Former Butler County resident reigns as Ohio ‘Trivia King’
A former Butler County resident and graduate of Butler County Community College is royalty in Youngstown, Ohio.
And Mike Curry is cementing his status as “Trivia King” by releasing his own adult party game based on the trivia nights he hosts four nights a week in Youngstown establishments.
Curry said he loves trivia games and has played in several bar teams over the years.
The Center Township native and 1983 graduate of Butler High School said he became interested in trivia as a player some 20 years ago.
“Twenty years ago I had moved to Albany (N.Y.). I didn’t know anybody. One night I was eating dinner by myself and these guys asked me some trivia questions,” he said. “I answered, joined their team, and 20 years later we’re still friends.”
When he moved to Youngstown, Curry initially was supplementing his day job by playing guitar and singing at night in Mahoning Valley restaurants, pubs and breweries.
He started hosting trivia games and eventually transitioned out of music altogether.
“When I started hosting trivia nights, it quickly became my main source of bookings and has pretty much been that way since,” Curry said.
He limits teams to four members, but depending on the venue, his nights can attract 15 to 20 teams in one place.
He takes his title as Trivia King very seriously and creates and researches the trivia questions himself.
“Now it’s to the point where I think in questions,” he said. “I see a TV show or a movie, and I think how this can be a question.”
“I research a lot. I do a lot of fact checking,” he added. “I’m not just going to Wikipedia. If it’s a space question, I’m going to NASA.com. If it’s a medical question, I call the Cleveland Clinic.”
Curry said he was surprised how fast his trivia nights caught on.
People asked him to continue the games virtually during the pandemic.
“Before I knew it, people were coming to play from across the country each week,” he said.
He decided to use his trivia expertise to create an at-home drinking trivia game called Drivia. The game, which can be bought on Curry’s website, DriviaGame.com, comes with 2,500 trivia questions and answer cards, score sheets, a timing hourglass, pencils and dice.
The game is a head-to-head team elimination trivia battle that comes in various versions. In Drivia, when a team misses a question, it rolls the die to see if the teammates must drink for blowing the answer or if they are able to pass the drinks on to another team.
In the TWIVIA (team wagering trivia) version, if the team flubs a question, members roll the die to determine how much pocket change each must put into a game jackpot. The winning team collects and splits the jackpot. Drivia/Trivia combines the drink and jackpot ante of the first two games.
Drivia went on sale online at the beginning of April. But Curry has no intention of quitting his night job.
“I’m fortunate people around here show up to play every week. They’ve become friends of mine.
“It’s fun to know useless facts, people like to connect with people and have fun with teams,” he said.
“You can hear the whole bar sigh when they don’t know an answer. It gives them a break from the day and the stress,” he said.
