The i-phone is killing pub quizzes

[Andy Wilson]

Did a pub quiz for the first time in years last night. Surprisingly enough, our team was kicking ass up until 3 rounds to go and we were all chuffed as we looked odds on to win the bucket of 18 beers and the prize for best team name... 6 more beers! Then, suddenly, our 45 pt lead was cut to 20, then we were level going into the last round, then we lost by like, 40 points. Maybe it was just bitterness, but these blokes who couldn't answer some easier questions early on, suddenly knew the answer to all the hard questions. My guess is they probably justified cheating by suspecting we were initially. So, it must be nigh on impossible to prevent this these days. Has the i-phone killed the pub quiz?

[Matt Morrison]

I'm inclined to agree that it's killed it... as a contest, yes.
But I don't think it's killed the pub quiz itself. The few I've been to over the past x months have been just as popular as ever, and I honestly believe the large majority of players/teams enter pub quizzes for the fun rather than expecting to be able to win prizes, so for most people not much has changed.

Me and HB went to this one t'other day and people had their phones out all the time - respectable, un-cheaty looking people. So easy to make it look texty, what can you do?

And then this quiz I used to go to back in Devon was in a young, rocky, 'cool' pub, and it used to be won nearly every week by one of two teams, of middle-to-a-bit-older-age people who would never be seen in the pub other than on Thursday quiz nights. They were far more experienced and knowledgefullified than the rest of the teams. They didn't cheat at all, but isn't that just as bad in terms of sportsmanship as cheating?

[Andy Wilson]

Aye, it didn't stop us partying like animals, bit of a kick in the tits though! No idea how i got home. If I'd have been Ryan Taylor I would have lost big at the casino last night.

[Jon O'Neill]

Yeah I think they're basically ruined as a competition. Are there questions you can ask in a quiz that can't be cheated? Maybe there would be a colouring-in round. Or tie-break rounds like guess how many pint glasses are in the whole pub. Just crazy stuff. Now that I'd like to see.

Jon Corby almost definitely cheats in these, if other people do.

[Ryan Taylor]

Aye, it didn't stop us partying like animals, bit of a kick in the tits though! No idea how i got home. If I'd have been Ryan Taylor I would have lost big at the casino last night.

Haha twat! I'm not going in there for quite some time. My win at Manchester train station was lost and more the following day

On this subject. Yes, mobile phones ruin pub quizzes. I used to go to 4 quizzes weekly and in one of these there was absolutely no signal in the pub, problem solved and I found my team often won. But the others everyone could be seen with mobile phones out and you look an absolute dick if you shout across the room to the quizmaster that such-and-such is using his mobile as they could genuinely be texting. How can you stop this from happening? Well, you can't unless you make people hand in their mobiles before entering the pub like in exam style conditions. Never gonna happen. So in the end you have a pub full of people who just happen to know exactly how many times Jerome K. Jerome had a shit in his lifetime and you become part of it because the whole mentality of "well if you can't beat them, join them" tends to kick in with most people. Everyone thinks well if they're doing it, why shouldn't I?

Anyway I've decided that I will never use my mobile phone in a quiz and I also stop all my team members from using their mobiles too. If others want to cheat then let them, they are only cheating themselves. It's completely pointless to cheat in a pub quiz, there is some kind of pleasure in dragging out facts that you've perhaps heard just once and getting told by the quizmaster that you were correct. No fun at all in hitting a few buttons and letting Google tell you. One of my friends cheated on literally the first question of the weekly uni quiz which I berated him for. We haven't been to the quiz together since.

[Matt Morrison]

Good input guys. Proud of you Ryan. Great idea for a completely balls deep in random quiz, Jono. Corby's about to make his contribution, I reckon.

[Michael Wallace]

f others want to cheat then let them, they are only cheating themselves. It's completely pointless to cheat in a pub quiz

Except for, like, the prize?

[Dinos Sfyris]

No it hasn't. Not at our usual pub quiz anyway. The Rockingham Arms in Wentworth lies in the middle of the Rotherham countryside and has zero to minimal phone signal (although still it's frowned upon to whip your phone out in the quizzing hour). Also long live the ungooglable picture round and other ingenious-style questions that make it much harder to Google.

On the subject of pub quizzes, anybody got any cool questions from pub quiz they'd like to share? Here's one from last week's Top 5 round:

Name the 5 richest countries in the world ending in the letter "n" (We got 4/5 correct and the one we missed we considered putting in our top 5)

[Jon O'Neill]

No it hasn't. Not at our usual pub quiz anyway. The Rockingham Arms in Wentworth lies in the middle of the Rotherham countryside and has zero to minimal phone signal (although still it's frowned upon to whip your phone out in the quizzing hour). Also long live the ungooglable picture round and other ingenious-style questions that make it much harder to Google.

On the subject of pub quizzes, anybody got any cool questions from pub quiz they'd like to share? Here's one from last week's Top 5 round:

Name the 5 richest countries in the world ending in the letter "n" (We got 4/5 correct and the one we missed we considered putting in our top 5)

Picture rounds are great, yeah!

[Matt Morrison]

This might be a bit shit, but what about the winning team being made to ask three questions closely periphery to three key questions they have just got right in the main quiz, in front of everyone, and having to get two right? Or one out of two?
I can't think of any examples of original questions and then additional questions thereon that would be extremely reasonable to expect the team answering the first part correct to know, though. Hmm.

[Ryan Taylor]

f others want to cheat then let them, they are only cheating themselves. It's completely pointless to cheat in a pub quiz

Except for, like, the prize?

The prize is often shit (this is Yorkshire) consisting usually of beer. A nice little touch though which does reward knowledge at a pub quiz was a raffle-style quiz question. If your number is picked you choose a question at random to answer, if you get it right you win £20. Simples. I was lucky enough to get the chance at this and I picked an easy question so won the £20. (Question was "What is the lowest male singing voice?")

[Ryan Taylor]

No it hasn't. Not at our usual pub quiz anyway. The Rockingham Arms in Wentworth lies in the middle of the Rotherham countryside and has zero to minimal phone signal (although still it's frowned upon to whip your phone out in the quizzing hour). Also long live the ungooglable picture round and other ingenious-style questions that make it much harder to Google.

On the subject of pub quizzes, anybody got any cool questions from pub quiz they'd like to share? Here's one from last week's Top 5 round:

Name the 5 richest countries in the world ending in the letter "n" (We got 4/5 correct and the one we missed we considered putting in our top 5)

Picture rounds are great, yeah!

I have some pretty decent picture rounds I've created all completely original and of course cheat-proof. Music rounds are also hard to cheat on apart from nowadays there is this application on phones called Alakazam or Shazam (or something equally as magically sounding).

Edit: It's Shazam, I checked. Alakazam is a Pokemon.

[Michael Wallace]

I remember doing a quiz in Cambridge where the rule was you could take part in any size team you liked, but only teams of 6 or fewer could win the prize. We were a 7, but so was a team near us, except towards the end when it looked like they had a chance of winning one of them snuck out. Fortunately at the end when the scores were totalled up the entire pub turned on them for cheating, which was brilliant (it's a really weird feeling when you're in that sort of situation where there is INJUSTICE but instead of normal Britishness getting in the way of anyone being found out, everyone is just all "haha no").

Another time some guy kicked up a massive fuss over the prize. The deal was that the winning team weren't guaranteed anything, but could pick an envelope to open, some containing beer (VOUCHERS FOR BEER NOT ACTUAL BEER!!!), some cash, that sort of thing. Anyway, this team wins and then they find out you have to open an envelope (something you'd know if you'd ever been to the pub before, or just paid attention) and the guy started getting really angry and being all "omg false advertising". The pub staff were having none of it, but jesus, it's only a fucking quiz.

[Matt Morrison]

Alakazam is a Pokemon.

Stop acting like a fucking child. I think you mean this guy:



I was pleased to learn there are absolutely loads of magicians who call themselves Alan Kazam.

[Ryan Taylor]

I was once hissed and booed out of the Sproatley pub quiz at The Constable Arms by none other than a team of wrinkly old locals who couldn't take it that I'd turn up once a month to win the quiz and not show my face until next month.

[Karen Pearson]

To be honest, I don't think it's just the advent of the iPhone. I think mobiles killed a lot of pub quizzes. Several years ago, we used to go to a quiz where people would text their friends for answers. We eventually stopped going.

We've also been to one where we live now where teams openly cheat (despite the fact that one team already has 8 members so you'd think thay'd have enough brain power between them).

Personally, I think it's just sad! (Much like cheating at Apterous!) We don't cheat because we use it for training for TV quizzes where there is a prize worth winning. As Ryan said, there is huge satisfaction in dredging up an answer from some remote recess of your brain.

[Jon O'Neill]

of middle-to-a-bit-older-age people who would never be seen in the pub other than on Thursday quiz nights.

a team of wrinkly old locals who couldn't take it that I'd turn up once a month to win the quiz and not show my face until next month.

[Matt Morrison]

of middle-to-a-bit-older-age people who would never be seen in the pub other than on Thursday quiz nights.

a team of wrinkly old locals who couldn't take it that I'd turn up once a month to win the quiz and not show my face until next month.

I think the conclusion here is that Ryan manages to look out of place in an old man pub AND in a cool people pub. This makes me think it'd be quite cool to have a word geek pub. Shit place to pull though.

[Ryan Taylor]

of middle-to-a-bit-older-age people who would never be seen in the pub other than on Thursday quiz nights.

a team of wrinkly old locals who couldn't take it that I'd turn up once a month to win the quiz and not show my face until next month.

I think the conclusion here is that Ryan manages to look out of place in an old man pub AND in a cool people pub. This makes me think it'd be quite cool to have a word geek pub. Shit place to pull though.

Unless there's Hex. (Too obvious?)

[Michael Wallace]

Unless there's Hex. (Too obvious?)

A F _ A I D
S O


(I actually had to do this twice because I'm a retard and fucked it up first time.)

[Ian Volante]

Speaking as a quizmaster in a pub that has wi-fi access left on throughout the quiz, I very rarely have problems with teams cheating. Now and again, I'll spot the odd person doing it (usually one of the one or two non-regular teams that we seems to get most weeks), and I'll either just make it really obvious that I'm watching that team closely, or if I'm lucky, I'll look over their shoulder to watch them texting the question. This is usually embarrassing enough to stop such behaviour happening much again.

It certainly helps that most of my teams are there most weeks, so on any given week I'll like know eight out of ten teams pretty well and know I can trust them. One or two of them cheated early in their career at the pub, and I always have them on a slightly higher watch for that reason. Also, the best three of the regular teams are good enough to beat most other teams whether they're cheating or not - it's almost always the poor-quality teams that cheat anyway, and it's laughably obvious a lot of the time.

Yet another tactic I have against cheaty teams is that their answers become very pedantically marked, misspellings are counted as wrong answers, that sort of thing. This is also useful in general - the best teams need to be exact in their answers, the worst teams get some leeway for decent guesses and almost-correct attempts.

On a personal level, my dad has texted me on occasion for quiz answers - I'm quite a useful resource - and he does indeed get answers from me, usually with a stern grumble and guilt-trip tacked on.

Random question: Which soap opera has been the only one nominated at the British Soap Awards never to win? Answer: Crossroads

[Jon Corby]

Jon Corby almost definitely cheats in these, if other people do.

Haha, no way. I haven't attended a proper pub quiz in many a year, but we do them at work (inter-department where we hire out the function room in the pub) and nobody cheats in them. I guess it's a different dynamic when it's not really a bunch of strangers, but no I wouldn't cheat in a pub quiz. And I'd kick off big time if I saw others doing it.

[Martin Bishop]

On the subject of pub quizzes, anybody got any cool questions from pub quiz they'd like to share? Here's one from last week's Top 5 round:

Name the 5 richest countries in the world ending in the letter "n" (We got 4/5 correct and the one we missed we considered putting in our top 5)

Ha! We had that same question the other week and got all 5. I assume this is a red tooth quiz?

Our quiz master has a rule whereby if he sees any mobiles out during a round you get a 5 point penalty, whether you're googling or not.

[Dinos Sfyris]

Yup Redtooth