The Pub Quiz

I was first introduced to the Pub Quiz on Wednesday nights at the King's Head pub in the English village of Battle while spending a year working overseas. I was still in an American-tourist state of finding everything in Britain romantically quaint, so sitting in a low-ceilinged, 600-year-old building was new and exciting. I paid my quid’s entry fee and started the first of 5 rounds on all manner of topics. This became an almost weekly event, my team winning the competition only once. When we won, we only got about five pounds apiece, but it was the weekly title of Pub Quiz Winners that was so coveted.

Later, while living in Sydney, Australia, I found another Pub Quiz at the Trinity pub. My knowledge of North American sports teams proved to be an asset to my team of mostly-British backpackers, although one overseas call was made (illegally) to discern the name of the Pittsburgh hockey team (Penguins). My trivia talents were better rewarded at the antipodean quiz night: my team was announced as "Last Week's Winners" twice.

Upon returning to Canada I was able to sate my thirst for trivia by playing the NTN trivia game that some bars have where you type in answers on a little box with an antenna. But this form of competition lacked the focus, camaraderie and social interactions of a proper pub quiz.

So I tried to do my own. The only problem was, being a primary school teacher, I wanted everyone to do well and began giving hints and clues and awarding extra points, much to the dismay of some of the more serious participants.

And now I have discovered a better-organized pub quiz with a better turn-out which runs at the Duke of York pub in Toronto. It is run by Pub Stumpers, a trivia league established in 2004. Upon entry, I noticed quite a specific demographic: participants were university students, the girls clad in trendy retro-80s outfits and the boys in graphic t-shirts and thick-rimmed spectacles. I sat down in my simple jeans and ordered a pint, in anticipation of my brother’s arrival. Surely our collected genepool would see us to the top of the tables.

I felt immediately intelligent, easily answering questions like, which animal has the highest blood pressure (the giraffe) and according to the poem, which child is full of woe (Wednesday’s – and I know this because I was born on this sorrowful day). My brother cruised through such queries as Frank Beard is, ironically, the only member of which band to not sport a beard (ZZ Top) and which South American country is named after the Latin word for silver (Argentina). The music round was the most fun, trying to extricate the name and artist from only a few bars of a song. Embarrassingly, I got “I Need to Know” by Mark Anthony and was convinced that a Foreigner song was actually “Join the Joyride” by Roxette. Brother Tim came through with “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles, which I was sure (along with most of the other contestants) was an A-Ha song.

So, what is it that brings people out to quiz nights? The pursuit of intellectual dominance? The team spirit and co-operation of the contestants? The arguments that erupt over whether a “grimalkin” is a cat or a hamster (it’s a cat)? The excuse to have 3 pints on a Tuesday night?

All of the above. The pub quiz gives a focus to the night’s events, it provides a goal for revelers to co-operatively strive for, and it supplies conversation starters for people to get to know each other better. The Pub Quiz also has a way of bringing every person in the room together, creating a community of trivia buffs who call out to the Quiz Master and to each other, all in pursuit of that elusive weekly title: Pub Quiz Winners.