Trivia nights turns me into a monster. Ask any of my friends and you'll discover how much they fear being in my team on trivia nights, because I will undoubtedly become a combination of Monica Geller and The Hulk at some point. Part of it is my terrifying competitive spirit, but another part has to do with how dry trivia nights can be when they lack soul. Call me an idealist, but quiz nights should be more than showing off your brain's capacity to store information, they should have to do with how you use that extra storage to connect dots, make connections with people and guzzle down free shots of Fireball!

In recent years two things have changed my mind about trivia: NPR's Ask Me Another, and The Big Quiz Thing! both of which happen to have in common a Mr. Noah Tarnow, Quizmaster extraordinaire who has mastered the art of combining OCD competitiveness with warmth and humor. I'm always at my best behavior in Big Quiz Thing events (at least I've yet to be expelled from any...), and the anagrams and wordplay in Ask Me Another have actually helped me improve my memory and writing skills! I realized Mr. Tarnow must be working some strange magic, so I set out to pick his brain and came back with some fascinating discoveries:

Were you that kid who would get sent to the principal's office for asking questions non-stop and embarrassing the teacher?  

Not so much sent to the principal’s office as annoying the other students for drawing too much attention to myself. And while I think most of my teachers appreciated me—I was a goody-goody, so I always did my homework and shut up when the discipline hammer began coming down—there was the occasional teacher who thought I was a pain in the ass and didn’t hide it. In retrospect, I appreciate them for teaching me that grown-ups can be just as obnoxious as kids.

For aspiring Quizmasters out there, how does one become a Quizmaster?  

Well, lucky for them, the bar for entry is pretty low—even some big-time trivia companies routinely hire hosts with no game-show or quiz experience. So my advice is that same advice for all creative people: Go out and do it. Start a pub quiz, apply to work for a quiz company, write a show, rent a stage. Being a good quizmaster, however, is something else entirely, as it is with any type of performance. I will say it’s important to recognize that every trivia event has its own rhythms, its own relationship to the audience, its own delicate balance between show and game. You get there via practice, and damn, would I love to host a quiz at Carnegie Hall someday.

Please help us kill the "curiosity killed the cat" adage. Isn't curiosity the mother of all knowledge basically? 

I agree, curiosity is very healthy, especially if you’re hoping to be an even moderately interesting person. I think the cat-killing impulse isn’t “curiosity,” exactly; maybe they should say “ill-advised lack of foresight killed the cat.”

For people interested in the corporate quizzes, how does this work? What does it entail? Do you help them find out interesting things about their corporation or do they end up fighting and disliking each other in the end?  

We do a lot of office parties, team-building exercises, client celebrations, etc. Every event is different, so we’ve gotten pretty good at providing personalized service. For a typical custom show, we’ll learn about the client and create a quiz event for their specific group—keeping in mind the venue, the occasion, the group’s ages, gender split, nationalities, capacity for dirty jokes, etc. Often we incorporate custom material about the client—history of a company, or likes/dislikes of a guest of honor—so I’ve figured out how to make interesting trivia questions out of what might seem like fairly dry material. (Anagrams and other word games come in handy.) People usually have a great time; I’ve yet to see two players try to kill each other in anything but the metaphorical sense.

Are you addicted to Wikipedia? If so, what are some of the darkest rabbit holes you've gone into?  

Oh, yes. It’s hard to avoid the fact that Wikipedia has become my No. 1 source, though it is Wikipedia, so I have to confirm absolutely everything. Still, it’s amazing how reliable the site is. Years ago I was predicting that Wikipedia would very quickly become useless, once the legions of nerds who spend all day correcting things moved on to some other hot new Internet thing. But not yet, it seems.

I spent one night reading the Wikipedia page for “The Internet,” and that kind of blew my mind. Likewise the Wikipedia page for “Wikipedia.” I also used to maintain a list of Wikipedia pages that I myself had edited; it included such diverse entries as “United States presidential election, 1840” and “B’wana Beast.”

As a writer for NPR's Ask Me Another, is it easy to write for other people and to adapt to their voices?   

It’s not easy. I don’t submit quizzes for Ask Me Another nearly as much as I like, partly because I’m always tempted to save my best ideas for the Big Quiz Thing. Also, they have a pretty serious editing process, which is great (they maintain an incredibly high level of quality), but since I spend most of my time as a one-man-quiz-writing operation, it does take some getting used to.

How does a Quizmaster stay away from learning new things? Are you collecting trivia nonstop or do you have a power switch for when you need mindless fun?  

I used to say my mind was like trivia flypaper—picking up facts wherever I went, whether I liked it or not. But you reach an age when popular culture ceases to apply to you as much as it used to, and keeping up with knowledge takes more effort now. So to answer your question, it’s actually pretty easy to stop learning, dammit.

What's the best source of trivia we can use to impress someone on a first date?  

My favorite trivia books of all time are the Book of Lists series, which I discovered in high school (the list of most popular sexual positions was particularly eye-opening). The first volume was from the late 70s, with new editions up through the early 90s; you can probably find them in that filthy used-book store down the street from your apartment. A lot of crazy info in those books—they were a big influence—though I imagine there’s a lot that seems awfully old-fashioned now (a very limited list of all the celebrities who’ve admitted to having homosexual relationships comes to mind). But you asked about something to impress someone on a first date, and based on my experience, I’m not sure anything like that exists.

What's your favorite piece of trivia you've ever learned?

My impulse is to say that’s like asking me to name my favorite child, but no, that would make sense only if I had millions of children, half of which I’ve completely forgotten. My go-to answer used to be that the same guy invented both the lie-detector test and the character Wonder Woman (and he was a pretty fascinating pervert). There’s a better one out there, I’m sure; I’ll remember it 30 seconds after this interview is published.

What is one piece of trivia you wish you didn't know?  

I’m not sure there’s anything I know that I wish I didn’t know, though maybe that means I’ve led a sheltered life. Even details about the Holocaust or whatever are worth knowing for educational purposes. So any real answer here would probably be something depressing/mundane about my personal life. And the last thing I’d want to do is share that; I must maintain the game-show-host illusion of effortless joy, after all.

For more on Noah Tarnow and The Big Quiz Thing! visit their official site.