World Trivia Night is North America's largest live trivia

Trivia

The trivia are the three lower Artes Liberales, i.e. grammar, rhetoric and logic. These were the topics of basic education, foundational to the quadrivia of higher education, and hence the material of basic education, of interest only to undergraduates...

 contest, held annually in Ottawa, Ontario since 1993. (In this sense, "live" means people answering the same questions, read live in the same forum, as opposed to radio contests.) Originally organized by the Kiwanis

Kiwanis

Kiwanis International is an international, coeducational service club founded in 1915. It is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. Current membership is 240,000 members in 7,700 clubs in 80 nations...

 Club of Orleans (Ottawa), the event is now organized by the Children's Aid Society of Ottawa-Carleton, which uses it to fund educational and other programs for "children at risk." Between 2000 and 2500 people play in teams of up to 10 people at the Aberdeen Pavilion

Aberdeen Pavilion

The Aberdeen Pavilion is an exhibition hall in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Overlooking the Rideau Canal, it is located in Lansdowne Park, Ottawa's historic fairgrounds...

. Many political and media luminaries attend. The questions are prepared by Paul Paquet

Paul Paquet

Paul Stephen Paquet is a nationally syndicated trivia columnist and a trivia writer, based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. In December 2008, he took over the Trivia Bits column from Stanley Newman. It runs in 14 newspapers throughout the United States...

 of triviahalloffame.com, and in 2003, Ken Jennings

Ken Jennings

Kenneth Wayne "Ken" Jennings III is an American game show contestant and author. Jennings is noted for holding the record for the longest winning streak on the U.S. syndicated game show Jeopardy! and as being the all-time leading money winner on American game shows...

 read the first question via videotape. (By tradition, the first answer is always Pierre Trudeau

Pierre Trudeau

Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, , usually known as Pierre Trudeau or Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was the 15th Prime Minister of Canada from April 20, 1968 to June 4, 1979, and again from March 3, 1980 to June 30, 1984.Trudeau began his political career campaigning for socialist ideals,...

.) Since 2006, the winners have been awarded the Trong Nguyen Memorial Trophy, named after a member of wirecrats.com who died earlier that year. In 2008, La Triviata became the first solo three-time winner, though the team has won or tied a total of seven times since 2000. In 2010, wirecrats.com captured the first place trophy for the second time - not to mention several ties for first place.

Winning teams

• 1995: The Data Banks
• 1996: The Bank Dicks
• 1997: Puzzles
• 1998: The Viagrins (now called the Smarts)
• 1999: Puzzles
• 2000: Random Access Memory
• 2001: La Triviata
• 2002: La Triviata
• 2003: Me and Nine Idiots
• 2004: Wirecrats.com
• 2005: Shocked and Appalled
• 2006: Fran Mahovlich
• 2007: Shocked and Appalled
• 2008: La Triviata
• 2009: I Lost on Jeopardy
• 2010: Wirecrats.com
• 2011: Nerd Alert