Spilling the sweet tea with Greg Fanoe

 I recently ventured down to Tampa to interview Greg Fanoe who made TOTW in Season 17 week 8 of OQL USA. This is his fifth time making team of the week and he was the only one to get a full house on the set. 

I met up with him at one of Tampa's first Michelin starred restaurants, Rocca in Tampa Heights. Their tableside mozzarella cart was fascinating and  I tried the Agnolotti, a stuffed pasta that I had never had before. For such a nice place, it was very affordable.

Tim: How did you first get into trivia as a hobby? What are your first memories of it?

Greg: I’ve always been interested in trivia. My family was big on Jeopardy! & Trivial Pursuit from when I was a kid. In high school I was part of my quiz bowl team at Walton High in Marietta, GA which was reliably a top level team until our longtime coach retired not long after I left (my team got top 5 at both of the first two NAQT nationals in 1999 and 2000). 

After high school, my college didn’t have a quiz bowl team and I have not much interest in bar trivia, so I had essentially no involvement in formal trivia for a long time. But I still was interested in learning as much as I could. Even without any trivia motivation at all, I was obsessively trying to memorize names of actors and musicians, reading Wikipedia pages of people 2 or 3 days in a row to try to memorize names and facts, etc. I can’t account much for it, it’s just always been the way I am. I wrote trivia quizzes on Facebook for my friends for a few years and it was through that where I got an LL invite from one of my old quiz bowl teammates in 2017 and that’s how I got into the hobby.

It was in 2019 that I decided to start taking studying and improving in trivia seriously though having a second kid in 2021 has definitely slowed my studying down since then and I haven’t been regularly flashcarding since mid-2024 (I try to keep it up off-and-on so I don’t get too far behind).

Tim: When and how did you first get into OQL? What team did you join and what has the experience been like? Was Season 13 your favorite when you led the league in scoring?

Greg: Since I knew absolutely nobody in the trivia community and have a fairly high level of social anxiety, I had no real interest in joining any team events, but persuaded myself to sign up for the first season of Pop Solos when it happened. The live online format definitely hooked me right away and I signed up as a scratch player for OQL-USA the next season. I was placed with Very Stable Geniuses who I played with for several seasons until that team dissolved and I joined Rusty Snails a couple of seasons ago.

Leading the league in scoring was a fun accomplishment that I’m very proud of, but I’ve enjoyed all of the seasons I’ve played. Generally, I think the quality of questions continues to improve over time in OQL so I suppose the current seasons I’ve enjoyed more.

Tim: Have you ever been on a game show? Are you currently trying out for one?

Greg: I’ve never been on a game show and have no particular interest in doing so; though I always do take the Jeopardy! Test to make sure I’m at least in the pool. I even made the in person stage of the process once in about 2012 though wasn’t picked for the show.

Tim: Do you play live trivia at any bars or restaurants in your city? What is the scene there like?

Greg: We recently moved to Tampa so I don’t know much about here. In Atlanta, my wife and I would play at Cultivation Brewery in Peachtree Corners a few times a year. Before it closed down a few years ago (RIP), my favorite place for trivia in Atlanta was definitely The Highlander though I always lived pretty far away from it so it was hard to go too regularly.

Tim: Have you ever attended SporcleCon, Trivia Nationals or Geek Bowl in the past? If so, what was it like?


Greg:  I’ve never attended any in-person trivia events, largely because my wife has absolutely no interest in trivia and it’s hard for me to justify leaving my wife home alone with the kids for a weekend (and incurring the associated expenses) so that I can attend a trivia event.

Tim: What are your top five trivia/quiz highlights both as an individual and as part of a team? Was the full house in Week 8 of this season your best OQL game ever?

Greg: I’ve had a few full houses before, but that week might be my best in context because both of my Level 4 questions (Troy Baker and Lizzie Borden) played really hard. I’d never heard of the filmmaker Lizzie Borden at all until she showed up on KFL a week or two before OQL Week 8 so that was a bit of serendipity.

Top 5 Highlights (no order):

1. Finishing 40th at the LL Championship in 2019 before I had ever started any sort of studying or preparing for trivia. I am very hard on myself when it comes to trivia results, especially since I started flashcarding (I’ve worked on this but it’s hard to avoid), and this is one of the few accomplishments I can look back on with no regrets at all.

2. Making the finals 2 seasons in a row of Mimir’s Well competition (granted, I made some silly mistakes in my first match that cost me a legit chance at the win and got absolutely rinsed by Evan Lynch in the 2nd match but still ‘it was an honor just to be there’)

3. Finishing a season as the top scorer by own gets in OQL USA.

4. Overall performance level in Pop Solos, including making the finals once and another time getting a full house of 15/15 in a week where nobody else got above 13.

5. Putting together 3 MiniLeagues on LearnedLeague where I was really happy with the quality of the final work (2 interactions of Online Content and one World of Pop Music)

Tim: Besides trivia, what are your other hobbies and interests?

Greg: I don’t get a ton of free time and most of what I do have I spend with my kids, but there are still a few:

1. Listening to music. I’ve always been a pop music fanatic and try to stay up as much as I can. I usually either listen to music or YouTube videos in the background throughout my work day.

2. Playing video games, largely Magic: the Gathering Arena and some puzzle and roguelike games when I do get time

3. I used to be a very regular reader (50+ books a year) before the kids were born, now between work, the kids and trivia it’s hard to make the time.

4. I follow professional sports as much as I can, rooting for all the Atlanta teams 

Tim: If you could have dinner and play trivia with any five guests in history, who would you choose?

Greg: If I go the cliche route and pick dead relatives (my mom and 3 grandparents) that still leaves one slot open, so I may as well throw Audrey Hepburn in there whose movies I’ve been obsessed with since I was in high school (I went through a stretch of trying to watch all of her movies and got at least 90% of the way through it and this was pre-Netflix so that was not an easy task).

Tim: What films did you watch in 2025/2026 and which of them do you want to win Oscars?

Greg: I almost never watch non-kids movies and when I do I have very mainstream/lowbrow tastes that often don’t align with the Oscars. I think the only movie I saw in the theaters last year without my kids was when my wife and I had a date night to see Hamnet.

The only Oscar-winning feature films I saw were Hamnet and K-Pop Demon Hunters and their wins were largely guaranteed before the ceremony so not much to root for there. But my wife and I did see the Oscar-nominated live action shorts (an annual tradition of ours) so my chief rooting interest was for The Singers in that category and it did win (or half-win but a trophy’s a trophy).

Tim: What is your favorite food and beverage? What is the dining scene like where you live?

Greg: My mom was full-blooded Italian and her parents had immigrated from Italy, so largely my favorite foods tend to be Italian food (and it’s a cliche but it is hard to find Italian food that stacks up to how my grandmother’s food tasted in my memory). At my present house in Tampa I live within walking distance of many good restaurants along the Riverwalk so that is nice. Atlanta, where I lived my entire adult life up until February of this year, had a great food scene. Atlanta is home to sizeable immigrant populations from almost everywhere in the world so it’s easy to find great restaurants of almost every type around the world there.

Tim: Besides OQL, what other quiz leagues do you play in?

Greg: My favorite was probably the late, great Mimir’s Well. Right now I play LearnedLeague, KFL, QuizNations when I can and most of the OQL offerings that I can (OQL USA, UK, COQL, and ICC)

Tim: I am glad you signed a deal to play Quiz Nations Global with COG back in 2025!.

What kind of music do you listen to and what are your favorite bands?

Greg: Again it’s a cliche but genuinely true that I listen to all sorts of music. Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of international music, mostly from Nigeria, South Africa, and Brazil.

But off the top of my head my top 10 all time favorite albums might be something like:

Amaarae - The Angel You Don’t Know

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - E. 1999 Eternal

Brian Eno - Here Come the Warm Jets

The Cardigans - Long Gone Before Daylight

Clint Black - Killin’ Time

Cocteau Twins - Treasure

Fiona Apple - When the Pawn…

Janet Jackson - Control

John Mellencamp - Scarecrow

Rolling Stones - Aftermath

I’m not much of an album listener though, more of a Spotify playlister. I keep a playlist of my all-time favorite songs here: 

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3TctWscUxUKihYO9K6hAyz?si=ZxXCankaRX-loLq-mHTjfA&pi=_7QH9CrWTa25I

Tim: Thank you and it's been a pleasure. You are lucky to live in such a nice warm city.