Trivia in the Twin Cities is about to get even better: Two revered institutions, Trivia Mafia and "The Initials Game," are joining forces to launch a brand-new live trivia game to play at the metro’s bars, restaurants, and breweries. 

It's called The Initials Game Live, and it officially kicks off Thursday, August 1, at Falling Knife Brewing Co. in Northeast Minneapolis. 

The Initials Game Live is based on the infectious trivia game created by KFAN morning radio host Cory Cove, made famous on “The Power Trip” morning show. Since its debut on KFAN in 2014, the Initials Game has grown into one of the country’s top weekly radio trivia games, with tens of thousands of listeners tuning in every Friday morning. In 2020, a play-at-home version was released following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Now, with the help of Trivia Mafia, The Initials Game is coming to a bar or taproom near you.

Cove is thrilled that the game he originally invented for smaller groups of players will now be playable on a larger scale. This is possible thanks to a web app developed by Trivia Mafia, which players can use on their phones to submit their answers.

“This is going to give fans who listen every Friday morning a chance to feel what it’s like to get in there and compete against other really good Initials players,” he says. “It’s the next logical step in the evolution of Initials and I could not be more pumped about this.”

How do you play The Initials Game Live?

As with typical bar trivia, The Initials Game Live tests players’ knowledge of trivial facts over a wide array of subjects, from pop culture to geography to history, and rewards them with prizes (usually free beer). Unlike typical bar trivia, this game rewards speed and quick-thinking. Players are given a two-letter set of initials (hence the name of the game), followed by six clues steering them toward an answer with those initials. 

Once a player thinks they know the answer, they submit it using the Initials Game Live app, similar to how answers are submitted at Trivia Mafia’s regular trivia nights.

“Trivia Mafia is the biggest name in bar trivia here in the upper Midwest, and this is an awesome opportunity to give our trivia fans a fun new game to play,” says Trivia Mafia co-founder and co-owner Chuck Terhark. “Bar trivia players will love it. And fans of the original Initials Game on the radio are going to love it too. It’s super fun.” 

The Initials Game Live will debut at Falling Knife Brewing Co. in Northeast Minneapolis on August 1, and will run weekly on Thursdays at 7:30. Trivia Mafia has run weekly trivia at Falling Knife every Wednesday for years and is thrilled to be able to add another great weekly event to the brewery’s calendar. 

“We were excited to see an immediate reaction amongst our guests to the game, even in its beta,” said Dan Herman, Chief Revenue Officer at Falling Knife Brewing Co. “Within a couple of weeks we had people coming out to the taproom specifically for the Initials Game and bringing their friends!”

“We've been looking for an event to bring people in on Thursdays that creates excitement, but doesn't suck all the air out of the room if someone is here just to enjoy our beer,” said Herman. “Based on the test run, we believe we've found that event to bring returnable business to our taproom.”

Following the launch at Falling Knife, Trivia Mafia plans to expand The Initials Game Live to venues throughout the Twin Cities and beyond. For more information about The Initials Game Live, visit initialsgamelive.com. For more information about the other awesome events Trivia Mafia runs, visit triviamafia.com. And for more info about how The Initials Game started and where to buy the board game, go to initialsgame.com.

What’s it like to play The Initials Game Live? 

Here’s a sample round. In the live game, these would be revealed one at a time. The sooner you come up with the correct answer, the more points you get! Let’s see how you do: 

Initials: TM

1. It may go back and forth.
   

2. Apple operating system backup mechanism.
   

3. Popularized by H.G. Wells.
   

4. Seen in “Napoleon Dynamite.”
   

5. It may be a hot tub.
   

6. It may be a DeLorean.

Scroll down for the answer…

If you answered “Time Machine,” great job! You’re an Initials pro. See you Thursday, Aug 1 at Falling Knife!

At any rate, we welcome your thoughts: is Tik Tok trivial enough for us? Or are we too trivial for Tik Tok?

Here’s a sample of his Asky Asky Ice Breakers: Have you considered how much you’d need to be paid to consider having barbecue sauce be the only condiment in your life? How valuable is it to you to understand a British accent? What are the best Christmas episodes of all time, and are there any good Hanukkah episodes? Is it worse to be a Cornflake Girl or a Hollaback Girl?

Philosophy and trivia for the low, low price of Patronage at $10/month or above. Whatever level of support works for you will work for us. Thanks to everyone who has contributed their hard-earned dollars to our company - we will continue to work to earn them in turn!

This means we can upgrade our Zoom Pro account to allow for over 100 participants, so we can coordinate even MOAR TRIVEAH for all the masses who so desperately need it. (Want to hire us to run trivia for a private group - work happy hour, or long-distance college reunion? Email us for more info and we’ll figure out how to make it happen.)

We are sending out packages of awesome love and gratitude - complete with pens! of your own! you can keep! - to our top two tiers of Patrons. Sean is cooking up a new live stream event to add to our exclusive offerings, so those supporters can expect to get wind of the details soon.

We still love those $5/month supporters, too! The fact that anyone is giving us their hard earned dollars of their own volition is super rad. Everyone who is tossing some digital dollars into our virtual cap is really helping in ways both tangible and emotional.

If you’d like to support us on a regular basis, join Patreon here and decide the level that works best for your budget. $25 per month and up will get you a t-shirt, socks, notebook, pens, stickers - and first access to exclusive content.

If you want to make a one-time contribution, put a dollar in the tip jar here, and we will doff our cap to you in thanks for your generosity. (We don’t have TM branded caps yet, but with enough tips, maybe we can get them made.)

Twitch.tv/triviamafia is where you can find it, and then you can chat on that platform or just watch and learn. We recommend conversing with your team on another platform (Hangouts, FaceTime, Zoom, tin cans connected by at least six feet of string) and having a pen and paper handy to jot down your answers (and maybe some notes) during the game. Chuck is prepping exclusive content for these games that no other host will use on other days of the week!

Afterwards, you can tell us how we did at triviamafia.com/howwedid - this gives you a chance to share your final score, note your best wrong answer, brag about your team name, compliment Chuck’s shirt, and make any suggestions. Each week we will randomly draw winners from those who submit info to that form to award sweet prizes like Trivia Mafia socks, notebooks, shirts, and - even better - a $50 gift card from Pizza Luce!

Prepare yourselves for an excellent night by ordering a pizza ahead of time; Pizza Luce gives you $2 off any large 2+ topping pizza when ordered between 7-10pm on Thursdays just because they know how well pizza and trivia go together (use code TRIVIAMAFIA to get the discount).
Thanks to Pizza Luce for their support! In the Before Times, we ran games at seven locations, and we miss them all sorely.

Scratch that twitch and hope you see us on Thursdays for our big games.

Many of them are going the extra (digital) mile to set up games anyway - and many are open to all! Thanks to the many avenues of modern technology, you can find them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, Zoom, and probably other places. We are updating our Schedule page as soon as we learn about these games, and putting that calendar on our From a Distance page. It’s entirely on their own initiative and we are so impressed with their dedication to learning new platforms and bringing the people what they want: TRIVIA! And FACES! Possibly DOGS and CATS and WALLPAPER! All the comforts of their home in your home.

We recommend ordering out of your favorite trivia place - whether it be 331 Club, Pizza Luce, Summit, Surly, Forgotten Star, Wooden Hill, Brunson’s Pub, Green Mill, Bad Weather, Carbone’s, Cardinal Bar, or any of a hundred other locations that used to welcome us for games every week. Your support now will help ensure there are real places for us to return to when life IRL changes again.

Our first step into the world of digital trivia is by way of a brand-spanking-new newsletter. SIGN UP and find in your inbox every weekday morning five questions to tease your brain, plus some good news stories to keep your spirits up. We’ll include alerts about what we're up to, too.

We'll send the answers to each day's questions in the following day's newsletter. It's on the honor system and there are no prizes, but we still say: use your noodle, not your Google!

Download the zip file here for questions, answer sheet, and sound round!

It has become abundantly clear that, for the good of our community, we must stop encouraging our players and our hosts to gather in groups of any size. And since the whole point of our business is to get people to go to bars and taprooms to play trivia, all Trivia Mafia events are hereby canceled until further notice. 

None of this is easy, and it’s about to get harder. Please spare a thought for your trivia hosts, who are temporarily out of a part-time job, as well as the employees and owners of the 150+ businesses that host our trivia nights, whose livelihoods are even more imperiled. Please support them while you can: buy gift cards, order takeout, tip generously. 

This is not an abundance of caution. It is the minimum. If you’re still convinced this is all an over-reaction, well, we can’t believe we’re about to say this, but: Use your Google.

Tonight, the CDC announced that it recommends all events of 50+ people go dark for a period of eight weeks. Eight weeks from tonight is Mother’s Day. That strikes us as the perfect day for checking in, seeing how everyone’s doing, making sure we’re all caring for ourselves as best we can, and judging our career choices. (Love you, mom.) 

We’ll be back before you know it, asking you questions about Real Housewives beefs and the shape of wombat poo, just like the good old days. We promise. In the meantime, we’re hunkering down, but we aren’t hitting the pause button on trivia altogether. We’re currently investigating ways to bring you a socially distant, play-at-home version of Trivia Mafia. Stay tuned this week for more details on that. 

Our hearts are bursting with gratitude for all of the players who consider Trivia Mafia an important part of their lives. If you love Trivia Mafia and will miss it dearly over the next couple of months: Believe us, the feeling is mutual.  

Stay safe, keep calm, and be kind to one another, 

Chuck, Sean, Brenna
+ everyone at Trivia Mafia