72 Minutes With... Scott Rogowsky

Playing bar trivia with HQ’s “Quiz Daddy”— the Bob Barker of our time.

- Max Read

THE QUIZ DADDY is not, by his own admission, a pub-quiz guy. (He’s not much of a drinker.) Nevertheless, he is here at Amity Hall, an Irish pub in Greenwich Village, trying to remember the ship that took Charles Darwin to the Galápagos. “HMS Majesty?” the Quiz Daddy ventures. “No, not that. Darwin’s ship …” He trails off, and we sit in hard-thinking, pub-quiz silence.

This is an unfamiliar position for the Quiz Daddy. He is by trade an asker, not an answerer, of questions. In 90 minutes, at 9 p.m., 700,000 people will pick up their phones and open an app called HQ Trivia to play the second of two daily live games. The Quiz Daddy—born Scott Rogowsky—will be their host. For now, though, he’s simply another contestant at a bar trivia night. “The Beagle? Yeah, that sounds right.” I write it down (I’m his Quiz Partner for the evening).

What makes someone a “Quiz Daddy” as opposed to a mere game-show host? (Separate but related: Why did three straight female friends try to crash our interview?) In person at 7 p.m., in a slouchy HQ sweatshirt, Rogowsky is an affable but uncommanding presence; on my iPhone at nine, done up in a sharp suit, he exudes an outsize, off-kilter energy, all raised eyebrows and widened mouth. With a stuttery delivery that seems to mimic the game’s not-infrequent glitches, a fondness for corny jokes, and a trace of a New York accent, he’s a Borscht Belt Max Headroom. Some find him unlikable; I (and many who tune in) find him compulsively watchable. (Rogowsky says he’s “not fully convinced” anyone likes him. He knows he has fans, but “a lot are in high school.”)