QuizList

Next update on or before Saturday 15 May – I’m away.

No sooner do I list TOC than they cancel the quiz due to ‘lack of interest’!  Oh well.  We tried to take part, three times, and only once was it on.

However, let’s move to new quizzes and I am giving you a good few this week.  On  Monday there’s:

The Exhibit Bar, 12 Balham Station Road, Balham, SW12 9SG,  020 8772 6556.

Here’s the information I have on it:

Every Monday night in the main bar, we will be hosting The Exhibit Quiz, so get a team together, think of a stupid team name and get down here for some geeky fun! Quiz will start at 8pm, get here for 7.30pm to get a good spot. Entry is £1 per person, there will be some wonderful, and not so wonderful prizes including a bar tab for the winners, spot prizes and booby prize for the losers!

Also on Monday we have a quiz at:

The Gallery, 190 Broadhurst Gardens, West Hampstead, NW6 3AY, 020 7625 9184, with cash and drink prizes.

And another Monday quiz with cash prizes in:

The Prince Arthur, 95 Forest Road, London Fields, E8 3BH, 020 7249 9996.

On Wednesdays there’s:

Lost Angel, 339 Battersea Park Road, Battersea, SW11 4LS, 020 7622 2112.  No more details and I have seen one reference to the quiz not taking place when a prospective team visited, so any more information would be welcome.

Thursday quiz with bar tab prize in:

The Circle, 348 Clapham Road, Clapham, SW9 9AR, 020 7622 3683.

And another Thursday quiz in:

Marie Lloyd Bar, Hackney Empire, 289 Mare Street, E8 1EJ, 020  8510 4524.

Finally,  two one-off quizzes are listed at present, including an ‘Arsenal quiz’ in the Florence!  Gosh.  Go to the relevant place for details.  Thanks as always to everyone who sent new quizzes and deletions in.

I also have a mailing from soneone who runs a big trivia website, who’d like to sponsor some quiz nights and can provide quiz questions, prizes and merchandise.  If you might be interested for your quiz let me know.  I’ve requested a bit more information.

So two clues in the placename marathon to keep you going:

6.  Has a famous namesake in the USA…

7. .. and one of its biggest population centres could be a namesake of a famous London street.

Back mid-May, volcanic dust permitting…

T O C (The Old Crown), 90 Highgate Hill,  N19 5NQ, 020 7272 3893, offers a quiz Sundays – early, around 7.00/7.30.  Now, I say this but there is some uncertainty about whether it’ll take place on any given Sunday, and hasn’t done so one of the weeks we attended.  It’s advisable, though not foolproof, to ring in advance or drop in if you pass by…  but we were told that the quizmaster lives locally and rings up to find out whether there are enough teams in before he ventures out.    So what to do?

Well, this is potentially a good venue and good quiz, so maybe it’s worth persevering.  However, I tend to think that a quiz should be offered even if only two teams turn up and that inconsistency will put teams off in the long run.  Mind you, not everyone has the gall to run a ‘Clash of the Titans’ where most people play as individuals as the great Robbie of the lovely Regency Rooms in the Plough did on one occasion.  Let’s see, remind me who won that? (hee hee)

Worthwhile one-off charity quiz on Sunday 2 May, in aid of the RNIB  – see the relevant section for details.

The clues to our place name continue, and try this one:

5.  Used to have something in its name; not now.

No sooner do I list the Finchley Tavern as having a Monday quiz than it switches to a Tuesday.  Oh well.

The wonderful Marsha and Steve, who with the help of NC and PH had a big jackpot win during the week, sent me the following link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/8544125.stm

Yes, it’s back to the age-old topic of cheating at quizzes, which is a source of annoyance to many.  I gather from another source that there is a Facebook group aimed at stopping cheating at pub quizzes and/or exposing the cheats.  Not being on FB myself, I can’t tell you any more.

I think the most annoying thing is not the fact that people do it but the half-hearted QM and pub response.  It appears that they don’t want to alienate anyone who might be a paying customer, even if they are a blatant cheat and p*ssing everyone else off.  I remember being at one of those quizzes where the jackpot question is given out to all teams at the end.  It was something to do with Vaclac Havel and we did know it.  Two drunks blatantly used a mobile to ring a friend and get the answer and were even heard loudly spelling it.  The QM’s response?  He split the jackpot between our team and theirs and told them that they were barred from future quizzes.  My sense is that the guys had been passing by and hadn’t intended to return.  To my mind, a watery and inadequate response;  but that was a long time ago, in another postcode, and besides the quiz is dead.

To clue 4 in our marathon:

4.  Stone age stone for a tourist attraction.

The Finchley Tavern, 686 High Road, N12 9PT, used to be called the Wishing Well and in addition to changing its name is now advertising a Monday night quiz, starting time 8.30.  And that, folks, comprises all the details I have – no doubt because of the pub name change I haven’t yet located a phone number, but will post this as soon as I can.

Next clue in the 13-question challenge leading to a place in the UK:

3.  Contains an airport.

And the hippocampus reference last week seems to have set the cat among the pigeons, no pun intended.

Finally, to the question posed in the title.  The short answer is of course ‘no’, though you might have wondered about this during the week with all the kerfuffle about the final of ‘University Challenge’.  I’ve just watched a few minutes of it and it really wasn’t that compelling.  Or watchable.  In any case, if you were to compare the levels of alcohol consumed per head in quizzing and rock and roll there would be no comparison.  I will leave you to work out the implications of that ever so slightly ambiguous statement.

More deletions;   many thanks for those and keep sending them in… the site is as up to date as I can get it but I always do advise people to check whether a particular quiz is still running anyway.

One-off quizzes:  there’s a charity quiz in the Three Compasses on Easter Sunday night, and no quiz on Monday 5 April.  The league arrangement starts again 12 April. For further details on the charity quiz, ponder the significance of this week’s post title and go to the relevant section on the site…

And the Wednesday quiz in the Windsor Castle, N2, has made its shift to a Thursday – can the area accommodate two Thursday quizzes?  Stay tuned for the battle of Robert and Richard.

Next clue in the 13-question challenge follows.   I hope my clue last week was not what prompted one QM to produce a particularly dire picture round on what he termed ‘terrible football strips’ – clashing colours, squares, stripes, etc… We got 3 out of 10 right (the correct answers were all provided and you had to match them up with the strips, but there might have been a couple of red herrings, no pun intended) and may have achieved one of the highest scores.

Clue 2:  Strange thing about the fields there – you might just find a hippocampus in one…

I will leave you to ponder that; enjoy the Bank Holidays!