I recently caught up with Ed’s Tucker Warner who made TOTW in Week 7. Tucker is an active member of the trivia community and very loyal to his friends. We sat down at Ribalto in Greenwich Village for some delicious Neapolitan pizza and chatted about trivia and other vital topics.
Tim: Congrats on TOTW last week. What stood out to you about the set and did you realize your teammate Abhi also got TOTW?
Tucker: Thanks! Two of my teammates got six direct questions right, so I figured either Abhi or Robin Falco would make TOTW. I had a 12(5), so I was only the third-highest scorer on my team. It was a really good game for my team overall!
Tim: How did you first get into trivia as a hobby?
Tucker: I’ve been a huge baseball fan my entire life, and I think baseball fandom naturally lends itself to trivia more than almost any other interest does. Even when I was a really young kid, I was constantly reading books about historical baseball players, trying to memorize the 3,000 home run club, reading the trivia on the back of my baseball cards, etc. I’m also very competitive and watched a lot of game shows growing up, especially Jeopardy, so any form of trivia became a pursuit I wanted to be good at. It’s always been mostly related to sports, though. Even now, many of my hangouts with friends just turn into asking whatever sports trivia we saw recently.
Tim: How did you first get into OQL-USA? Did you know all your teammates? What other iterations do you play and what non-OQL online leagues are you in?
Tucker: When COVID hit, pretty much every basketball court shut down—at the time, I played about four times a week—and while I could still exercise by myself, I was desperate for some form of competitive pursuit. I heard through the LearnedLeague message boards that OQL USA was forming, and I signed up right away.
I registered for the first season as a scratch player, since I didn’t know many people in the trivia scene personally, just by reputation through LearnedLeague or game show appearances. Thankfully, I got placed with a great group. Raghuveer, Zach, and Alex made the core of the original team, and they were excellent teammates. Eventually I split off to form another team with Lindsay Sobczak, and she brought a group of people she knew from Jeopardy who I didn’t know yet, but have since become good friends. I eventually added a couple friends of mine—Abhi and I were friends in high school, and Andy was my college roommate. While I do still think of trivia as a competitive pursuit first, OQL is a format where it’s important to me to have teammates I like being around and can be friendly with.
I’ve been playing a lot of leagues this year! I’ve been in every season of OQL Regions and Connections (where my teammates for both are also great), and Pop Solos. I’ve been playing Mimir’s Well more than usual, and I’m trying out ICC (International Culture Challenge) for the first time right now, which has been a really difficult challenge for me, since I’m a pop culture specialist. I also played Quiz Nations earlier in 2024, and did the FLAMES side event that was a duos-style before-and-after quiz.
For daily leagues, I play LearnedLeague, BP Trivia, and my favorite of these (naturally) is Apocalypse Sports Trivia. They’re all really high quality.
Tim: : Why did your team change its name from Rusty Snails to Ed.?
Tucker: When I formed my second team, we were joining as a new team. Since everyone else was naming their team after a pop culture reference or a pun, we thought it would be funny to just give our team a dude’s name. It was between Ed. or Doug.. The period after the name is mandatory.
Tim : What was it like being on the Battle of the Brains team that won it all in 2022?
Tucker: Before we won, it honestly felt a little intimidating. I had already been friends with Amanda Walker and Jeff Frank, but at the time I felt pretty out of place being on a team with five trivia veterans (including Josh Heit, Matty Kimberlin, and Jonathan Hess) who all have a really strong reputation. This was my first time being invited to a team for a major event, and it was my first time even attending an event like that, so I put a lot of pressure on myself to make sure I wouldn’t be dead weight. Truthfully, I’m not sure I contributed anything—every answer I knew, someone else already knew it too. But that’s a perk of being on such a strong team! They didn’t need me there for anything except vibes, and that helped me feel the pressure fade away. I can’t provide answers to science questions, but I can provide vibes.
It was obviously a great experience from there. I got to live out my dream of being awarded a giant novelty check! The winnings covered my expenses for the trip, which was a huge plus, but that giant novelty check could have said $0.05 and I would’ve been happy.
Tim: Besides SporcleCon, what other big trivia events have you attended?
Tucker: Actually none! I wasn’t into the national trivia scene until OQL USA started, and many of the events from before 2020 haven’t quite come back. I’m very interested in the return of Trivia Nationals though.
Tim: What is the live trivia scene like in NYC? Do you play at the same venues every week?
Tucker: New York is definitely one of the best cities in the country for live trivia. I play almost every week with local friends at our hangout pub, but there’s several really good leagues and events in the city. I’m a particularly big fan of the notoriously-difficult movie trivia night at my favorite Brooklyn theater, the Nitehawk, where we often lose to the hosts of my favorite movie podcast, Blank Check. I also love getting together with OQL friends (whether local to NYC or just visiting) to play at different venues that I wouldn’t have otherwise gone to.
Tim: : It was a thrill for me to play the O’Briens' Oscars Quiz with you, Randall, Yogesh, Amy, Dan, and Kristen. I was mostly dead weight but glad to see you all in action.
What is the dining scene like in your borough and city? What is your favorite restaurant, food, and drink?
Tucker: Admittedly, as much as I love food and drink, I know very little about it, and it’s certainly my weakest trivia category. There are a small handful of great restaurants near me, but the best ones in the city are in different neighborhoods and boroughs. I’m trying to explore different cuisines more often than I did before, since New York is the first city I’ve lived in that had a flourishing culinary scene. If I had to pick a favorite restaurant, it’s the pub that I’m a regular at, but that’s far more for the ambience and social scene.
I have really strong opinions about New York pizza. And that opinion is that all of the pizza is good. I have my favorite nicer, higher-end pizza places, but I also love a dollar slice after a show or game, or on a late night walk.
I’m more in touch with the bar scene than the restaurants, but I’m not sure I have a favorite drink. I recently discovered iced coffee, which has finally burrowed its way into my life after 30 years of never drinking it. I love an aqua velva—the drink that Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr share in Zodiac—but that’s very strong and bartenders tend to look at me sideways when I order it. I’m a bigger fan of breweries and beer. I’m trying to visit every brewery in New York.
Tim : What pro sports teams are you a fan of? What are your top five memories as a fan?
Tucker: This question might result in a novel-length response from me. I’m a big fan of the Yankees, the Carolina pro teams (Hurricanes, Panthers, Charlotte FC, and unfortunately for me, even the Hornets), Chelsea FC (there’s a great culture of soccer pubs in Brooklyn), and I’m becoming a New York Liberty fan. It was great to see a local team win a championship!
I’d also be remiss if I didn’t extend this to college, because I’ve always been a UConn super-fan, which was only slightly awkward when I attended Syracuse for college. If I had to pick an unordered list of top five moments as a fan, they’d be something like this:
1. Attending the national championship in 2014 when UConn won its fourth men’s title. I went with my family and we stayed at the same hotel as the team and the Turner Sports crew. The party went on all night, and I got to meet multiple basketball legends, including Oscar Robertson and a very-drunk Charles Barkley. I have a lot of pictures from that day, but the one with me and Chuck is one of my all-time favorites.
2. One of my favorite traditions is going to the Big East men’s basketball tournament at Madison Square Garden, which I’m able to do every year now that I’m in New York. It’s an environment unlike any other I’ve ever been to, and I highly recommend going for any basketball fan. One of the first times I went was the same year as the famous Kemba Walker buzzer beater against Pittsburgh, which gets replayed all the time as one of the iconic moments in college basketball history. That was really a magical season, and Kemba’s individual brilliance was the reason for it. I’ll never forget when the defenders switched on the ball screen, and for the first and only time in my life, I was 100% confident that the game-winning shot would go in.
3. My first time attending a playoff game in Yankee Stadium was a tense 1-0 win in the 2017 ALDS. The Yankees had to come back from a deficit, down two games to zero before the series came back to the Bronx. Masahiro Tanaka threw an absolute gem—I love watching great pitching—and when Greg Bird hit the one home run of the game in the seventh inning, the bleachers turned into absolute pandemonium.
4. My dad and I have a plan to travel to a new city to watch a college football game every year, an excuse both to travel and see some great gameday environments, and our first road trip was to see UConn play at Notre Dame. South Bend was a beautiful campus and it was fun to experience the Notre Dame traditions, but it was a very emotional season, as the Huskies’ star defensive player and leader was murdered after a game, and while the players desperately wanted to win a big game for a beloved teammate, the team had suffered a few heartbreaking losses in a row. The team finally broke through with a massive upset win against a powerhouse, and I’ve never heard louder celebrations from visiting fans. It meant a lot to everyone.
5. I was watching this one from home, but one time the Hurricanes had both goalies get hurt, and had to play the emergency replacement goalie, who was a 42-year-old minor league zamboni driver with no playing experience, and the Canes still beat the Maple Leafs, and I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as hard or as long as I did during that game.
Tim: Who is on your Mount Rushmore of Women’s Basketball players from UConn?
Tucker: Stewie, Diana, Sue Bird, and Maya Moore. Paige Bueckers is also great, but this is the UConn women’s basketball program, and you’ve gotta win a title to make the Mount Rushmore. Hopefully this is the year!
Tim: I am glad the Liberty won as it is a sad state for NY sports. The Yanks losing in the World Series this year really crushed me.
Should Danny Hurley have taken the Lakers job?
Tucker: No way! Not only is he set for life at UConn, but his wife is such a Jersey girl. She’d never leave the northeast.
Tim: What movies have you watched in 2024 that stood out for you?
Tucker: Shockingly for me, I took a months-long hiatus from watching movies. I normally watch a few hundred a year, but I’m only at 106 for 2024 so far! That said, there have been two huge standouts among new movies:
Hundreds of Beavers is one of the funniest I’ve seen in theaters in a long time—it’s a blend of the Looney Tunes/Chuck Jones comedic sensibility, by way of a 1910s silent vaudeville aesthetic. On paper it sounds like a hard sell, but it’s just joke after joke after joke, and all of them hit. I loved it.
On the other end of the spectrum, I Saw the TV Glow is existentially horrifying and also the best movie I’ve seen this decade. It’s not what I’d call “a good time,” but it’s a completely unique piece that speaks to multiple levels of being while remaining firmly grounded in genre and a shared sense of time and place. As a writer, I’m in awe that Jane Schoenbrun was able to pull this off. Nobody’s tried anything like this before, and they mastered it in the first go.
Tim: Who is your favorite actor, actress, and director?
Tucker: I don’t know if I could choose just one, but I’ll pick a recent favorite for each! For actors, I’ll go with Adam Driver, who I think chooses really interesting projects (give or take the movie where he hunted dinosaurs) and fits every style I’ve seen him perform in.
Tim: Adam Driver was robbed of the Oscar ( Marriage Story) and the Tony ( Burn This) as far as I’m concerned.
Tucker: For actresses, I’m really drawn to the work of Deragh Campbell, who performs mostly in Canadian indie movies; she’s had to pull off some really, really difficult stuff to fit different formal premises, and I always come away impressed. Director is especially tough for me to choose, since there are several dozen working directors who I’ll see any movie from, but currently I’m really interested in Robert Eggers. For a director who’s clearly so inspired by works from different mediums, I love how he makes his movies feel literary and rooted in a sense of contemporaneousness; it adds another layer of understanding and contextuality to his films.
Tim: If you could have dinner and play pub trivia with any five people in history ( dead or alive), who would you choose?
Tucker: There’s a lot of people and historical figures who I’d love to meet, but I’d love a chance to play a sports-themed trivia game with sports historians, who I’d love getting the opportunity to learn more from. One day I really want to compete in the baseball trivia event at the annual SABR convention of baseball, and I know I’d need some teammates who are more well-versed in the history than I am! I would prefer to play trivia with them alive, if possible.
Tim: Did you try out for Jeopardy pop culture and will we see you on any other game shows in the future?
Tucker: I did try out for pop culture Jeopardy, but my team didn’t make it to the audition stage. If there’s a second season, we’ll be trying out again! In the meantime, I’m excited to see some of my friends on the show, and one of my OQL teammates was a writer, so I’m really looking forward to the show’s release.
I can be selective with the game shows I audition for, so other than PCJ, I’m not sure if I’ll be auditioning for anything else—especially if The Chase doesn’t come back anytime soon. But if a new show comes along, I’m definitely going to look into it.
Tim: What are the top five musical artists on your playlist?
Tucker: My two favorite artists both released albums this year, so I had a brat summer followed by a Charly Bliss fall—they’re an indie rock group that started as a pop/grunge act that has morphed more into a pop/rock sound, and all of their changes have worked well for me. They’re an incredibly fun live show too! I think the best actively touring rock band is a group called Momma based in Brooklyn, who remind me a lot of my favorite 90s bands like the Smashing Pumpkins and Pavement. Another current favorite is the extended MJ Lenderman musical universe, so his solo work, his band Wednesday, and his collaborations with Waxahatchee. And given recent events, I’ve also been listening to a lot of Rage Against the Machine lately. They speak to my soul.
Tim: Thank you for your time and I wish you all joy in your future quizzing endeavors.
Comments
Post a Comment