For the past year and a half, Weinberg senior Justin Dynes — or one of his friends — has arrived at Bob’s Pizza at 6 p.m. sharp every Tuesday, ready to snag a table two hours ahead of the now-closed restaurant’s weekly trivia game.

At the end of the night, chances are that players will hear the host announce their team, Hilbert’s Hotel, as one of the top scorers. Just this quarter, the team has come first twice, third twice and fifth three times.

Hilbert’s Hotel began when a group of six Northwestern students, most of whom were rising upperclassmen in the Integrated Science Program at the time, got together for Tuesday night trivia in June 2024. What started as a casual evening hangout turned into a third place finish. 

The $10 gift card they received was enough to bring them back week after week as the group stayed in the Chicago area for the summer. By the time the school year started, they “couldn’t live without it,” Dynes said.

Since then, they’ve played more than 60 rounds of trivia hosted by Go 4 It Entertainment at Bob’s, Dynes said, skipping only a few weeks because of University breaks. Even after the restaurant closed last month, they’ve followed the trivia to Prairie Moon, with no plans of stopping any time soon. 

History of Hilbert’s Hotel 

Hilbert’s Hotel’s team name was born out of a conversation about mathematical paradoxes while the group was gearing up for their first game.

“We’re all really big STEM nerds, and we were trying to come up with names. And for some reason, their minds were going towards math ideas, thought experiments and paradoxes,” Dynes said. “The fun part is it’s alliterative, it’s fun to say and it rings off the tongue.”

Hilbert’s paradox of the Grand Hotel is a thought experiment that shows how a fully occupied hotel with infinitely many rooms may still accommodate additional guests.

While the group has grown to include nine regular members, they’ve applied the paradox’s philosophy to welcoming mutual friends as guests with Hilbert’s Hotel. 

“We’re very open minded to anybody here,” Dynes said. “There’s always room at Hilbert’s Hotel.”

For members of Hilbert’s Hotel, Tuesday nights are off-limits for anything but trivia. 

McCormick senior Arjun Farsaiya said being at trivia is a given, unless he’s physically out of town.

“People will ask for things on Tuesday night,” he said. “And I’m like, ‘Nope, that’s trivia night.’ It’s rarely ever a question of, ‘Am I going to be at trivia?’”

McCormick senior Lucia McConnell said playing trivia every week has helped ISP students in the group form tighter bonds and stay connected even as they’re taking fewer classes together this year.

McConnell said trivia is a designated time for her to socialize with friends in a non-academic setting. She hopes younger students in ISP see that the upperclassmen have balanced lives despite being in tough majors where it’s easy to sequester themselves, she said.

“In ISP specifically, people can have a habit of relishing in the program being hard and we spend so much time doing our problem sets and studying,” McConnell said. “I don’t think it’s productive. It’s good for the younger kids in the program to know that we are close, and the things that we talk about and connect on are not just classwork.”

Even though some members in the group are no longer in ISP or have graduated, they still return to trivia every week.

Jacob Cox (McCormick ’25), a founding member of Hilbert’s Hotel, takes an hourlong roundtrip on the Purple Line train from his home in Chicago to Evanston every week for trivia. Even when he was briefly staying with his sister in September and commuting for three hours on Tuesdays, it was well worth it, he said.

“It’s no lie that I’m not very good at trivia, so I mostly come back to hang out with the amazing members of the team,” Cox said.

No matter how competitive a round of trivia might get, Hilbert’s Hotel knows how to have fun. 

During the music round, when teams have to guess a song’s name and artist based on a short clip, Hilbert’s Hotel members will put Cox’s name if they’re blanking on the answer. They even had a competitive water drinking stint where they would try to see how many pitchers they could finish in an evening, which the Bob’s staff put an end to after they stopped giving them refills, Dynes said.

When Dynes first started playing trivia with the team, he would be distraught if something went awry and caused them to place poorly, he said. But this year, his mindset has changed.

“Nowadays, I actually just like the vibes,” Dynes said. “I’ve been having a lot of fun just hanging out with people, and I think that’s mattered more to me recently.”

Unleashing their competitive spirit

As trivia regulars, Hilbert’s Hotel is a well-oiled machine. Members of the group have their distinct roles, Dynes said.

Before every game, Cox writes down the team’s name on each of the answer sheets. During trivia, Dynes is the go-to for literature, movies and pop culture references. Farsaiya is the geography whiz and team scribe who writes down the answers. Weinberg senior Simon Kissel then runs up to the host to hand in their answer sheet.

During the tossup question, which requires teams to estimate a random statistic after a round, McConnell and McCormick senior Isaac Cross will offer a “prophecy number” as the team’s applied math students. They make up a random number before the host even announces the prompt, which has led them to win the round on occasion by being the closest to the actual statistic, McConnell said.

Hilbert’s Hotel has made its success and presence known at Bob’s, with another team even naming themselves “Humbert’s Hotel” as a play on words, Dynes said.

“Maybe they were fans. Maybe they had lost to us and were a little upset,” Dynes said. “It honestly felt like we had made it: We’ve become a fixture and people think about us.”

The team’s stellar performance at Bob’s has qualified the group for Go 4 It Entertainment’s trivia finals two years in a row. After becoming one of the highest scoring teams at Bob’s during the six-week summer trivia playoffs, Hilbert’s Hotel was invited to play against teams from other locations.

The first-place team won a $1,000 cash prize, and Hilbert’s Hotel sent four representatives to face its competition in Aurora, Ill, this year. Despite the pressure, the team performed well before faltering on the final question, Dynes said.

“We got the final question wrong, which brought us down,” Dynes said. “But if we had gotten it right, we would have been, I think, second. So it was a very tough loss — a lot of head-sulking that day, but still really fun.” 

Beyond Bob’s

Hilbert’s Hotel found out that Bob’s was shutting its doors when a member sent a Reddit post with the news to its group chat.

Farsaiya said he was in disbelief and in denial, but reality set in when another member shared an article announcing the news.

Hilbert’s Hotel wasted no time in taking its talents to Prairie Moon, where trivia with Go 4 It Entertainment lives on.

While Dynes is excited about a larger menu with more variety at the restaurant, he said Prairie Moon doesn’t have as many shareable food options for the group. He added that the new environment will take some getting used to.

“It’s definitely weird going to somewhere new after a year and a half of the same place,” Dynes said. “Being in a basement with very low lighting definitely didn’t feel bad or good. It just felt weird, a little bit.”

All nine members attended the last night of trivia at Bob’s. Hilbert’s Hotel came in third place, ending its run at Bob’s with the same podium spot it had at the team’s first game together.

Members reflected on their run at Bob’s over a smoked chicken sausage pizza — the pie they most reliably order as a group, especially if they’ve won a gift card from a win in the week prior.

“It may be the death of Bob’s Pizza,” Dynes said. “But it’s not the death of Hilbert’s Hotel.”

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