QuizList

… And when he died, all he left us was a loan’.

Better than average topical team name heard recently (mind you, it did kind of have to be spelled out…) leads us back to consideration of pub quiz team names.  There are some other categories I could mention:

Come again?

World of Borecraft
Timmy, eh Timmy
I’m serious as cancer when I say rhythm is a dancer

Bo-ring

We three
Richard and Judy (or equivalent, just the team’s names)
And in last place….

Enough already…

Ahmadinejad – get me out of here!

 As regards one-of quizzes, you may expect a few more than usual at this time of year, so go to the relevant section for two this weekend.  You’ve missed one for Camra members but there are sure to be more… keep me informed.

How do you come up with a good quiz team name? This article,  http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/40744/how-pub-quizzes-became-big-business/full/, which is one of the best I’ve read on pub quizzes and which I have cited quite frequently, has some rules which include:

- Be topical:  but don’t be stale (ie I do remember jokes about West Ham and Michael Jackson’s chimp which persisted long after their sell-by date)

- Know the room (know what will be appreciated and what won’t)

- Wit and wordplay count.  Obviously.

Nice if these were the guiding principles, but they’re not always.  I have concluded that quiz team names include a sizeable proportion of the following:

Things you put down when you couldn’t be bothered to think
Those we have used have included references to topics we’ve been talking about that have nothng to do with the quiz, including ‘They are not on the streets, but they are here’, ‘Emerald City’ (from Oz the ultra-violent tv series, not the Wizard thereof), ‘Pigs in Blankets’ etc.  With these I would classify others which I have heard from various teams, including ‘Latecomers’, ‘Barflies’ and so on.

Things which obviously have relevance to the team themselves, but probably to no-one else
Examples from quizzes I sometimes attend include ‘Endless Nameless’,  ‘The Full Cream Clots’, ‘Mrs Neville says…’, ‘Arsebeard’, ‘Paris Texas N8′, ‘The Boundary Commissioners’, and ‘Always you talk about…’.  The last of these we tried to wind up by calling ourselves ‘Always you sit beside the toilet’ one week.  Which leads seamlessly to my next category:

Attempts to wind up the quizmaster or someone else
In this context I like ‘Let him have it, Chris’, especially when a jackpot seems unwinnable (and the QM’s name is Chris).  Or ‘I say!  Two of us – seven of you!  I make that Pimms o’clock!’ which was a dig at a frequently over-large team in a well-known quiz.  In the distant days when Fletch and I set a quiz some team referenced our unintentionally matching apparel (respectively, a red jumper and a red shirt), which was fine.  (They won the quiz but not the bottle of wine we awarded for best team name….)

Topical and/or bad taste names
For instance, there were innumerable names about Gadaffi (‘Gadaffi ducks’, ‘Gadaffi down the drain’ etc).  Always good for a laugh or a groan, but try to steer away from taboo subjects…

Were these ever funny?  In any case, for feck’s sake retire them now…
‘Norfolk and Chance’, ‘Quizteam Aguilera’, ‘Quiz Akabusi’, ‘Quizlamic Jihad’, ‘The Cunning Stunts’, ‘The Funkin’ Barstewards’ and so on ad nauseam.

My favourite team name, other than a couple thought up by ourselves which would take too long to explain, is probably ‘My twenty year quiz hell’, which I have heard at an unnamed North London quiz.  It manages to get digs in at tabloid headlines, quiz players, and by extension quizzes and quizmasters as well.  Well done that team!

New Tuesday quizzes at:

The Old Ship, 25 Upper Mall, W6 9TD,.020 8748 2593,  http://www.oldshipw6.com/ .  £2 entry, prizes: 1st – £50 Bar Tab, 2nd – £25 Bar Tab, 3rd – £15 Bar Tab.

Continuing the theme of the pub quiz as a business, there is an interesting article from the US ( http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/40744/how-pub-quizzes-became-big-business/page1/) which looks at how these quizzes originated and their likely future directions.  I wasn’t aware that quizzes in the States sprang up in Irish bars, and find this difficult to square with the fact that quizzes haven’t taken off in Ireland to anything like the same extent as in the UK.   With regard to the future development of quizzes, it’s speculated that the more ‘corporate’ quiz setters will signal the end of the ‘wacky local quizmaster’.  Now, there are many instances where this would not be such a tragedy…

But essentially it’s what makes a profit that counts, and the article argues this point well, stating that ‘In economic terms, pub quizzes exist for one reason: to populate bars during the work week with people who otherwise would not be there’.  There are lots of other common-sense observations like ‘If people who play pub quizzes are reasonably competitive nerds, the people who want to become pub-quiz titans are horrifyingly competitive nerds’ which echoes the UK experience.  To an extent.

More on the business of quizzing next week.  In terms of new London stuff, the following pub is advertising a Wednesday quiz:

The Whittington Stone,  53 Highgate Hill, N19 5NE, 020  7281 0905, http://www.thewhittingtonstonehighgate.co.uk, but unfortunately the staff member NC spoke to on Tuesday couldn’t actually provide any information about the quiz.

And we have a guest review of Fox and Hounds, 29 Passmore Street, SW1W 8HR,020 7730 6367 , by Steve, which follows:.  Many thanks for this and all reviews welcomed.

It is a lovely, quaint little pub with good beer and a rather secluded location. The quiz is once a month on the 4th Sunday – no jackpot/rollover – just a friendly diversion for a couple of hours.

The format was 20 picture questions as the table round (Ugh!) (faces with a Halloween theme – at least they were in colour and clear!)
There were 10 music questions with a Halloween theme – easily heard due to the pub’s small size!
The 20 general questions, again with a Halloween theme (sometimes slightly tenuous!), were generally fair and covered a reasonable mix of subjects.

This is a quiz for a social evening’s entertainment (which in my view is what a pub quiz should be).

Whether it is always a themed quiz or is more general at other times is something to be investigated over a few pints of the good stuff in the coming months!
 

Contestant call for a ‘new tv quiz show based on general knowledge and luck’.  Volunteers are needed for the pilot which will take place in London on November 22nd/23rd.  Mail me for more details if you are interested and I will put you in touch with the organisers.

And there’s a one-off charity quiz on Sunday 27 November:  go to the relevant section for details.

This site/blog/whatever tends to concentrate on pub quizzes from a player’s point of view, or, very occasionally, I recall my own very brief QM/question setting experience.  I haven’t spent a lot of time on quizzes from the pub’s point of view, so over the next couple of weeks I’m going to do just that.  I started this by wondering whether there was a shared pub industry understanding of what running a quiz does for your pub or does everyone start at ‘ground zero’?

An interesting article in the Publican’s Morning Advertiser (http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/Business-Support/Question-time-pub-quizzes) claims that around 22.000 pubs in the country run quizzes, which is close to half the total. I’ve seen another estimate of around 40% of pubs offering quizzes, and it may depend on how you define ‘pub’ as wine bars and the like don’t tend to be so involved.  The writer also points out that a pub quiz is the best form of entertainment for customer participation;  you can’t always avoid being part of the quiz whereas you can steer clear of pool, darts and poker.

It’s the element of potential extra profit which seduces pubs into offering quizzes.  One guideline I’ve seen is that a pub should aim for a certain ratio, eg if you lay out £100 on your quiz, you should make at least an extra £300 over and above the usual takings for the night.  A Cheshire pub mentioned in the Morning Advertiser article claims an extra £200 uplift in takings on quiz nights, and others cite increased drink (but especially food) sales.

Things only go wrong if the pub’s expenditure outweighs your extra takings, and to be honest, £100 in outlay for a quiz mentioned above seems very high.  I do know that there are QuizMasters who charge that much, but claiming that kind of a L’Oreal factor (‘because we’re worth it’) implies that the QM personally, not the prospect of the prize or jackpot, is the big attraction.  Or maybe some pubs are putting up the cash prize themselves?  Good idea, if you can sustain it, but better to have a cash prize based on the takings and donate a free round or some bottles of wine for spot prizes.

More next week…