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Portland Monthly

Big Brains

Your Ultimate Portland Bar Trivia Guide

Where to get your brain workout (almost) every night of the week.

By Margaret Seiler September 9, 2025

Trivia with Sam host Sam Ceron (onstage, holding an excited player’s answer sheet during the Knockout round) runs a rare Friday trivia night at Tomorrow’s Verse Taproom on NE Fremont Street.

Image: Michael Novak

A pub quiz brings fun focus to a night out, whether you're just kicking back with friends, assuring a date you're not a complete idiot, or drinking alone and hoping to do something other than look at your phone (except you might have to—some games have players submit answers online instead of on paper). In Portland, scores of local bars (and restaurants and cart pods) have caught on to this way of keeping customers on their stools for a couple of hours, and every night except Saturday offers opportunities to flex those neurons.

Q: What night do you want to play trivia?

A: Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday

As to the questions themselves, they might be an idiosyncratic mix prepped by a nerdy local or the output of a huge company running trivia nights across the country. Homegrown options include the long-running ShanRock’s Triviology, which Shannon Donaldson started in 2005 with a trusty mix of pop culture and "book learnin’" (that's the name of round 3). Answer sheets are traded with other teams between rounds, so you're pretty much guaranteed to interact with other humans. (Disclosure: This reporter shouted questions at people in bars from 2010 to 2020 as a ShanRock TJ, or trivia jockey.) 

Trivia with Sam has a similar structure but projects its questions on a screen for people to read and mull, and adds a "Final Jeopardy" type of gamble at the end. Late-game surprises are also in store at PDX Trivia (that's just the name of the company—it's not all questions about the airport or the city), where the final general-knowledge round is worth double points, so a team that didn't seem to be a threat on the music round or goofy list round (a recent challenge was to name 10 rum brands) can suddenly come from behind to claim victory. 

Started as a regular event at the Untapped growler fill house on N Interstate Avenue in 2016, Untapped Trivia kept on kicking after the taproom closed down in 2020. Cofounder Beau Bohanon and a handful of other hosts bring a good variety of topics and difficulty levels to nearly a dozen spots around town. Most of the game is on paper, but teams should have a phone handy for the occasional picture round that needs to be viewed online.

Everything's on paper at Know Shit Trivia (formerly known as the Bar Exam), where topics vary but generally include a current events round and a this-week-in-history round, and questions carry a strong dose of host and writer Kerr's personality. There's a similar feeling at Dave's Trivia at Occidental Brewing (Disclosure: This brewery is co-owned by this writer's nephew), where taproom bartender Dave writes the questions, asks the questions, and pours the beers. His assortment is light on modern pop culture, heavy on geography and the Cold War, and meant to be challenging—winning teams rarely get much more than 60 percent right. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the origin story for Knoxville-based Not Rocket Science Trivia involves some buddies from the University of Tennessee who were out at bar trivia one night and decided it was too hard. So don't look for a real brain workout at any of the national company's 250-and-counting venues. While we're a little worried about the dumbing down of a beloved intellectual pursuit (to quote Ms. Cross from Rushmore, Nihilo sanctum estne?), it's a good reminder that you don't have to be Jeopardy!-caliber to ace a round at bar trivia—and the easier night is a good match for multigenerational teams at family-friendly venues like the three local Level taprooms. 

Denver-based behemoth Geeks Who Drink hosts more than 700 weekly trivia nights, hiring local hosts to drill questions from coast to coast and occasionally bringing its community together for the Geek Bowl showdown. (Disclosure: This writer once attended the Geek Bowl and shook the hand of one Ken Jennings, who was very nice.) But rather than big-box-store cheapness from scaling up, the question quality at a Geeks Who Drink event is solid, with high production values and an entertaining variety of rounds.

The actual questions at a Last Call Trivia night can feel a little generic, almost as if they were assembled by a group of Cincinnati-area marketing professionals in matching shirts who appeared on a 2022 cover of Northern Kentucky Magazine. But the local hosts at spots like North Lombard institution Mock Crest Tavern do a good job of breathing some personality into them. Check your phone's battery before you go, as answers are submitted online. Max team size is eight (so you might have seven people trying to talk you out of your gut-feeling answer).

There are plenty of other trivia experiences to be had in the metro area, from bars with their own one-offs to the rotating theme nights at Senet Game Bar in Tigard (recent events have been dedicated to Love Island, Grey's Anatomy, and K-Pop Demon Hunters) to multivenue companies like Rain Brain Trivia, Five Star, Bridgetown, Rip City, and SoCal-based King Trivia.

The events listed here are free unless otherwise indicated, though it's customary to drop something in a trivia host's tip jar. While some trivia companies post hints or subject-matter previews for their followers, there's not usually any prep needed. Most events run about two hours and reward winners with a gift certificate that should cover a round of drinks, though prizes can vary. Schedules below are subject to change, theme nights pop up now and then, trivia nights can start or stop seemingly at random, and a quiz might be canceled due to illness, burst pipes, a power outage, the Blazers making the playoffs, societal collapse, etc. So it's a good idea to check both a bar and a trivia company's website or social media before you go. 

If you still feel intimidated, note that on the British comedy series Starstruck, the protagonist credits her ability to rattle off the cast of The Outsiders at a pub quiz simply to being a former virgin. Hey, isn't that quite a few of us? 

Untapped brings a slate of topics, like its Naughty Thoughts Trivia, to nearly a dozen spots around town.

Image: Courtesy Untapped Trivia

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

thursday

friday

Did we miss your favorite trivia night? Email [email protected] with additions or changes.

Filed under
Bars, Higher Education, Family Fun
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