did the Vietnam War begin?,’ well, there are all sorts of possible answers to that, like when the troops went over or when the French pulled out,” Weiss said.
But just because it’s trivial doesn’t mean NTN will buy it.
“We don’t want the people to feel like they’re taking a test,” Weiss said. “They’re playing a game.
Since it’s all in good fun, some topics are off limits.
“We don’t talk about AIDS or cigarette smoking and lung cancer or drinking and driving,” Weiss said.
There is such a thing as too trivial, a tendency to which Grace admits.
“You can’t be too obscure in this game,” said Grace, who works out of her Carlsbad home while raising her 12- and 14-year-old sons. “You can ask a question about David Hockney, but you have to tell who he is before you ask the question.”
