What might be ‘the ultimate pub quiz round’? That’s the question Laura Hadland has asked us to consider for this month’s edition of The Session.
Our first thought was of the best we ever performed in a pub quiz round.
Back in about 2006 we went to the film and TV quiz at The Rose & Crown in Walthamstow.
The format was, as we recall, that two utter nerds would ask slightly too many questions about Doctor Who, considering the more general nature of the quiz, broken up with themed rounds on various aspects of film and TV history.
On this particular occasion, one of the rounds had ten questions about Hammer, the legendary British film studio of the 1950s to the 1970s. The questions were, as usual, slightly too difficult and too obtuse.
Except – except! – about three hours before the quiz began, Ray finished reading The Hammer Story by Marcus Hearn and Alan Barnes. It was as if he’d crammed for an exam. Ten out of ten!
But they got us on the tiebreaker with a question about Timeslip that only one of their weird mates would ever know. So it goes.
This took us to our second thought: how do you calibrate pub quiz questions so that everyone can join in and have fun?
It’s all too easy for the quiz to be won by (a) one of those teams of professional quizzers, all drinking tap water; (b) a group of random people who just happen to be unusually knowledgeable; or (c) a gang of regulars who’ve heard all the questions before, or are mates with the quizmaster.
(Side note: we once did very well in the quiz at The Dock Inn in Penzance when the then landlady, Steph, reused the questions from the previous week by mistake.)
Maybe sample questions could be provided so people could rule themselves out beforehand, saying either “Oh, this is just a fun quiz, I won’t bother…” or “Bloody hell, this is a university final exam!”
Or perhaps the results of the first round could be used to calibrate handicaps for each team, to level the playing field. This might work quite well except, of course, it would be a bit too complicated – and people would work out how to game it by week three at the latest.
No, the simplest and best method is to make sure the topics are varied across the whole quiz, and that they use different sets of skills such as listening (music round) and image recognition (picture round).
Honestly, you might think a pair of geeks like us would be great at pub quizzes, but we often fall down on rounds about:
- contemporary pop culture
- Premiership football
- other sports
The single topic quiz round, however brilliantly put together, will inevitably lead to one or more teams putting down their pens in despair: “Do you know anything about rearing alpacas? I know I don’t.”
So, with all that in mind, what is the ultimate pub quiz round?
For us, it’s probably a general knowledge round that includes questions about history, geography, science, sport, old pop culture, new pop culture, food and drink, and anything else a civilian off the street stands half a chance of knowing about.
That format means you can always hope that the next question will go your way – and it’s hope that makes pub quizzes fun.
For more on this, back in 2020, we wrote something about the history of pub quizzes, and Laura built on that in a later article. Do check them out.
