For the past year, we’ve been playing trivia on a regular basis. Primarily, we’ll hit up trivia nights in Kennebunk, where we live, or go to Pepper’s Landing in Ogunquit to play with our favorite company Raise the Bar Trivia. However, in 2025, Ogunquit raised the in-season parking rate to $8 an hour, from $5 an hour last year, and our budget simply couldn’t handle that. We took this as an excuse to find other places to play trivia in Southern Maine where parking would be free. That’s how we stumbled on Best Worst Trivia.
Best Worst Trivia in Southern Maine
Best Worst Trivia hosts 12 games in Southern Maine over four nights each week, Monday through Thursday. Primarily, these are in Portland pubs and restaurants though there are two games on Monday nights outside Portland. One is in Biddeford at Banded Brewing. The other is at El Rayo Taqueria on Route 1 in Scarborough. Given the ongoing construction in Biddeford these past few months, we decided to avoid that area altogether and head straight to Scarborough to check out what kind of game Best Worst Trivia offers.
Our first time playing happened to be Memorial Day Monday when barely any other place was offering trivia. To be fair Sebago Brewing in Kennebunk, which works with Raise the Bar Trivia, has trivia on Mondays and often hosts on holiday weekends as well. It’s where we went to play trivia on New Year’s Day 2025 when every other place had off that week.
There were 11 teams playing that evening and pretty much overtook the restaurant area adjacent to the bar. If you’ve never been to El Rayo, and we hadn’t, you order your food at the counter when you walk in and then a server brings it to you. You can grab free glasses of water, which helped us keep the bar tab to zero. It’s always free to play trivia. Your only cost is for dinner and drinks. I enjoyed a vegan bowl of plantains, vegetables, rice and beans and Bill tried the fish tacos.
Structure of the trivia game
The game starts at 6 p.m. and promptly at 6, Ryan, the trivia host, walked around to tables, handing out answer sheets and pencils. There are six rounds of trivia, each with 10 questions. The company announces some of the themed rounds ahead of time on its social media channels so you can study up if necessary. Or, if like us, you can determine if you want to play that week. In fact, in addition to the only trivia game in town for the holiday weekend, it was the first time Best Worst Trivia offered advertised themes where we felt we had a fighting chance to know something. Those themes were:
- Dance movies
- Famous Harvard grads
- Cooking Reality TV shows (We love Gordon Ramsay’s “Next Level Chef”.)
To be clear, the themes are specific to the night of the week and/or the restaurant or pub hosting the trivia. On Sunday evening, the company announces the themes for the upcoming week. The week that I’m writing this review, none of the themes really resonate with us so we’re skipping trivia with Best Worst Trivia and finding a Raise the Bar Trivia game with free parking. But back to our experience playing Best Worst Trivia.
Six rounds of 10 questions each
As I mentioned, we knew the theme for questions in three of the six rounds in advance. The dance movies round, which was Round 2, was actually an audio round, which was an unexpected treat. Those audio clips sounded like the previews you would watch at the movies.
We knew two of the answers had to be “Step Up” and “Dirty Dancing” because they’d shared those images on social media. There were a few we knew right off the bat, thanks to being GenX: “Footloose” and “Fame.” We got 7 out of 10 answers right in that round.
The other three rounds were surprise themes. One was about nuts, any nuts, including the “Peanuts” comic strip, and the other was on fictional characters named John Smith. I was pleased that the remaining round had to do with songs and musical artists. It was worth 20 points — one point for the song and one point for the artist. Every other round was just 10 points.
Name That Tune-like rounds are usually where I do the best in trivia. My husband calls me a music savant. I think it helps that we have Sirius XM in the car and I play Pandora on my Roku TV while I work, which means I can always glance up to see the name of the song and the artist who sings it. The theme when we played was best worst wedding DJ songs. We expected Billy Idol’s “Mony Mony” to be in the mix, but it wasn’t. Of the 10 songs, we knew only five and therefore only earned 10 points in that round for knowing the song and the artist:
- Who Let the Dogs Out by The Baha Men
- YMCA by The Village People
- Macarena by Los Del Rio
- I’m Too Sexy by Right Said Fred
- Tubthumping by Chumbawamba
Ryan zipped through the questions, repeated each twice, and, after three rounds, it was half time when he announced the scores. At half time we were in 5th place. Unfortunately, by the end of six rounds, we’d dropped to 8th place but still had a great time.
Prizes
Best Worst Trivia gives out prizes for the top 3 teams. Teams in first and second place win gift cards to the restaurant hosting the trivia game. The team in third place gets to request a theme for the next week’s trivia round, which, as I mentioned earlier, the company announces on Sunday when it does a recap of the previous week and reveals the themes for the upcoming week of trivia.
Where to play Best Worst Trivia
As of this writing, you can find a Best Worst Trivia game at three different Portland-area locations, Monday through Thursday. The current schedule is as follows (we’re also in the process of adding these trivia nights to our event calendar, which you find listed at the bottom of this and any other trivia article on this site):
Best Worst Trivia Monday Night
- El Rayo Taqueria, Scarborough
- Banded Brewing, Biddeford
- Lazzari, Portland
Best Worst Trivia Tuesday Night
- Another Round, Portland (it is a board game bar and cafe)
- Ri Ra, Portland
- Brookside, Westbrook
Best Worst Trivia Wednesday Night
- Salt Yard, Portland
- Wilson County BBQ, Portland
- Smoked, Portland
Best Worst Trivia Thursday Night
- Locally Sauced, Yarmouth
- Tomaso’s Pizza & Burger Bar, Portland
- Arcadia, Portland
I’ll keep checking the company’s socials — Best Worst Trivia Facebook page and Best Worst Trivia Instagram — and when I see themes I think we’ll enjoy answering trivia about, we’ll definitely head back to one of their games, probably in Biddeford or Scarborough, simply because they’re closer to where we live. Or we’ll try one of the many other trivia night offerings near Portland, Maine.
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