To my knowledge, no event quite like last night’s literary trivia throwdown (to celebrate the release of Slice magazine’s fourth issue) at Dixon Place on the LES has ever taken place. It pitted some local favorite authors—Jonathan Lethem (The Fortress of Solitude), Chip Kidd (The Learners), Darin Strauss (More Than It Hurts You), A.J. Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically) and Susan Jane Gilman (Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven)—against formerly faceless (but integral!) teams of editors and book agents. But perhaps most importantly, the event was cosponsored by Sixpoint Craft Ales (beers are key, if only to moderate the cross-industry bloodlust). Are authors actually smarter than the people who keep them humble and financially solvent? Brief recap after the break.

After some pithy introductions by DJ-with-jokes Joe Scalora, the first of eight rounds began. The authors jumped out to a quick lead, and I was afraid that it would quickly become a shellacking the likes of which the world hadn’t seen since Tyson disabused Carl “The Truth” Williams. Perhaps overconfident due to early success (Jacobs at some point read an entire encyclopedia), the hubristic author team didn’t reckon on the publishing-industry acumen of Grand Central Publishing editor Les Pockell (who, with humor and showmanship, eloquently explained the genesis of Catch-22’s title) or the preternaturally Rolodexical Harry Potter tidbits offered up by the agents table (why wouldn’t they know everything there is to know about a book series that made a bajillion dollars?). Eventually, though, the combination of Kidd and Lethem’s formidable comic book knowledge and Strauss’s steely-eyed gamesmanship carried the day. Still, we know who really holds the power—so enjoy those trophies, authors.