Principles can be a dangerous thing to have.
I have always said that I will never not go to a quiz in
the rugby club simply because I don’t like the quizzes from a particular
setter. Yes I’ve missed quizzes because I’ve been ill or otherwise engaged.
There was one setter whose quizzes I stopped going to because she made a very
personal comment about me on the microphone. But there’s no one for whom I’ve
said - they are so bad at this that I just can’t sit through another one of
their quizzes. Even though I’ve wanted to say that.
Nobody who sets quizzes on a Thursday night in the Aberavon
Rugby Club has ever tried to present themselves as a professional quiz master.
Nobody has, to the best of my knowledge, received anything more than a couple
of drinks for doing the quiz. You have to respect that.
But.
As much as I do really like last night’s setter as a
person, his quiz was awful. Seriously dire and not even in a ‘so bad it has a
certain ironic enjoyability ‘ way either. Our question setter committed many of
what I would call simple yet serious blunders, all guaranteed to turn the
evening into an unentertaining slog. We had:-
Some very turgid questions requiring very specific
knowledge – for example How many metres in a nautical mile? If you’re going to
ask a question like that, at least make it a multiple choice to give people a
chance
Some questions where the answer did not match the questions
as they were asked. For example – which three countries have capital cities whose
capital city is less than 400 miles from Mount Everest? Check the wording of
that question again. Okay – we put down Nepal, Tibet (which you can argue is
not a country because it is not currently an independent sovereign state
rightly or wrongly ) and Bhutan. Answer given – Kathmandu, Lhasa, Thimphu. He
had asked for the countries, yet gave the capitals for the answer.
In two rounds he had to leave a question out at the end of
the round because he had already asked it in a previous round. Once is
careless. Twice – supply your own adjective.
He has difficulty pronouncing or reading his own questions.
His very idiosyncratic way of doing this sometimes renders even straightforward
questions much more difficult.
He would ask quite a few questions with multiple answers –
for example, name the 4 chemical elements named after the Swedish town of
Ytterby – and then only award 1 point if you had all 4. When challenged about
the fairness he fell back on the ‘It’s my quiz!’ argument. I’ll be honest, that
was the point where I really lost any sympathy for him. When you’re a question
master it is NOT about you using and abusing your little bit of power. It is
supposed to be about providing everyone else with an evening’s entertainment.
Full stop.
There was a bit of a feeling of ‘couldn’t be arsed’ about some
of his questions. He asked for a boxer’s nickname and when I pointed out he had
more than one he replied ‘I know but I couldn’t remember the other.’ Which just
shows that he couldn’t be arsed to google it when compiling the quiz. There
really is no excuse for not checking your answers.
It’s difficult to be sure but I don’t think that the other
teams, except possibly his own, are that fond of his quizzes. The poor guy was
supposed to do this quiz three weeks ago, but he was ill. Now, back when it was
announced that he would be doing the quiz, none other than Captain Slapdash himself
called out ‘I can feel a headache coming on next Thursday!’ implying he wanted
to avoid it. Now, okay, you might not like his quizzes but I think that’s
unnecessarily rude, especially bearing in mind the crap that the Captain
himself so often produces in his own quizzes. Whatever you think of the quiz,
the tradition is that at the end of the quiz, after the QM has signed off, one
of the audience will shout thank you
(supply name here)! And everyone will give them a round of applause.
Last night no one else seemed to want to issue thanks so I shouted it, and
hardly anyone joined me in a round of applause. In a way I understand, but
again, it is a bit rude.
Now, if it was me, I wouldn’t mind anyone coming up to me
and telling me what was wrong with my own quiz. We would talk about it calmly
and rationally, I would explain the beauty and brilliance of the quiz they had
just been fortunate enough to participate in and in the end we would agree that
I was right and they were wrong. But there’s just no way I can do it with
anyone else. Even though, in this case, I just don’t think the setter is cut
out to be question master for a pub quiz. Not everyone is. We can’t all be
brain surgeons. We can’t all be formula 1 drivers. We certainly can’t all
teach. It’s nothing to be ashamed of if that’s not where your skills lie. Read
the room and call it a day. But I can’t actually tell him that.
The trouble is, despite everything, I still probably take
quizzes too seriously. If I didn’t then last night’s quiz would just have been
the best part of two hours’ tedium. But I get so frustrated with bad quizzes
that I honestly don’t think I can deliberately go through an evening like that
again.
Principles be damned.
4 comments:
It really was not a good quiz, and I believe we've said that every time this setter has been at the table. But this one especially felt worse than others, not just due to the calibre of the questions, but the attitude of the setter and what felt like a power trip. I wonder if it's worth taking this to the organizer of the overall quiz, though I doubt there is a tactful way of doing so.
This is what make principles a double-edged sword, Dan. Yes, we could mention it to the organiser. Although not a great quizzer, he’s a relatively competent question master and he must have recognised the inadequacies of the quiz. I think back to when ‘Science Guy’ had asked to do his first quiz and the organiser talked to us about it, saying that he knew how bad it would be but he didn’t want to say no to anybody who offered/asked to do the quiz. We endorsed this – it has always been the way in this quiz. So I can imagine that the response now would be – yes, you’re right, his quizzes really aren’t any good, but if he wants to do them then we are morally obliged to let him. Science guy had the sense to read the room during his second quiz and never want to do it again.
It’s complicated. I don’t want to potentially cause bad feeling by talking to the organiser about it. I don’t want anyone actually stopped from doing the quiz when they want to do it. I suppose what I really want is for the guy himself to realise that he’s just not cut out for it and to stop wanting to do it. Likewise, I wouldn’t want to tell the organiser that if you know who is question master again then I’m not coming. This is not a boycott by way of a protest and I’m neither encouraging nor discouraging anyone else to do the same. But I would rather sit in a dark room with a pencil in my eye than play in another of his quizzes.
This is nothing about you know who as a person. I like him as a person. I’m sorry if, the next time he is question master, he sees that I’m not there and draws the correct conclusion that I am deliberately avoiding his quiz. But I don’t quite like him enough to be prepared to play in another of his god-awful quizzes.
So, here's my two cents. I'm a professional quiz host (I'm employed by a company that supplies quiz nights to pubs and bars). There's two pubs I do regularly, plus occasional one-offs in other places - although I'm currently taking a break because my partner's a candidate in the Welsh Senedd and I've temporarily given up work to devote my time to the campaign. To the best of my knowledge, I'm getting both my regular gigs back when I return to work in May. I don't write the questions, I only ask them.
I think when it comes to complaints, one of the most important things you can recognise as a host is that there's different kinds of complaints - i.e. complaints about an individual adjudication on a question and complaints about the experience in general. There's barely a week that goes by when someone doesn't grumble about a decision I've made on an answer that is borderline right (one particularly comes to mind when someone was cross that on a question about Alan Cumming, I had declined 'Alan Cummings' as an answer. When they were challenging me on it, I made the point that on an earlier question about Prue Leith, I'd declined Prue Lee as an answer. The team said, 'Oh, well that one I think was fair enough.' And I said, 'So what's the difference between Alan Cumming/Alan Cummings and Prue Leith/Prue Lee? I have to be seen to be completely fair and consistent in the way I'm awarding the marks, I can't be harsh on one team for something like that and then be lenient on another team for something similar.' When I put it like that I think they kind of understood my position.)
I can be quite a harsh marker on things like that, but I like to think I'm firm but fair. Generally my rule about incorrect spellings is 'Would the way they've spelt it still be pronounced the same as the correct answer?' If it would, they can have the point, if it wouldn't they can't - which I think is fair because if it's someone's name they might have heard it spoken aloud but never seen it written down before. There have also been times that something's been messed up because I haven't explained it clearly enough. For instance, I remember one question where I said, 'There are three answers to this question, but you only need to get one right to get the point.' What I didn't say, because I thought it was obvious but apparently not, is that if they also say an additional answer that's wrong, it cancels out the one that's right. It never occurred to me that anyone might be confused by that, but a high number of people tried to write all three answers and expected a point because only one was right. On that occasion (and because it was the last quiz before Christmas) I was just like, 'Okay, I appreciate I didn't specify that, and it's Christmas so on this occasion I'll be generous. But in the future, 'you only need one right' does not mean you can get the others wrong and still expect a point.'
Also there's been times that the question on the sheet has been wrong - either that the whole answer was incorrect or that something about the question has been slightly inaccurate (like once when there was a question about something that happened in the news when it turned out it hadn't actually happened, it was only alleged to have happened. Which wasn't the question writer's fault - I imagine what happened was that they wrote that question when they saw it in the news, and by the time it came out that it wasn't real the question was already in the system and it was too late. News questions must be really hard to write, I think.) I always try to arrive really early so that when I get given the sheet (which is sent to the venue in advance) I've got time to quickly go online and google every single answer, just to make sure that it's all correct, and if anything isn't I'll adapt the question. That isn't really my job to do, but it's far preferable to getting information inaccurate. (Part 1)
(Part 2) But the difference between these kinds of things and your situation is, people might grumble about individual question decisions (and I'm sure sometimes I've made the wrong call there and I'm sure there will be times that I will again, no one's perfect) but still enjoy the quiz overall. I think (hopefully) most people are quite happy with the way I do things overall, even if they've disagreed with me at certain moments. At any rate, one of my most frequent complainants seemed genuinely really sad when I said I was taking a few months off and got me to reassure them that I'd definitely return after the election, irrespective of whether or not my partner wins. I guess it's like with school kids and the teacher - sometimes the teacher might be quite strict, or accidentally accuse someone of something they haven't done, but overall still be a really good teacher that the kids miss when they aren't there. I take my role as host really seriously, and always try to remember that ultimately it's not my quiz, it's their quiz, they've paid to take part and I'm being paid to make it good for them, and every decision I make is about making it as fun as possible. That's the case even if I mark a question harshly - it's not about being horrible, it's usually about trying to be fair to someone else who I've been harsh on with a different question.
If someone is really such a bad host that they're ruining the evening, then I don't think there's anything wrong with complaining. A quiz is ultimately entertainment; you have a right to go out and enjoy yourself, and if you aren't enjoying yourself and it's very specifically because the entertainment isn't doing a good enough job, you should express that.
And also, sometimes it's the case that someone isn't a bad host in general, but for whatever reason they don't suit a particular venue. That's happened to me, in two different ways. The first time, I had what I thought was a new regular gig, but after a couple of weeks, my boss rang me and told me that they'd asked for a different quizmaster. Didn't particularly get any feedback or any idea what I was doing wrong, I'd thought it had been going quite well, so naturally I was a little put out to start with, but my boss reassured me that there's not one single person working for the company, including him, that that hasn't happened to at some point (and I'm not upset about it at all now, because if I'd carried on doing that one I might not have had the gigs I have now, which I'm really enjoying, so maybe it was meant to be). The other time was more recent, and it was my own decision. I was a stand-in for a regular quiz host who was on holiday, and I had a really horrible time. I wouldn't even be able to say WHY I had such a horrible time - it wasn't that any of the staff or punters weren't very nice or anything, everyone was lovely, but for whatever reason I found this job insanely stressful, to the point where I wasn't able to be a good quiz host. The first thing I did the following day was to phone my boss and say, 'Please don't send me there again' - not exactly anything anyone did wrong, but for whatever reason I just did not suit the vibe of this one, and I could see that myself as much as anyone else could. And that's important as well, that you're in the right place. I love doing this job, but it would be a lie to say it's not stressful sometimes. I find I can only make other people enjoy themselves if I myself am enjoying myself, and if I don't fit in somewhere it's just not going to work. So maybe your guy would suit quiz hosting somewhere else but just not there at this place with this group of people.
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