I recently caught up with Josh Hill who made TOTW in Season 13 Week 11 of OQL USA. He recently celebrated a birthday and I met up with him in Little Rock, Arkansas for an interview. Hill was on the first Friendly Writer's MTT team for Team USA and is a Season 34 seven time Jeopardy! champ. Rich: How did you first get into trivia as a hobby? Hill: Thanks Tim! I have been quizzing for most if my life, going back to junior high school and on into college. I have always loved learning about the world and the people in it, and trivia sort of sprung from there. I unconsciously stepped away from trivia after leaving college, but my quizbowl captain Andrew Wehrman invited me to LearnedLeague, and I was soon hooked again. Rich: How did you first get into OQL as a player? Hill: I saw posts on the LearnedLeague message boards about the Online Quiz League at the outbreak of the pandemic, and I decided to give it a shot. Great call, that! Anyway, the commissioner at the time formed a scratch ...
I recently caught up with Shrug Emoji’s Collette Lee who made TOTW in Week. She has made team of the week three times this season so I made the trip to Paxton, Illinois and chatted with her about trivia and other things while enjoying burgers and fries at Just Hamburgers. Rich: How did you first get into OQL? Did you know your teammates when Shrug Emoji was formed? Lee: I signed up as a scratch player for Connections Online Quiz League back in August 2023 and ended up on a team with James, Phil, and Mike. We realized in playing together that we had very different but highly complementary knowledge bases, so we started playing in OQL USA in Season 11 and have been Shrugging together there ever since! Rich: what other formats of OQL do you play? What other online leagues are you a part of? Lee: I play with Shrug Emoji in COQL and QuIP in addition to OQL. I’m also part of the Chicago Malört Cohort in OQL Regions. Individually, I play LearnedLeague, Pop Solos, ICC, and Mim...