Even as a double major in Spanish and statistics and a certificate in film from Duke University, Devin Cross ’05 always knew he wanted to be a writer. Trivia-minded, Devin is currently on a multi-year streak of completing the New York Times crossword puzzle every day. And he and his wife Aubree used to love going to The Irish Snug on Colfax to participate in a weekly trivia night. When the pandemic hit, they decided to host their own online trivia events because they couldn’t go in person. For their first trivia -turned-Zoom game, 120 people showed up. About three to four weeks in, a friend in New York City asked Devin to host a trivia night for her company to assist with team building. And that’s how Social Quiztancing started. He and Aubree formed an LLC in June of 2020 and since then, they’ve worked with companies such as Facebook, Google, and the New York Times to host online trivia games, uniting work forces who can’t be together in person. Devin credits his love of learning to St. Anne’s and is putting that to good use – he creates all of the trivia questions himself and is hosting 3-4 games a week. Here’s a sample question: In a standard-Q-&-A-trivia round for dog lovers where each correct answer contains a dog breed, an abridged example might be: Q: Which ship is associated with Charles Darwin? A: The HMS Beagle.

 

When he’s not “Quiztancing”, you’ll find him reading, sometimes at BookBar on Tennyson Street, his preferred local bookstore. A few of his favorite authors include Colson Whitehead, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Adam Haslett. He recently applied to graduate school for an MFA in creative writing, working towards his goal of becoming a literary fiction writer (he’s already written a few novels). But he still hopes to maintain the Social Quiztancing business. Thank you, Devin (and Aubree) for hosting an alumni quiz night last week. We can't wait to see what Devin does next!