JOTTeopardy, played every Tuesday at Jimmy's Old Town Tavern, is for masochists, or those who were going to go out and spend a few hours at a bar with their friends, whether playing trivia or not.
See, only three contestants can actually play JOTTeopardy; in order to do so, you have to win one of the three preliminary rounds. The qualifying rounds have fill-in-the-blank forms with 18 questions on various themes, such as actors and roles ("Who played Josef Mengele in 'The Boys From Brazil?'") or state landmarks ("What state boasts Chaco Canyon and the Painted Desert?"). The papers are passed out by servers and turned in at the bar. You get 30 minutes to answer the questions. About 15 minutes after the deadline, the quizmasters share only the name of the winner and how many questions the winner answered correctly -- no answers, no runner-up, no personal report card.
My friends and I were getting seriously annoyed by the delays; we almost left after the third round (no, none of us qualified for the main event). Good thing we didn't, because the final round of JOTTeopardy is impressive. The bar brings in a six-foot-high board that mimics the familiar "Jeopardy" set up, but with five categories instead of six. The three contestants have electric buzzers, which light up when they ring in. But, as host (and owner) Jimmy Cirrito told one contestant after learning he appeared on the television show, "You can drink, smoke and swear here. I bet Alex Trebek wouldn't let you do any of that."
It's hard to say what was more amusing -- Cirrito, dressed in a sequined Uncle Sam jacket (think Apollo Creed in "Rocky IV") and cracking bad jokes at every turn, or the game itself. Categories included "Spelling Bee," in which contestants had to spell words like "sacrilegious" and "chlorophyll" without starting over; "Halls of Fame," with questions about various sports' halls of fame; and "Music," where the DJ played snippets of songs by groups like the Dave Matthews Band and Earth, Wind and Fire for the contestants to identify. There's only one round of questions, plus the one-question "final JOTTeopardy." The winner and runner-up receive bar tabs.
-- Fritz Hahn
