PENN TWP — Grab your thinking caps and head to trivia night.

The Runway Sports Bar & Grille on Airport Road hosts trivia nights starting at 8 p.m. Wednesdays.

“I’ve been doing DJ Trivia at the Runway Sports Bar & Grille for about two months now, and my goal is to place it in at least five more locations here in Butler County,” said Craig Lawrence of Red Hot Chameleon Entertainment.

Runway manager Dena Hochbein said, “He came in when we had other entertainment playing and asked if we wanted to do trivia nights.” She said the event has brought a new crowd out to the restaurant.

“It’s a great reason to come out in the middle of the week and socialize,” Carol Conner of Hampton said. Conner attends trivia night nearly every week with a group of friends.

Alex Harper of Penn Township said, “It’s a mixed crowd, which I think is good.”

And Lawrence is no stranger to entertaining a crowd. He has been a disc jockey for more than 13 years.

Recently he decided to try trivia nights.

“In March of 2012, my wife and I went on a ‘DJ cruise’ that featured various seminars, companies and featured speakers. One of the companies that was represented was DJ Trivia,” Lawrence said.

He liked what he saw in the company and decided to start up trivia nights in Butler County.

“DJ Trivia divides territories into counties and offers potential affiliates the option to represent as many counties as they would like to take on,” Lawrence said. “I opted, for now anyway, to focus on Butler County because I see strong possibilities here.”

According to Lawrence, DJ Trivia is the only interactive trivia company hosted live with questions, answers and team scores posted in real time.

The game itself consists of four rounds. Each round has four questions, and points are awarded for correct answers.

What makes the trivia “DJ Trivia” in particular? After Lawrence reveals a question, teams have the length of one song to turn in answers.

At the end of each round there are “double-dare” questions which award double points for a correct answer and take away all points in that round for an incorrect answer.

The last question of the game not only wagers all points for the fourth round, but all points a team has earned during the entire game. Teams do not have to answer the final question.

A correct answer doubles a team’s points for the entire game. A wrong answer takes a team score to zero.

Prizes are awarded for teams who come in first, second and third.

“I believe that the majority of the questions are based on common knowledge. Also, because our games include not only music or movie trivia, but also history, geography, sports and science, it makes the game more fun and actually more fair because there is a much wider variety of questions,” Lawrence said.

“It also opens the game up to players of all ages.”

One of the rules of the game is no cell phones allowed.

Another rule is not to discuss answers with other teams, but teams do share their knowledge after the answers have been revealed.

“I like the interaction,” Tom Ball of Meridan said. “It’s a conversation piece long after the game is over.”

“Some nights we’ve had as many as 13 teams, some nights seven or eight teams, and we’ve had six teams play,” Lawrence said. “Persons on a team range from two to eight, with the average being four.”

Having more people on your team does help the chances of placing, but even teams of two have finished in one of the top three places.

“Someone on your team may be really good at history, for example, while another is not so good at it but knows sports inside and out,” Lawrence said. “Some are here just because it’s fun, and some are here because it’s fun and they want to win.”

Lawrence is currently looking to expand DJ Trivia to other locations, and he is hoping to have a different place for every weeknight.

More information about DJ Trivia is available at djtrivia.com.