Which city has a larger population - Auckland or Oakland? - and other "quiz night" questions

Neither Jen nor Pete had previously had much interest, or proclivity toward, trivia prior to leaving for NZ.  But this is really big here. Almost every bar or pub seems to have a "quiz night" and not a week after arriving, we were roped into our first go at it with colleagues of Jen's at the hospital. And, since we promptly won, with first prize consisting of a bar credit for the next week...well, we were hooked and just kept coming back.

Dr. Kevin Jones ruled our team for the first couple months with an iron fist, and sarcastic wit.  Our venue of choice was the Red Lion Inn.  Pretty much each week you find the same teams and mostly the same people back for a go at it.  We really like the announcer at the Red Lion, who is both witty and has a very energetic and catchy way of speaking. Specially fitting were the way he announces the team names, with accents where appropriate.  We attended just about every Thursday night from our arrival until the Christmas break.  After that we had a bit more difficulty gaining traction with our team - Dr. Jones had left, and our numbers dwindled.  Still, we went when we could, and enjoyed the company of several different squads.

We were very successful at first because the team was well balanced.  That is the key to it, having a balance of interests and nationalities on the team.  Also it is key to have people with knowledge on areas that seem to be inordinately important to the quiz night questioners...so an ideal team has a movie and TV buff, a US sports nut, a cricketer, a rugby fan, a geography and history buff, a science and medical person, and people geographically dispersed between NZ, Australia, the UK, and the US.  When we had all that, we either won or were close.  The few nights where we were low on the diversity, not so good.

For instance one of our last weeks our team, named "Team America", was indeed four Americans and one kiwi, with had no knowledge of cricket or rugby, and we finished dead last.  Hopeless. But a week or so prior we had four Kiwis, a Brit, and our same four Americans, and we finished in second.

We had our specialties.  Pete does well in American sports, world geography and US history.  Jen in medicine, literature and 80's music. Kendra came a lot with us (we think mostly for the cider) and is very good at current pop music and culture.

Most of the time Jen and I don't feel like we are contributing at all, but then you realize that the one random question about which US president was on the $50 bill comes up, and all of the Kiwis and Brits around the table look at us hoping beyond hope that we have the answer (Ulysses S Grant).

First impressions are also really important.  On the first time I attended, Pete got an answer about Gwyneth Paltrow right (she had thrown a fundraiser for Barack Obama) that no one else knew the answer to...and that earned him three weeks or so of goodwill and of people thinking he was clever, despite the fact that during the next three weeks he just sat there in silence through questions on how many wickets various Indian cricketers had bowled in the 1976 Cricket World Cup, or what was the chorus of the theme song to this 70s sitcom from Australia.

We got so hooked on this that we even started doing all kinds of daily trivia contests on a few of the local NZ websites, most of which have a daily quiz. And it really has been interesting that since we have actually traveled the country more than most native Kiwis have, we have come to appreciate how good we have become at deciphering or guessing whether Matamata is in A) Northlands, B) Wairarapa, C) Waitake or D) Waikato.

The answer is D.

Now home for over 5 years (!) we really miss this...but are starting to motivate to find and join a local league and get to working on knowing (and then forgetting) random facts.

And the answer to the title above (which I chose because when people in NZ say Aukland, it sounds just like how an American would say Oakland)...well, the answer is Aukland...and not particularly close. 1.6 million in Aukland compared to just 460,000 people in Oakland. I am betting the typical Kiwi or American would split 50/50 on this not particularly close trivia question.