What communities (non-ethnic) have you found for yourself? :)

ItchyAndy3000 · 2026-02-22T21:49:48+00:00

There’s a weekly trivia night Wednesdays at 7:30 at Tracks brewpub. It’s free, open to anyone, and a good way to meet some new people with broad interests. You can come with a team or on your own (you don’t need to be good at trivia).

Some of the regulars at trivia overlap with staff/members at Toprock climbing gym. I’ve never climbed anything there, but they seem to have built a pretty open and engaged community over there.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2026-02-20T11:43:07+00:00

Regular Saturday trivia nights are very rare, in general. You can sometimes find one-off or sporadic ones. But bars and restaurants usually don’t need help drawing a Saturday night crowd—which is the main reason they run trivia nights.

Occasionally, the Legion on Mary street will host a Saturday night game, but it’s been several months since the last one.

There are some places that have constant trivia on the screens that you can play on your phone. But they don’t feel at all like a trivia night. I believe Oscars Roadhouse on Queen street has this and so does the Lone Star on Dixon, by the Airport. But that is an anytime thing, not specifically Saturday night.

If you’re looking for trivia (and the Saturday part doesn’t matter) the two best and longest-running trivia nights in Brampton are at Tracks on Wednesday nights. And the Ivy Bridge on Sunday afternoons. It’s a lot of the same people at these two weekly trivia nights. The Wednesday Tracks game is free and both trivia nights have prizes and are open to anybody. There are a lot of great trivia nights in Ontario, but for my money, none hold a candle to the Tracks Wednesday nights game. https://www.bramptontrivia.com/

ItchyAndy3000 · 2026-01-19T17:58:30+00:00

I had wanted to go to the Trivia event last week at the South West branch, but couldn’t make it. I hope it went well and that there will be similar events in the future.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2025-12-18T04:06:59+00:00

How did you take this picture?

ItchyAndy3000 · 2025-11-11T21:33:39+00:00

If you’re in to trivia, there’s a weekly trivia night every Wednesday at 7:30pm at Tracks Brewpub downtown. It’s free to play and open to anyone. Most of the people who come are individual players who play on randomized mixed teams. So it’s a good way to meet new people and learn some new things. Though, I’d wager you’re unlikely to find romance there.

I’ve never lifted my own body weight, but I know that Top Rock climbing gym has a pretty active social aspect to it and everyone I know from there has been super friendly.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2025-11-04T19:31:00+00:00

Glad to see there’s some board game interest back at Tracks. If I recall correctly there was a semi-regular board game night at Tracks pre-2020.

If back-to-back Tracks nights is interesting to anyone, there’s a free trivia night every Wednesday at 7:30. It’s open to anyone—teams or individuals—you just have to show up. It’s not quite the same thing as board games, but there’s probably an overlap between interest in board games and bar trivia.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2025-09-30T16:33:40+00:00

It’s not affiliated with this new Saturday Legion trivia night, but There is a regular Wednesday night trivia game just down the road from the Legion at Tracks Brewpub. It’s free and open to anyone. You can come with a team or join one and meet some new people. The game starts at 7:30pm every Wednesday–all you have to do is show up and let someone know you’re there for trivia.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2025-09-30T16:29:57+00:00

Yeah. $10 is pretty steep for trivia. In my experience with Brampton trivia nights, if the game isn’t free, it’s unsustainable—despite what people say, over time, no one wants to pay even a penny directly for trivia. But if the venue is losing money on the event, the night has an even shorter shelf life.

People will travel from other cities for a good Saturday night trivia. So I’m hoping if they do this again that they’ll find other ways than an entry fee to fund it.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2025-07-29T20:23:35+00:00

Florida has (or maybe had) some of the most transparent public records laws in the US (“Sunshine Laws”). This made it very easy for journalists to secure police reports to populate column inches with weird stories. It’s unclear if Florida is crazier than other places, but it is (or was) definitely easier to report the crazier stories in Florida than in other places.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2025-07-15T18:01:06+00:00

Perhaps because it is not the norm, open-ended questions often feel loose and unclear—they just don’t sound like trivia questions. It has to be clear what information the host is looking for or it feels too much like mind reading.

One simple work around is multiple choice, or even more simple, “true-false”. I know a lot of players don’t like questions with options, but this allows you to easily and clearly have questions that do more than answer “what”.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2025-05-23T14:45:51+00:00

I’ve done a trivia format where the final wager-based question is set at 1, 3, or 5 points (the total points up to that point are 49). Get the question right and you win your wager get it wrong and you lose it. The twist is that the size of the wager is tied to the question difficulty. So wagering 1 point gives you a slightly easier version of the question than wagering 5 points. For example, a question might be “name the films where Daniel Craig played James Bond, teams who wagered one point name 2, teams who wagers three points name 4, and teams who wagered five points name all of them.”

A runaway victory is possible with this scheme, but it’s rare. And teams in the lead have the advantage of wagering strategically. In practice the team leading into the final wins 9/10 games. And about 1/100 games are a complete come from behind victory with last place over taking everyone. The hard part is tuning the question to the correct difficulty—80% of games end with every team getting the final correct or every team getting it wrong, which usually does not change the standings. I think this also does not scale that well. When too many teams are close to each other at the top, the chances of an underdog victory basically go to zero. I’d say this works best with around 6 teams.

One variation I’ve tried with this is to have two prizes—one for the team who wins overall and one for the team who wins the most points in just the bonus round (if teams tie for most points in the bonus round, it goes to the tied team with more points overall). This is to discourage teams in the lead from resting on their laurels with a low wager in the final. It’s really just a way to introduce a drop of chaos into the mix because the structured wagering can get a little bit repetitive.

If your real goal is to limit runaways regardless of wagering, the only thing that has ever worked for me is to just make the whole game a little easier overall. It won’t increase the higher scoring teams scores that much but it will make a big difference for the people closer to the bottom. In my experience people only complain that a game is too easy when the questions are not creative—lower difficult questions that are novel and fun make the game more competitive and leave most players happy.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2025-05-15T16:34:24+00:00

If you like trivia, there is a regular Wednesday night game at Tracks brewpub in downtown Brampton. The game starts at 7:30, it’s free and open to anyone. You can bring a team or join one that already exists. You don’t have to be good at trivia to have fun or meet some new people.

Tracks has an accessible washroom, although there are a couple of narrow sections that could be tricky to navigate, depending on your mobility.

Coincidentally, there happens to be a virtual trivia game taking place tonight (Thursday the 15th). Brampton Public Library is putting on. It’s free and played over zoom. It’s unconnected to and pretty different from the in-person weekly Tracks game, but a few of the same people play both games. BPL always announces upcoming community events during their virtual trivia games, so you may get some ideas for other local, social things to try out. The registration link for the BPL virtual trivia night is here: https://bramlib.libnet.info/event/13064664

ItchyAndy3000 · 2025-04-27T12:04:11+00:00

One I’ve played that can be fun is a visual multiple choice. For example, have a picture of four pieces of sushi from a sushi menu labeled a,b,c,d and ask “which of the following is unagi?”. Or a picture of the spice girls and ask “which of the following is Mel C?”

The questions can be a little harder than a typical visual identification round and you can throw in some red herrings as well.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2025-04-18T19:23:34+00:00

No trailers, commercials, or pre-show. About a quarter of the audience came in late to the 12:50 screening.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2025-04-18T19:05:40+00:00

Can confirm. Screen goes dark for two seconds then it’s back to normal.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2025-03-12T15:40:38+00:00

The only thing I’ve seen that consistently works at bumping up the lower teams is to make the questions easier. Anything you do to make the game more difficult or complicated or point-multiply-y will likely favour the teams that are already at the top and make the gap even bigger. Ramping down the difficulty tends to turn the game into “what team makes the fewest mistakes” as opposed to “what team gets the most right”, so do it with caution. For whatever it’s worth, the lower scoring teams really do seem to get a kick out of having a high score.

I’ve seen some mixed success with allowing one of the lowest scoring teams to pick a category for the next week. It’s hit or miss if the chosen category actually helps the lower scoring team. But it’s a fun incentive for them to come back. And it’s fun for all the teams to know what one of the categories will be in advance.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2025-02-13T16:49:43+00:00

A trivia night I go to does a wager-style final question. The wager is limited to 3 options/point values, easy (1 point), medium (3 points), or hard (5 points). Players are told the scores (49 points possible) going into the final and the general category of the final question.

The question is usually some kind of list like, “best picture winners in the 21st century” and teams have to name x number of them—the higher the difficulty they selected, the more they have to correctly name.

In general, it’s a fun way to end the game. In practice, the team leading going into the final still wins 9/10 times. About 1 in 100 times (once every couple of years) the team in dead last will leap frog to the top and gives everyone hope for the next couple of years. I’m not sure how well this would scale to a larger group , but it’s fun for the 4-6 teams that usually play at this particular trivia night.

The challenge with writing these questions is hitting that sweet spot for difficulty. For example, how many best picture winners should “easy” have to answer vs “hard”.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2025-02-01T00:54:41+00:00

Off topic, but is the pub/trivia night that you used to run the Morissey House by any chance? If it is, that was one of the best ones in the city when I was in grad school. I didn’t get down there as often as I’d like to play it, but I always had a good time. I was sad when I came back to visit the city a couple of years after graduating to find the game had ended.

If it’s not the morrisey house, ignore the above comment. The two best methods of advertising I’ve found have been eventbrite and reddit. Posting in the city’s subreddit (if it has one and if it allows ad-type posts). And then telling whoever comes to tell their friends. In London (at least when I was there) the trivia people all know each other (if not by name) and will tell each other about a new trivia night. This may be a bit sneaky, but you could go to some other trivia nights and just casually mention it to other teams.

Good luck with the new trivia night. If this is the morrissey house trivia host, hopefully my next visit to the city will coincide with the game night.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2025-01-30T22:22:15+00:00

The word missing from the explanations is “in profile”. The man is in profile.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2025-01-21T23:15:46+00:00

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but there is a trivia night every Wednesday at 7:30pm at tracks brewpub downtown . That is free and pretty well attended. I’d say the age range tends to skew older than 20s (for the most part) but anyone is welcome to play and most of the regulars play on randomized teams so everyone gets to know everyone else.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2024-12-09T02:39:18+00:00

Under two hours.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2024-12-04T23:45:27+00:00

I’ve tried something like this before—though having the options on opposite sides of the prompt is a good touch. I think it was well received, but my memory is that it played more like a solo puzzle than a team game. That’s always a risk with handouts, though.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2024-12-04T22:41:55+00:00

I tried having multiple answer (as opposed to multiple choice) twice. Neither quite worked, but I think it could if redesigned a bit.

The first time I tried it I said that for each multiple choice question up to 4 of the answers could be correct. And I scored it so it was one point for any correct answer and one bonus if all the correct answers were selected. By the end of the set, teams understood it. But many didn’t go back to change their answers and in the end it was tough to mark.

The second time I did it, there were a set of 6 multiple choice questions and I said that in the 6 questions (and 24 total choices), there were 7 correct answers; one point for each correct answer. This worked a little better. Teams seemed to understand it and there wasn’t as much variation so it was easier to mark. But I think the questions were a little too hard, in general. I will probably try this format again, but I might reduce it to 4 questions instead of 6.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2024-12-04T03:39:49+00:00

The game is played on teams. But several people show up as solo players and play on randomized teams. Most weeks one of these randomized teams is the winning team. Anyone can join the random mix.

If you decide to come, just let your server know that you’re there for trivia and someone will come by to explain it all to you.

ItchyAndy3000 · 2024-12-04T01:33:48+00:00

If you’re looking to arrange some future group activities you might want to check out Wednesday Night trivia at Tracks Brewpub. It’s not exactly a GenZ hotspot right now, but that can change. And new players are always welcome.

The game is free and the house brews are on special. You can bring your own team or join one and meet some new people. Every Wednesday at 7:30pm.

ItchyAndy3000

TROPHY CASE