QuizList

An N1 pub is looking for a reliable quizmaster to host a quiz once a month on Tuesdays.  They might be persuaded to change it to Mondays.  Let me know if you want your details forwarded to them.

Slow week , two fairly un-brilliant quizzes visited, and NC and PH proved hard to detach from the quiz machines.  Most pubs now seem to have the same model of games machine and it has a boring selection of games – once in a while when I happen on ‘Trivia for Dummies Version 1′ or ‘Quiz City’ it’s good…  ‘Beat the Landlord’ or whatever it’s called started with promise and has, I think, been hammered by too many professionals;  the crossword one isn’t bad but some original new games are needed.  I started off liking ‘Choose to Lose’ but then you get those awful spates where your choices are reduced to two…

Finally, for all would-be or veteran quizmasters, visit QuizList next week for the QuizMasters’ special, when I will be trying to put together a few resources for that group of people about whom I am frequently critical…

Word of a rare Friday quiz has reached me.  Apparently it’s early evening and in:

The Windmill, 44 Lambeth High Street, SE1 7JS, 020 7735 1698.

Any more details, let me know.

And recently I’ve revisited two quizzes which some time ago I used to be found at semi-frequently.  First of all, we have the Victoria, North Hill, N6, which has changed its quiz night a few times and now settled on a Monday.  It’s taking a break at the moment but persisted through the first flurry of snow.  What’s good is that each round carries a separate prize;  what’s not so good is that some of these were fairly nasty-looking  sweets or similar which we gave back;  what’s good is the final ‘jackpot’ round where you have to reach a certain number of right answers out of twenty to scoop the takings.  The possibility exists of a rollover.  Anyway, I believe the quiz is taking a break in January.

Then on Tuesdays we have the Washington in England’s Lane, NW3,  a long-running quiz which temporarily shifted to Monday nights.  This is the standard ‘Redtooth’ format with the final wipeout round – get one wrong and your score for that round is wiped out, get all right and you gather an extra five points.  I am glad to say that we won and had an enjoyable evening sharing a big table with various other groups who dropped in and out and listening to stories on the architecture of Belsize Park (!).  The QM experienced some barracking and unfortunately wasn’t running the jackpot on the night we were there, which was a bit of a pity;  the only other complaint I had was that when the time came to get a taxi a staff member offered me a number where the controller had never heard of the Washington and also seemed puzzled at the concept of ‘England’s Lane’ …  Nonetheless, well worth a visit.

Complaints on the hardness of the ‘mystery place’ quiz!  Sorry.  Will do better…

During a slow week for quizzes, and a good week for snow, the only information I have to impart is that if you go to a quiz onthe events of 2009, brush up on your MPs’ expense claims.  It pays to know who claimed for horse manure and toilet seats.

So you couldn’t guess the place name?  Shame on you.  One correct guess given to me verbally, so that person is the winner, and many incorrect ones by e-mail.  Here we go:

It has at least 15 namesakes in the USA,  and contains a prison, cathedral and castle.  Well, no more explanation is needed on these clues.

Nineteenth century literary connection:  there are actually several, but Dickens was closely associated with this place.  And this ties in with ‘think of a metal roster, then turn it round:  ‘a metal roster’ might be  ‘a chrome list’, which is an anagram of Cloisterham, the setting for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and believed to be based on our place.

Walk up a prominent street there, and you might find yourself in Pennsylvania:  Fort Pitt.

A defensive afterthought nearby has given us a word which entered the English language:  well,  here’s how Wikipedia defines this – ‘Fort Borstal was built as an afterthought from the 1859 Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom, by convict labour between 1875 and 1885.’  So now you know….

Famous near-carthorse:  ‘Carthorse’ is nearly an anagram of the place name.

Sometimes grouped with other neighbouring places around a geographical feature:  the Medway Towns.

An old Roman Road runs through it:  Watling Street.

Nearby football team has blue as a prominent colour:  Gillingham.

In 1998, something happened this place which makes it (to my knowledge) unique among English places for what it hasn’t rather than for what it has:  it lost its status as a city, making it possibly the only ex-city in England today…

And if you still don’t know where it is, well, reader, I married him.

Haven’t decided whether I’ll run another one of these in the immediate future, so to keep you going, think about what the following might have in common:  Fireworks, skip lorries, the pips on Radio 4, the bleeps on ‘Mastermind’, text message signals?  (Answer:  the dog is scared of all of them…)

Happy New Year, all. I know a few people still recovering from the night of the 31st…

Time for QL’s review of the year, and for once I am at a loss. I think the main story was pub closures, and though I have tried as far as I can to keep the site up to date, I’ll repeat my plea that if you know of a pub closure or quiz which is no longer running, please take a minute to let me know. You don’t go on any mailing list and your e-mail address isn’t used in any other way, but you will have done all users of the site a favour. People are generally keen to tell me when something new starts; when it finishes it’s kind of ‘out of mind’ but not necessarily out of site (sic) as you haven’t let me know to remove it…

Anyway, pub closures, recessions, big jackpots… I think we have come nearly full circle to the position of 10-15 years ago, with a small number of people targeting big money and big jackpot quizzes, and barrings and bannings happening. On the other hand, small quizzes with no big cash atttractions are being held onto by pubs as they draw the punters in during these difficult times. I think predictions of the end of quizzing as we know it are premature, and we’ve heard it all before…

Low points were easier to identify than high points. There was that ill-advised return to a quiz where we were sure we’d been shafted twice and being almost certainly shafted again (the QM didn’t recognise us) – three losses by one point to drunk teams of the QM’s friends is too much, and besides I took the answer sheets so am aware of the winning team being marked right for wrong answers… enough said. Then there was being presented with a round of Suduko counting for ten points. Then there was going to a quiz organised from work and my colleague picking ‘Music’ for our joker round (turned out to be national anthems…).

High points – what? The continuation of some good local quizzes, like the Three Compasses in Hornsey and the Five Bells in East Finchley, some good quizzes outside London like the Rendezvous in Weymouth and the perennial Mermaid in Porth, and the usual good company and good times at quizzes when people don’t take things too seriously.

So the usual thanks to Carl, who created the site and does all technical things; some of the better pub landlords and QMs (you know who you are); everyone who has sent me information during the year; and Quizzers Extraordinaire NC, PH and MF; and here’s to a prosperous 2010.

All North London news this time, with the Three Compasses taking a break and Monday quizzes will restart on the 11th January.

The Winchester, Archway Road, has stopped its Wednesday night quiz, I gather for some of the reasons I was listing recently – difficulties around Wednesdays and football…

And the King’s Head, Crouch End, is advertising a quiz on Monday 11 January (see details under One-Off quizzes) but it’s  not clear to me whether this has replaced its usual Wednesday quiz or not.

In terms of ‘Quizzes of the Year’, some of the data you will need features here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009, but one still requires a list of winners of reality shows and the like, so I’ll keep searching…