Strange Format

Quizzing on a Wednesday evening ? Whatever next ?! I hope that I can be forgiven this shocking display of hedonistic behaviour on the grounds that it wasn’t a school night, and this was undertaken in what I like to think of as a bold spirit of experimentation.

I’m probably not making myself very clear, so I’ll cut to the chase. John rang me up and asked if I’d like to go to a quiz we’d never tried before last night. The quiz took place in a pub in the absolutely charming village of Llangynwd, which is just outside Maesteg, in South Wales. It was worth going to the quiz just for the picturesque drive, to be perfectly honest. That’s not why I’m writing , though. What intrigued me was the format of the quiz. The quiz itself consisted of 20 General Knowledge questions, and two handouts. That’s not the unusual thing. The unusual thing was that each team was given out the printed page with the questions and the handouts at about 9:15, and then just left alone to get on with it , and finalise their answers and write them down within the next hour or so.

Alright, its not totally unheard of to run a quiz like this, but I have to be honest, pretty much all of the quizzes I’ve ever been to like this have been individual rather than team quizzes. Don’t misunderstand me, there are no complaints about the standard of the questions or the handout. The 20 general knowledge questions were a real mixture, as they should be, and some required good guesses from us – which some did not receive, I hasten to add. The first handout showed the national flags of the 32 countries in the world cup finals this year. Well, I wasn’t certain about which countries were there, but I knew the flags, so no problem there. Thanks , Sporcle. The second handout gave cryptic clues to help you find the names of 20 chocolates, sweets, etc. The only one we missed was
– often seen at the races -.
I asked Mary the same question today, and straightaway she said the correct answer – Tictac. D’Oh !

So, as I say, no complaints about the substance of the quiz. Its just . . . well it was odd. There was a distinct lack of atmosphere throughout the answering hour. Then once the answers were given out and the marking started, the banter between teams and the QM was actually terrific. Shame it didn’t start earlier. I only mention this quiz, because it intrigued me in that in over 20 years of going to pub quizzes, this is the only pub quiz I can recall that has actually worked in this way. I didn’t ask, but I can’t help wonder if they have ever tried doing it in more traditional fashion.