Paul Paquet
Paul Paquet has had a lifelong interest in oddball arcana. In high school, he devoured Fred L. Worth’s trivia encyclopedia and was on his school’s Quiz Bowl team. In the 1990s, he launched a website for his writing and editing business, and added a trivia feature as a way to generate traffic. Soon, the feature was more popular than the site, and it was spun off to www.triviahalloffame.com. In addition to daily and weekly games, the site includes interviews with people who run major trivia contests, trivia authors and big game-show winners, including Ken Jennings of “Jeopardy!” fame.
He has written questions for Trivial Pursuit, Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, Microsoft Encarta, MTV Europe, “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” merchandising and the online version of “1 vs. 100” on nbc.com.
In 2007, he won the North American leg of the World Quizzing Championship and finished second in 2008. He also helps organize other WQC events and is the congress’s honorary “vice president of trivia.”
Paul is based in Ottawa, where he runs a local trivia league. He prepares content for Ottawa’s World Trivia Night, the world’s largest non-radio trivia charity event. He also volunteered as a coach for a Quiz Bowl team at Lisgar Collegiate, which won the local championship.
Paul is mentioned in books by “Jeopardy!” champs Ken Jennings and Bob Harris. He has been interviewed by CBC National News, CBC Radio, Talk TV's “Chat Room,” Global National News and numerous others.
And although he hasn’t been on “Jeopardy!” yet, he’s passed the audition test a half-dozen times, and his wife, writer Laura Byrne Paquet, was a contestant in 2004.
