We've compiled the best trivia nights across Melbourne's funkiest bars and pubs.
We’re diehard fans of the best trivia in Melbourne because we know the pub is a place for spinning yarns, knocking back some beers with mates, and proving your knowledge in extremely niche and useless information, is in fact very useful.
Luckily for us, a solid trivia or quiz night offers a chance to do all three. From nights based on fun and breezy questions that anyone can get around, to high-tech trivia showdowns with all the modern bells and whistles you could ask for – we’ve compiled a who’s-who of the best places to bust out some facts and take home the glory.
Now all you’ve got to do is get a team together. Happy quizzing, Melbourne.
Check out the latest trivia nights in Melbourne here.
Funky Bunch Trivia
Funky Bunch Trivia is one of the most popular quiz nights in the country, covering venues across the country and even taking hold overseas. As for prizes? Someone recently won close to 5k, so there’s some solid incentive for you. This night is all about keeping it fresh, so you wont’ find any dull ‘What’s the largest river in Woop Woop?’ questions here. There’s video elements too, with a solid emphasis on keeping it all exciting, fun and accessible to every punter keen to prove their knowledge over a few froths.
Funky Bunch trivia nights go down weekly at numerous venues throughout Melbourne and Victoria. Head to their website for more information.
Rock and Pop Culture Trivia
Rooftop trivia at the Corner Hotel has earned itself a golden mark in the weekly events calendars of Melburnians. Over its 11-year tenure, it continues to attract rock and pop culture aficionados alike. Get down to win a slab of beer for the top prize, as well as jugs galore. Plus, $20 will get you a trivia meal deal (read: a classic pot and parma to help your brain cogs tick along nicely).
Rock And Pop Culture Trivia goes down at the Corner Hotel every Wednesday from 8pm.
Tuesday Trivia at Northcote Social Club
Every topic under the sun is covered at this all-rounder’s night. Not just your average pub trivia, this night takes punters on a mind-twisting journey that’ll challenge even the smartest of cookies. The perfect place for anyone who’s mind is full of otherwise useless random facts and enjoys a beer or two.
Tuesday Trivia with The Funky Bunch goes down at Northcote Social Club every Tuesday night from 7.30pm.
Off the Wall Trivia
Off the Wall Trivia got sick of boring exam-style trivia nights so they made their quiz for folks that just want to dick around and have a hilarious night out with their mates. They award points not only for correct answers but also for any answer that makes them crack a laugh. First place takes home a $100 bar tab, and their serving up $8 schooners all night.
Off the Wall – Trivia With A Twist goes down at The Carlton Club Tuesdays at 7pm, kicking off Tuesday June 20.
Provincial Trivia Tuesdays
Count on this night for a fun mix of general knowledge and current events with extra games and challenges thrown in to keep teams on their toes. There are two rounds of 20 questions including pictures, audio, cryptic clues and plenty of banter plus pre-bookings get a free jug on arrival. Happy Hour quiz time will score you $6 bevvos, with $10 parmas all day. The winning team scores a $50 voucher and a bottle of plonk.
Provincial Trivia Tuesdays goes down at The Provincial Hotel, Fitzroy every Tuesday.
QuizzaMe
All rounds of QuizzaMe trivia feature randomly selected questions from their massive database across a range of categories, so you never know what you will get, but there’s always something for everyone. They also run a social quiz night that’s family-friendly and suitable for all ages and abilities. The QuizzaMe wireless buzzer has A – E on it, and every question is multiple choice. So the right answer is always on the screen and there is no need to write answers down or worry about Dave’s dodgy handwriting
QuizzaMe goes down in numerous venues in Melbourne from Monday to Friday from the CBD to the outer suburbs. For a full list of their trivia nights, head to their website.
Trivia at The Beast
The Beast’s Tuesday night extravaganza will have you jumping through hoops ranging from famous heroes and villains to Seinfeld, and even the solar system. Teams will often need to draw their best picture of something to do with the theme of the night for bonus points, and the losing team gets to pick the theme for the following week. First prize wins a slab of beer courtesy of Two Birds Brewing, second prize wins a bottle of house red or white wine courtesy of The B.East’s cellars, and third place wins a jug of beer.
Get down to The Beast every Tuesday night for your dose of trivia.
The Elsternwick Hotel
Quiz Meisters have been running trivia at The Wick for almost a decade. The night is hosted by local singer/comedian/writer Alice Tovey, who warms a Monday crowd that refuse to accept the weekend is over. Segments range from a Romanian opera singer belting out pop songs in an operatic fashion, to the last game of the night called ‘Duck Lotto’ which has teams betting on rubber ducks racing in the Darebin Creek rapids.
Trivia at the Elsternwick Hotel goes down everyday Monday from 7.30pm.
The Metropolitan Hotel
Get down for traditional pen and paper pub trivia, no screens, no special gadgets and mixed rounds of questions with no set theme to each round. After taking a year off, we relaunched our trivia night in April with great success. The Metro offers food and beverage vouchers for first, second and third place on top of chances to win cocktails, jugs of beer and bottles of wine throughout the night. What’s more, their trivia night is hosted by Melbourne-based comedian, writer and entertainer Nick Caddaye who recently graced the 2017 Melbourne International Comedy Festival with his show He Didn’t Make It.
Thursday night is trivia night at the Metropolitan Hotel every week from 6.30pm.
The Reverence
The theme changes each week. The losing team from the week before picks the theme. Exploring topics from TV shows to music genres to geography and movie magnates, in past weeks we’ve had Disney, hip hop, Seinfeld and Italy, as well as ‘90s and metal trivia.
The Rev is consumed with trivia on Wednesday nights with prizes flavoured to the theme of the night, from 7pm.
The Workers Club Pub Quiz
The format is based on a traditional English pub quiz with three big rounds of general knowledge and a slant towards music. It’s been running the last few years and bookings are essential. Dr Pump runs the show – a former Weddings, Parties, Anything guitarist and featured personality on Triple R’s JVG Radio Method. A larger than life personality and one of Australia’s great musos. Segments include Dr Pump’s synthesiser challenge, The Dollar of Destiny, and on occasion Pumpy brings in his guitar for an interactive live game.
The Workers Club Pub Quiz goes down every Tuesday from 7pm.
Windsor Castle Trivia
There’s three rounds of ten questions, with our ever present music round in the middle. The other two rounds are usually general knowledge but we sometimes have specialty rounds like movies, Disney, sports and more suggested by the punters. There’s three rounds of ten questions, with our ever present music round in the middle. Each week there’s a bonus point for the best team name, and if you’re ever unsure of an answer they encourage teams to have a guess or even just write something funny instead. If their host also finds it funny and reads it out, you’ll get the point.
Windsor Castle Trivia goes down at The Windsor Castle Hotel Tuesdays at 8pm.
SoundStorm Trivia
Why did you first start SoundStorm and how was the idea born? We began as a weekly trivia night at the Mitre Tavern in 2003. I was doing a course in radio and doing some work at 3AW when the pub rang the radio school to see if anyone wanted to host their night – and the rest is history.
What sets your trivia nights apart from the pack? The three things that come to mind are format, professionalism and trust. Our format is a more traditional night without the use of TV screens or DVD questions. Our nights are professionally run and well-choreographed with a more corporate feel rather than a uni night, and regarding trust, we have a “no swear” policy so companies know what they are getting and don’t need to be on edge wondering what the host is going to say next.
What companies have you worked with in the past? We work regularly with major banks as well as financial institutions and law firms. We can cater for companies from any background, from tradies to retirement homes. United Airlines use us each year and we provide The Spirit of Tasmania with the trivia entertainment for passengers onboard their day sails.
What’s the hardest trivia question you’ve got to challenge us with? We don’t generally ask questions that are “too hard” or “too easy”. Our questions are written to evoke conversation amongst teams. One of my favourites is: “The three heaviest living land animals in order are the elephant, the rhino and the hippo. What’s the fourth heaviest living land animal?” A: Giraffe.
Lulie Street Tavern
Tell us about your trivia night and what makes it tick. Lulie St Tavern’s pub trivia is for people that spend their time trawling through their news feeds half reading ostensibly interesting articles and intermittently switching their Spotify playlist between trap music, ambient electro and (mostly) ‘90s rock.
Who’s the host? Dan Watt and Brendan Esmore.
What prizes are on offer? $100 voucher.
What drinks specials can I get on the night? Lulie’s ridiculous happy hour has extended from 8pm until 9pm, and we offer $7 pints and $10 house cocktails. Plus, there’s booze give-aways throughout the rounds.
What food is dished up on trivia night? Your choice of Rita’s Pizza and Kelso’s Sandwich Shoppe.
What’s the best thing you’ve ever seen at one of your trivia nights? I reckon it was the ostensibly off-putting situation when a team requested a “How well do you know: Placebo” round for the following week, then that team proceeded not to rock up. The plus side was that all the other teams remembered Placebo were actually a pretty good band and Dan realised he could now go to BANG! and pick up a goth.
The Metropolitan Hotel
Tell us about your trivia night and what makes it tick. We offer traditional pen and paper pub trivia, no screens, no special gadgets and mixed rounds of questions with no set theme to each round. Our trivia nights are always a great success.
Who’s the host? Our trivia night is hosted by Melbourne-based comedian, writer and entertainer Nick Caddaye who graced the 2017 Melbourne International Comedy Festival with his show He Didn’t Make It. He also hosted Late Night Letters and Numbers, adding a hysterical spin to the favourite SBS game show.
What prizes are on offer? We offer food and beverage vouchers for first, second and third place on top of chances to win cocktails, jugs of beer and bottles of wine throughout the night.
What drinks specials can I get on the night? Our happy hour is from 5-7pm and we offer $8 selected craft beer pints as well as $6 spirits. Our $12 espresso martinis also run all night.
What food is dished up on trivia night? Our menu sprawls wood-fired pizza, pasta, char grilled steaks, salads as well as a classic chicken parma and burger options.
Funky Bunch Trivia
The age-old mid-week tradition of trekking to your local pub for a night of trivia is now stronger than ever, and that is largely due to Mark Doble’s brainchild — Funky Bunch Trivia. In 2005, Doble was pouring beers at South Melbourne’s Limerick Arms Hotel and began putting on a weekly trivia night, which quickly evolved into his full time gig as more venues vied to get on board.
Hotly in demand from the get-go, Funky Bunch has now been lapping up the world of trivia rockstar style for 13 years. As well as pub trivia, Funky Bunch also do corporate events.
“I did a tour around Australia in our early days with an events coordinator and we travelled interstate doing big events for Telstra,” Doble says.
“It was a rock trivia theme, so I got to dress up and wear leather pants and I had a big crazy wig on. It was as close as I could get to my dream of being a rock star without being able to sing or play guitar very well. I kept worrying at the start that it might drop off, I wondered, ‘How long will trivia nights be this popular for?’”
But Doble needn’t have worried, with Funky Bunch proving to be a truly booming business. The company now has up to 40 trivia emcees on the ground, as well as full time staff members taking care of the daily organisational duties and the creative direction back-of-house. They’ve taken the plunge overseas too, and have headed to the UK and New Zealand and have delved deeper into the corporate world, taking trivia to new heights along the way.
“We’re really branching out, so say if a corporate client wants a specific themed night, we can do that. We did a launch night for Talkin’ Bout Your Generation which has come back on TV recently. Channel 9 got in touch and asked us to make a show up for that, so we put together a custom show for them and by all accounts they loved it.”
Funky Bunch are no doubt leaders in their trade, and the company’s director puts it all down to the group’s commitment to providing a cracking atmosphere for people to feel comfortable letting loose in.
“Our offering is certainly a lot more light-hearted, and we like to be responsible for the tone of the night being a bit looser than a traditional trivia night, we really try to create a bit of a party atmosphere,” Doble says.
Question One’s trivia nights have the best drink deals in town
“When we first started, trivia nights seemed like a giant game of genius-version Trivial Pursuit, it was full of people that were really serious, they might have had one glass of wine or sat on the waters all night because they didn’t want to lower their chances of winning.
“But then we saw an opportunity to get some of the younger crowd in there and get them pumped up, singing karaoke for bonus points and doing crazy challenges and stuff, and making it have more of a sense that actually anyone could win it – you don’t have to be a genius – and more so, that winning isn’t the main part of it, you’re there to have fun.”
Doble admits that sometimes it can take a while for people to warm up to trivia and really let their guard down. But the main deal for Funky Bunch is making sure that all their punters are relaxed and having a belter of a time with their mates. Most importantly, he says, anyone and everyone is encouraged to get on board.
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“The audience varies through from 18-year-olds to anywhere up to 50 and 60-year-olds and they can be playing at the same pub,” Doble says.
“When we’re training new hosts or pitching to a new pub we always say we want everyone to have fun and we want to create a fun energy in the bar. We think that really helps with people letting their guard down.”
So what’s next on the cards for Funky Bunch, fine purveyors of all your trivia needs? Well, Beat readers rejoice, Doble explains that there’s some music X trivia action in the works.
“I’ve got a bit of a side project going with some bona fide musos,” Doble lets loose. “We’re coming up with a new form of music trivia entertainment.”
Sounds ripper to us.
Quiz Meisters
Who’s going to win the race? Will it be Ducky Howser MD? Maybe it’ll be the more equine Quack Caviar? Or will James Van Der Beak take out first place honours of the Duck Derby? The competitors are mini rubber ducks, the size of a duckling who all “look like their names” and are being propelled down the Darebin Creek by the current, while a hundred people cheer on the winner.
“It’s one of our cult games at the moment,” says Pete Curry, one of the founders of Quiz Meisters Trivia. The Duck Derby is a pre-recorded segment, which they play at the end of the night, with each team choosing a duck to back. Filmed segments such as this one, animations and other audio-visual clips are all part of the multi-media experience at a Quiz Meisters Trivia night.
Curry started Quiz Meisters along with Steffan van Lint back when they were in university, and he had been hosting a trivia night for another company. “We used to get lots of people to our shows, including friends, however a lot of our mates who came along couldn’t really answer a lot of the questions, a lot of them were suited for Baby Boomers,” Curry recalls.
“So he and I decided to create a show that our friends could go and see and we thought the best way to do it was to put things on the screen. So we think we were the first in the world to create audio-visual trivia. Essentially what we wanted was to create a show where it wasn’t just about Q&A,” Curry, who after hosting thousands of shows across his career has now retired to work behind the scenes, says.
Quiz Meisters have over 60 individually produced games that they rotate through, such as ‘Porn Star or My Little Pony’, where players have to decide if the name given is one of a kids toy or an actual porn star; ‘Can They Eat It’, which involves teams predicting how the person on the screen goes in an eating competition and ‘Name These Films’, where “three films are re-enacted by three of Melbourne’s worst actors.”
To keep trivia purists satisfied, they also have the standard questions as well, which require both book-knowledge and life experience. “Our trivia really is a mix of traditional questions, like ‘name the nine countries that border Germany’, which will satisfy those people who love those types of questions, but not everyone is that way inclined,” Curry explains.
“What we like to do is celebrate life and nostalgia in each quiz, so for instance, we play a game called The ALDI Game, where we put up three ALDI products and you have to name the original product or the product they are trying to emulate. So you don’t read that in a book, you learn about that by walking into ALDI and doing your everyday shopping, so we like to quiz people about everyday things.”
With hosts often being actors or stand up comedians hosting trivia nights to hone their time on the mic, the result is an interactive, entertaining show that feels “like a TV game show experience,” Curry says. “It’s like a combination of three game shows: Spicks and Specks, Talkin’ About Your Generation and Have You Been Paying Attention?”
Since starting Quiz Meisters in Melbourne in 2004, the brand has grown to be a national one, presenting weekly trivia nights in dozens of venues in every state. In Victoria, there’s almost forty shows happening each week, spreading across outer-suburban areas like Diamond Creek, Ringwood and Frankston, with dozens held at inner-city pubs like The Empress, The Swan, The Dick Whittington Tavern and Welcome to Thornbury, plus venues right in the CBD, such as Campari House and The Mint.
A creative team of Gen Y writers and videographers based in their Collingwood headquarters keeps things topical. “We want the content to be relevant and in order to do that it needs to be produced week by week and that’s something we’ve managed to do,” Curry says.
“We’ve had teams that have played for over 12 years but we also have kids straight out of high school loving it as well, so we really feel like we’ve got the 18 – 40 age group. We’ve really got the balance between traditional trivia and things that are happening today.”
Question One
Founded in 2003, Question One has become a world leader of quizzes and has provided thousands of pub-goers with a fun night out. Their first pub quiz night was held in Fulham, England and since then it has spread to over 150 venues across the world.
Question One is hosting trivia every Monday night at Francesca’s Bar in Northcote. The quizzes include a blend of current affairs, general knowledge and picture puzzles to get you thinking. Quiz host Rian is professionally trained and chosen for his ability to entertain the crowd – this is a great way to get your group of friends together and get your brain ticking.
There’s plenty of prizes available including a $50 first place prize, a bottle of wine for second as well as a jug of beer for the half time heads or tails challenge. If you’re the competitive type then you’ll definitely want to make this a weekly event. Happy hour starts at 5pm so you can get warmed up before trivia starts and there’s $8 pints of Furphy, $5 house wines and cheap pizzas for those keen to keep the good times rolling.
Francesca’s also host a monthly bingo night, which is not your average ball draw –this bingo night incorporates music and pictures to really spice things up. It’s held on the first Thursday of every month at 7.30pm with lots of prizes available too.
Yorkshire Stingo’s Musical Bingo
It’s the craziest combination of your favourite playlist, off-key karaoke and the best dance party you’ve ever been to – happening every Wednesday night at The Yorkshire Stingo.
140 years young, The Yorkshire Stingo is an Abbotsford icon. A beautifully renovated example of the best of Melbourne pub architecture, the Yorkshire Stingo has been a northside pillar for as long as anyone can remember – it’s everything a great pub should be, and more.
It’s rampant success is down to its incredible delivery of the classic pub staples – this pub provides the epitome of fantastic pub food, hilarious pub trivia, and best of all – bingo.
Yorkshire Stingo’s Musical Bingo
- Musical bingo hosted by Tom Baring, with $60 bar tab prizes each round
- The Yorkshire Stingo, 48 Hoddle Street, Abbotsford
- Every Wednesday night at 7:30pm
On Wednesday nights at 7:30pm, punters journey from around Melbourne to join musical know-it-all (and everyone’s favourite publican) Tom Baring for rounds stuffed full of chart-topping classics, So Fresh bangers, mad mashups and indie faves – no decade, style or genre is off limits.
This is like your nan’s bingo – your nan’s into So Fresh, right? – but with songs instead of numbers. Cross ‘em off your card as you hear them – and don’t be afraid to sing along.
Get down with your mates (four-legged ones included), warm up those vocal cords and drown those midweek blues in the heart of Abbotsford. Win and you’ll bag yourselves a sweet bar tab – a handy $60 per round – plus the Stingo has plenty of food and booze specials going too.
With an old-school front bar, a casual dining room, a dog-friendly beer garden with a wall-length mural, arcade machines out the back, the aforementioned rave-reviewed musical bingo, expert trivia, and live music every Saturday and Sunday, this Abbotsford favourite has just about everything for everyone. Head down to the Yorkshire Stingo every day of the week on 48 Hoddle Street in Abbotsford.
Check out the latest trivia nights here.
