QuizList

And for those of you who don’t know the famous apocryphal answer, good for you.

I was reminded of this because of the supposed return of ‘Fun Fortunes’ as a dominant quiz mode.  These are entire quizzes based on ‘Family Fortunes’ type answers, as in ‘We asked 100 people to name a James Bond movie’ and you need to match the 4/5 most popular answers.  I’ve seen ’Fun Fortunes’ described elsewhere on the net as ‘the quiz for people who don’t like quizzes’ (quite).  I think they are a bit of a love it or hate it scenario but they do tend to even things out as regards winning teams, which is why some pubs like them.

A few years ago many Ember Inns used to offer two quizzes a week, with one being general knowledge and one ‘Fun Fortunes’. I’ve noticed from their website that you can check for E. Inns near you by entering your postcode and that many of them list two quizzes a week, but whether these are GK or FF or neither, I don’t know.  It will take me a while to update QuizList given the sheer volume of information so if you want to try out the site yourself, here is the link:  http://www.emberinns.co.uk/.

Should have a few new quizzes to list next week;  no live update the following week as I’m away so I’ll post a couple of reviews of recent quizzes.  Keep sending your comments and updates and I’ll do my best to keep up.

Almost a week’s worth of one-off quizzes appear in the relevant section at the moment.  Bear in mind that I get these mostly at very short notice and won’t always be able to draw attention to them in the blog postings, so if you are on the lookout for an unusual one-off quiz, something in aid of a cause you support, or a quiz on a weekend night (as many of them tend to be), keep an eye on the One off Quizzes section.

As someone who has been to a lot of one-off and charity quizzes, I would say that they vary in quality more than regular quizzes.  The QM can tend to be an enthusiastic amateur whose passion for their cause, or whose liking of the sound of their own voice, can overwhelm everything else.  I have bad memories of two of us trying to make the final bus home from one which had gone on and on and asking them to hurry it up or give us our prizes or something like that and being booed.  I also have memories that might be delusional of some quiz organised by a fringe political party where every question seemed to begin with ‘What imperialist lackey did such and such?’  I did learn a lot about the Bible when the vicar joined our team at a local church quiz, and we won (just as well for his reputation, as most of the questions had a religious flavour).  And in the course of charity quizzes I have learned a lot about expeditions to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

At times they can be really the pits.  However, mostly they are also a welcome relief from the cheating and competitiveness of regular quizzes, and you get the odd good or unusual prize (some Dell bags with wheels are still a welcome addition to my travelling).  Bear in mind, though, that sometimes they take place in venues which Do Not Serve Alcohol…

More Wednesday action, including a quiz at:

The 7 Dials Club, 42 Earlham Street, WC2H 9LA, 020 7691 1577, www.sevendialsclub.com.  This has an early start (7pm) with £1 entry and max six to a team. Prize is a £20 bar tab for winners.

And a monthly quiz, I believe on the last Wednesday of the month, has just launched in:

O’Neills, 87 Muswell Hill Broadway, N10 3HA, 020 8883 7382, http://www.oneills.co.uk/oneillsmuswellhill/.  Best to ring for dates in case it’s the fourth Wednesday rather than the last. Or some such complication.

What are some of the ways unscrupulous (or desperate) quiz players can boost their totals?  Cheating, of course;  mobile email and internet devices.  Before all that, there were other less technologically advanced methods.  One which I saw the unwelcome re-emergence of last week was a team writing down two or more alternative answers for a question and then claiming  a point for the right one.  I was marking another team’s answer sheet and they did it twice;  once putting two names for the subject of Bob Dylan’s song ‘Lay Lady Lay’ and once for inventing a country called ‘Saigon and Cambodia’.  Because the correct answer was contained in each of these they went whinging to the (inexperienced) QM about my marking and got some extra marks.  They were still last, so it didn’t entirely work. Oh, and we won.

Another thing which p*ssed me off this week was a member of bar staff being sold a jackpot ticket and being drawn out for the question.  She didn’t get it right and told us all that she was upset.  Jackpots are an extra piece of entertainment for those who enter quizzes – they’re not a replacement for the 10% service charge.  Neither are they a way for QMs to make themselves popular with bar staff at the expense of their relationship with the people for whom they are supposedly employed – quiz players/customers.  There are other ways of alienating quizzers, like a hand-around Mister (Bastard) Men picture round.  And if you want to include bar staff in the quiz, get someone else to serve punters.

… I said, well wait for me…’

Don’t think Julian Clary was referring to the Titanic here, but hasn’t the ship itself been prevalent in quizzes this week?  I found myself learning all sorts of things about it, and in a stupid moment idly wondering what ‘rocket’ had to do with anything, in a question where the answer had to be a type of lettuce.

To move on:  there’s a charity quiz on tonight (Saturday 21st) in the Victoria, 28 North Hill, N6 4QA, 020 8340 6091.  I don’t have any more details.  And there used to be a Wednesday quiz in The Auld Triangle, Plimsoll Road, Finsbury Park,  N4 2QW, 0207-354-2869.   Now there is another with 8.30 pm start, winning team takes cash pot from £1 entry per person. Bonus question worth £10 each week, if not won it rolls over to the next week.

This week, I’m concluding my comments on the site itself with the all-important issue of updating.  How can I keep it up to date?  The answer is, I can’t.  I can update a small number of quizzes that are local to me or that I find out about.  Otherwise, I rely heavily on people to send me in new quizzes, which they tend to, and changes in night of week or details when a quiz or pub closes.  They are less likely to do the latter, which is why I have a big warning at the top of every page of listings that you should check things out to see if the quiz is still running.  Particularly if you haven’t been there before.

There used to be three other pub quiz listing sites and I am not sure if they are around, but all suffered from the same problem of keeping things up to date.  One relied on pub landlords and QMs to post the listings themselves, which had its advantages but there seemed to be no way of taking them down once they were included.  Another pinched a whole load of listings from QuizList but didn’t bother updating them.  Even when I did.  They’re gone.  Tee hee.

So do your bit and send me any changes you become aware of;  I have said it before but I’ll say it again – your email stops with me and you will not be contacted again.

New listings of some quizzes run by Adventure Quizzes (more details at www.adventurequizzes.com ) -

Sunday:
The Pilot, 56 Wellesley Road, W4 4BZ, 020 8994 0828, http://www.pilot-chiswick.co.uk/.

Monday:
The Queen’s Head, 13 Brook Green, W6 7BL, 020 7603 3174.

Tuesday:
The Hollywood Arms, 45 Hollywood Road, SW10 9HX, 020 7349 7840.

So to some more details about how the site works.  Last week I was talking about the details that I need to list a quiz.  Now, by all means you can send me whatever details you want to highlight, but be aware that if this includes self-styled descriptions or hyperbolic claims, chances are I won’t reproduce them. Claims that are frequently made include ‘the hardest quiz in London’, ‘the best quizmaster around’, ‘the quiz queen’ etc.  If you think your quiz, QM or plasticine modelling rounds are the best in London, fine, but I probably don’t and I am running the descriptions.  Oh, and QMs, don’t send in something purporting to be from a punter saying your quiz is the best in the world.. ..

Other irrelevancies I’ve been sent or seen have included details of how spot prizes tend to be given to ‘hot blondes’ (claimed by the QM) or things that aren’t really quizzes that people want me to list.  I will do so only if they are of general or any interest.

A good description would be something like:  The Tuesday night quiz at the Collaborators’ Arms, Pinkerton Road, SW22 4EF, starts at 8 every week.  We have five rounds of 10 questions, with GK, Music, TV/Films and Sport making regular appearances, also a themed round which differs every week – recent ones included Australia, The Oscars, and Fashion.  Spot prizes of bottles of wine are given for the best team name and  the winners of a hand-around puzzle round.  There’s also a jackpot capped at £300 and it was won a few weeks ago by someone who knew what role in history was played by Richard Brandon.  First prize is all the cash collected (£1 entry per person) and second prize is a round of drinks.  We have had a few different winning teams recently and it seems to be the theme rounds which prevent the usual suspects from winning all the time…

Basically, that is most of what people would like to know about a quiz, and that is a quiz I would go to.  Unfortunately, there is no Collaborators’ Arms in existence….

More next week.