Back to School Brains at the bar

If you’re going to blow off your homework for a few drinks on a school night, the least you can do is give your remaining brain cells a minor workout. This campus offers several options for constructive drinking during the week, and The A.V. Club is here to show you which trivia nights will give you an easy A, and which will make you work for extra credit.

Lucky’s Bar and Grille (1421 Regent St., 608-250-8989)
When: Wednesdays at 8 p.m.
Difficulty Level: High school
Lucky’s trivia constantly straddles absurdity, bouncing from topics as universal as Harry Potter to those as mundane as Calvin Coolidge. Questions range from easy to easier, and the tricky questions that do get thrown into the mix lose their effectiveness in a multiple-choice format that would make any Honors student scoff. Lucky’s atmosphere is spacious and comfortable, and that is especially beneficial for how much time you’re likely to spend occupying yourself with other distractions in the back of the room.

Quaker Steak & Lube (222 W. Gorham St., 608-663-9464)
When: Mondays at 7 p.m.
Difficulty Level: College-entrance exams
Team Trivia organizes trivia leagues throughout the state of Wisconsin, and hosts close to 20 trivia nights in the greater Madison area every week. However, the downside of reaching such a vast audience is the need to generalize content. The breadth of information might occasionally be daunting, but the diversity also normalizes the playing field like a bell curve. Like all standardized tests, the questions are not meant to knock you over, only to gauge a degree of competence. Relatively generic trivia in a lively atmosphere might suit some, but Honors trivia students are going to want to seek out a greater challenge.

Logan’s Bar (322 W. Johnson St., 608-230-6906)
When: Thursdays at 7 p.m.
Difficulty Level: Undergraduate studies
Hosting pop-culture trivia presents the Sisyphean task of determining an appropriate level of difficulty for an audience of varying degrees of media consumption. The balance between overly obscure and outright obvious in pop-culture trivia is maybe the most tenuous one to grasp. However, something about the pop-culture trivia night at Logan’s seems pleasantly understated. The game takes a comfortable pace, wrapping up in under two hours. The in-house emcee writes all of the questions, which stretch back in relevancy as far as Nick at Nite. And the questions are an appropriate balance of breadth and depth—nothing seems impossible, yet total domination would be a fluke. We might be biased in our affection for modern pop culture and quest for knowledge of Insane Clown Posse and Elizabeth Hurley, but trivia executed as acutely as Logan’s is exactly what we’re looking for in a program.

City Bar (636 State St., 608-250-2489)
When: Mondays at 8:30 p.m., Tuesdays at 9 p.m.
Difficulty Level: Doctoral studies
The City Bar’s trivia on Monday nights is relentless: seven rounds of oppressively obscure trivia, often stretched to cover three-plus hours. Literally competing in a basement adds a degree of difficulty, at least in finding enough reception for your smart phone to look up who created Peter Pan (J.M. Barrie) or what two universities competed in the first-ever collegiate sporting event (Yale and Harvard in a crew competition). But the newly instated “Truncated Tuesdays” trivia takes a less harsh line. All questions are still written by the City’s staff of in-house fact-buffs, but this time they only comprise four rounds that wrap up in about an hour. It is brisk and affordable, and even with the later start time, it still lets out early enough that you can squeeze in some valuable late-night study time. Or perhaps return the slew of missed calls.