Any aspiring quizmasters want to do a Thursday night quiz in E3 (Bow)?  If so, mail me and I’ll foward your contact details to someone who can tell you a bit more about it.

A couple of new quizzes to be going on with while I’m off - nice to get central London ones for a change.  However, it’s my experience that these come and go more rapidly than quizzes in other zones, so check them out as always.

Mondays:
The Crown and Two Chairmen, 31 Dean Street, W1D 3SB, 020 7437 8192.

First and third Wednesdays:
Theodore Bullfrog, 26-30 John Adam Street, WC2N 6HL, 020 7839 2697.

The Phoenix cinema has teamed up with the Bald Faced Stag in East Finchley to offer a monthly film quiz, early evening on the third Monday of each month, with the next one on 18 August. Do you feel lucky, punk? Have a look at the questions from July’s quiz at:

http://www.phoenixcinema.co.uk/news/pubquiz.php

and see if you’re up to the standard…. Nice cinema, comfortable pub, so if I can persuade the Fun Boy Three along I might be there.

Brookhouse Pub, Kingshill Avenue, Hayes (may not be regular quizzes).

Sun and Doves, 61-63 Coldharbour Lane, London SE5 9NS, 020 7733 1525 (Wednesdays).

The White Hart, 96 Church Road, London SE19 2EZ (Mondays).

A lot of pubs don’t publicise their phone number and are difficult to find in phone books, and the explanation I’ve been given is that the phone may be registered in the landlord’s name rather than the pub’s.

On the subject of pubs generally, here is an unashamed and free plug for the O’Neill’s chain, as they are currently serving the best drink in the world on draft: Smithwick’s ale. Fairly decent selection of quiz machines as well if you’re an afficionado.

Was that round on ‘Mister Men’ at a quiz I attended last week a deliberate wind-up? Looks like it….

The Black Horse, Union St, Barnet, Hertfordshire, EN5 4HY, 020 8449 6438, advertising a Thursday night quiz.

And the other is:

Angie’s, 710 Holloway Road, London, N19 3NH, with no phone number in evidence and I couldn’t see the night of the week indicated on the notice.

When is that hand-around of Mister (Bastard) Men going to lose its popularity? We’ve had it three times so far and each successive time got a lower score - strange, but true…

The Half Moon and Shepherds have been modernised and renamed; the Prince George is no more, and it’s a long time since I visited the Oxford Arms. To prevent this sounding like a lyric from ‘Dublin in the Rare Old Times’, let’s get down to business and what prompted me to mention the Oxford Arms. No sooner had I mentioned that Pat Logue, ex Oxford Arms, was now running a new quiz, than two people mailed me within an hour of each other with the required information. The pub where Pat is to be found now is:

Sheephaven Bay, 2-3 Mornington Street, Camden, London, NW1 7QD (no phone number in evidence), the quiz is or will be on Monday nights, and here’s a link to some more information from the Camden New Journal: http://www.thecnj.co.uk/camden/2008/061208/news061208_15.html

Pat’s Oxford Arms quiz was legendary and the free supper gimmick may have attracted a few people initially, but they came back for the quiz and Pat’s good-humoured baiting of the audience. The only detail I don’t have is whether the quiz has started yet…. no doubt someone will let me know.

I keep trying to update the list and note that the Spoons on Colney Hatch Lane has changed its name to ‘Keenans’ - looks a bit brighter but as regards quizzes I’m not sure whether anything is running at present.  Here’s the only new (to me) quiz I’ve been notified about:

The Hurlingham, 360 Wandsworth Bridge Road, Fulham, SW6 2TZ, 020 76109816.

and frustratingly I don’t even know the night of the week…

The prize for best team name given out at a charity quiz I was at was awarded to:  ‘667 - the Neighbour of the Beast’.  What’s the consensus on that?

Here are, from my point of view, is the countdown of the top five crap quizmasters and their comments.

5.    Only at 5, largely because I didn’t witness it, was the female QM who berated a good team for ‘taking money from my boys’ (ie students who sometimes attended the quiz).  However, I did witness her refusing to give out prize money because the person who went up to claim a winning score  was not the person who had purchased the quiz sheet. Good riddance to that quiz.

4.    At 4 is the QM’s uncle (apparently), who was doing the scoring (badly), and when I queried his addition on our sheet he said ‘If I’ve scored you wrong I’ve scored everyone wrong, so get lost’.

3.    At 3, higher because he was usually terrible and I encountered No 4 only once, is the QM who, again when we queried our score, said ‘You’ve been given a score for the round and that’s it’.

2.    At 2, and  it would have been top just for the sheer awfulness of No 1, is the QM who offered a joker on all rounds but then decided to add an extra question to Round 3, given teams who had picked that round in advance a distinct advantage. When I objected he said ‘Who cares - you’re not going to win anyway’.

1.    And yes - nothing can beat number 1.  The scene was described in a post a couple of weeks ago - when the drunks won the quiz.  A mild debate broke out about a football question (why is sport so controversial?) and the QM said ‘Well, even if I had marked you right on that, you still wouldn’t have won’.  That opened the doors and I made a comment about the ‘winning’ team who seemed to have obtained their answers from the cosmos somewhere.  Thing is, if it had just been that night, it might have passed by and been chalked down to experience, but we went back a few weeks later and were screwed even worse;  that was described in a very recent post though I made no connection between the two nights.  I’m not quite sure which of his comments is the worst, but possibly his saying ‘Welcome back’ when we returned for the second time is the most insincere - the ones listed above were just stupid semi-bullying comments, basically.

So that’s quizzing’s rich tapestry, nothing new this week and check whether Sunday is football-affected this week…

Back from a largely quiz-free zone, with news of a Wednesday night quiz:

The Stinging Nettle,
55 Goldhawk Road,
W12 8QP.
(020) 8743 3016.
Some Dublin quizzes are listed on this site, but many go off for the ’summer’. I will indicate the ones which appear to do this but it’s worth checking around September if there are any pubs of particular interest to you.

Secondly, we have two newly notified quizzes in East and North London:

Nightingale, 51 Nightingale Lane, E11 2E, 020 8530 4540 (Monday quiz).

Clifton, 96 Clifton Hill, NW8 0JT, 020 7372 3427 (Wednesday quiz).

Lastly, and this is nothing to do with either of the quizzes mentioned above or others visible in recent posts, we have:

QuizList Quizmaster’s Guide on How to Fix a Quiz So Your Mates Win.

Rule 1: Let one of them come up while you are marking the sheets and engage you in a long discussion, during which it is possible that a couple of answers are changed.

Rule 2: If they have left a blank space for one of the answers, write the correct answer in, using the same pen you use to mark the quiz.

Rule 3: If you’ve asked a question about a music group, and their answer is wrong but is a rough synonym for the group’s name (e.g you wanted the answer ‘The Ruts’ and they’ve put ‘The Furrows’), mark it right.

Rule 4: Cross out their total score and write in a higher total.

Rule 5: If you’ve done all that and it’s still only enough to put them in a tiebreak, improvise.

Rule 6: Finally, show your contempt for all other teams by leaving the answer sheets lying around the pub.

And for those of you who wanted me to say more: sorry, but that’s it… maybe one day we’ll return to the topic of the quiz night where all that happened.

Well, I said I’d write about the awful quiz we were at some time ago, but as I left it a few weeks, its awfulness might be fading. Started well: expensive drinks but okay bar, friendly quizmaster, interesting questions, even a music/entertainment round which we had dreaded (for some reason) was fine. Because of where I was sitting I was more aware than my team mates of a few drunk guys to our right, permanently on mobile phones (and also outside when smoking) and making a big racket about some of the answers. Alarm bells started ringing when the answers were read out and they cheered virtually every single one… then, strangely enough, they were announced as the winners. ‘Oh, XXX doesn’t look too pleased’, one of them shouted, referring to someone sitting near me.

At that stage another punter went up to the QM and complained and she may have used the dreaded ‘c’ word (cheating). Things were made worse when the victorious team loudly demanded ‘their’ winnings a couple of times and then announced to the pub in general ‘We’ll be back next week to take your money again!’.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. I haven’t seen anything as blatant as this since the early days of mobile phones. If the noisy team weren’t actually obtaining answers I don’t see how they won, given the state they were in and that they were acting like people who had never played a quiz in their life. Of course, like the other punter, I stupidly felt obliged to say something to the QM and got some blustering in return. Reminds me of the time I said something to a bus driver about someone causing trouble on the bus and his reply was ‘Actually, you’re the only one giving me hassle’. Come to think of it, he didn’t say ‘actually’, as his vocabulary probably didn’t rise to words of three syllables.

Friends are prepared to give the quiz another chance so we shall see…