The Venns: A Quest for the Perfect Pub Quiz

What I did over my summer vacation.

Quint — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 22:41:17 +0000

So much.

SO. MUCH!

But in reverse order, here’s a podcast from the first trivia night I’ve ever had the pleasure to attend in my home town of NYC.

Check back for further updates to this post.

— Quint

Pubs bring us together like nowhere else can.

Quint — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 08:21:22 +0000

I saw this tweet the other day from the Rose and Crown in north London, referring to the riots.

@roseandcrown16: #pubquiz is going ahead as usual tonight. Come along for positive community spirit. 8pm start.

Awesome.

Sheffield’s stayed #steelcitynotsteelcity so far (that’s a heck of a twitter hashtag), including on Tuesday night when I went back to Greystones quiz, for the first time since it opened, as a player. My friends and I (including the aforementioned guy who said ‘munted’ on Countdown, who is from Croydon and enjoyed taking his mind off things) came in second by half a point, won the new and awesome ‘guess the celebrity round’ (which you really must go down and try – it’s very creative), and took an acceptable amount of ribbing from the other teams, now my co-competitors.

The Rutland quiz I hosted last week with my drinking buddy Jow in honour of John Venn’s birthday is now up on their community page.

I chatted to Rony on Radio Sheffield about pub quizzes, outer space, advertising, and fanzines yesterday and now I’m off to the fringe to do some of the other comedy I do when I’m not obsessing about pub quizzes. Will let you know if I get to do any comedy pub quiz research up there.

Here’s to you, John.

Quint — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:22:37 +0000

Today is John Venn’s birthday. He would have been 177 today. He invented the Venn diagram, which is memorialised in this stained glass window in Cambridge. In his honour The Venns are hosting the Rutland Arms quiz tonight. Without him, very little of my thought processes would actually make sense. Cheers.

If you’d like to join the Venns as a field correspondent or question-setter, come along tonight or get in touch with me via my personal blog: Chella Quint.

Andy and I shared another Venn last week, which I’ve renamed Sheffield Quizmasters in the Media week - check out these interviews:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/jul/24/another-view-on-quiz-trippers

http://pubchampion.co.uk/2011/07/25/pub-quiz-questions-the-rutland-arms-sheffield/

http://pubchampion.co.uk/2011/07/27/pub-quiz-questions-chella-quint/http://pubchampion.co.uk/2011/07/27/pub-quiz-questions-chella-quint/

Also, Dave got a perfect score on last week’s Rutland quiz while I was giving a talk at Pecha Kucha. He was highly smug. He may be my nemesis again.

Not-so-smart Phones.

Quint — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:01:39 +0000

This story trended a few weeks ago on the BBC News Magazine web page, and was retweeted to me a whole bunch by concerned and interested fans:

Can pub quizzes survive in the smartphone era?

So here’s my rebuttal.

Yes, BBC News Magazine, pub quizzes can survive the smart phone era. They can survive cheaty-cheater-pantses, and they can survive chain pubs. Not to be too post-apocalyptic about it, but I suspect that (like a WAY more enjoyable companion than cockroaches) they’ll be around long after smartphones are gone.

Why? People never tire of asking questions. Tom Stoppard imagines a bored and lost Rosencrantz and Guildenstern turning the questions themselves into a game –“It’s all questions,” one or the other of them says (I’m not getting my facts wrong – they don’t even know who’s who). Finding answers in a confusing world gives us focus. Some people have religion. I have the pub quiz.

The BBC article specifically asks how to prevent cheating at the quiz, and suggests ever more complicated questions that may challenge smart phones, such as sheet music or blurry pictures. It even quotes alarmingly awesome Only Connect host Victoria Coren, who worries that pub quiz cheating is a symptom of a national self-esteem problem. I’ve got a different theory which might allay her fears as well.

The fun of pub quizzes (and of pubs in general, really) is shared experience. As quizmaster, I want people to talk and share their knowledge. I try to keep the questions interesting by following a rough formula of topic-combining that came to me as I was watching an Adam Ant documentary several years ago. It starts with a diagram.

Imagine a quiz question based on a quiz team made up of a series of overlapping Venn diagrams of different subject-specific knowledge. These kinds of questions get teams talking and pooling info. The most successful teams are those that are made up of a seemingly disparate group of people – a mix of ages, genders, interests and areas of expertise.

At the Greystones, I hope I managed to create a competitive yet friendly atmosphere – walking around the pub several times throughout the night, encouraging people, welcoming both new and regular teams warmly and remembering names and faces. Everyone usually had a good time and was pleased enough with the result to come back and try their luck again. Questions (and according to the Venns theory, teams) and rounds mixed up different skill sets and areas of expertise to allow everyone to make a contribution through discussion and working stuff out.

At a good quiz, cheaters tend to be shamed out of the joint by other quiz-goers. The best way to support local pubs is to help build a community of quizzers who wouldn’t dream of cheating others out of winning fair and square.

The most important issue, which really extends beyond the quiz, is supporting independent local pubs and brewers to engage with the people in their neighbourhood (now there’s a missing scene from Sesame Street), and vice versa. The Greystones does this really well in general, with community events, outstanding live music, and excellent beers that attract people out of the city centre every night of the week.

So for those of you who are tempted, here’s Rule 6 from The Venns’ fanzine:

Don’t cheat. You’re allowed to prepare. By all means, stack your team with a cadre of clever people, read today’s paper, listen to the Radio 4 news bulletin at the top of the hour, glance at the sports page, notice if it’s a special date or the anniversary of some historical event. But, really, don’t cheat.

There’s no need to be nastily competitive. There may not be a Pub Quiz Personality of the Year Award, but, I recommend acting like there is, and that you’ve just been nominated.

Pubquiz Anti-matter.

Quint — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 20:20:08 +0000

Now Dave (my ex-nemesis) has the uncanny ability to join the winning team at the Rutland Arms every week. I don’t know how he does it. It’s almost like he has the moth-magnetism (look it up) and can gravitate toward the right team each Thursday, just before, or sometimes even during quiz time. This is how we came to write the Nemesis quiz together the other week. The other night at Tramlines, I was introduced to a guy called Josh who was a regular teammate of my neighbours, Mike and Kerri. Mike casually introduced Josh like this:

And Josh smiled. It was a very good-natured admission that Josh’s contribution most weeks was a wrong answer. No harm, no foul, though. They said they thought of it as a golf handicap. The four of us had a great evening watching Heaven 17 play in the rain, and then sampling some Sheffield Brew Company offerings at Henry’s.

I decided Josh and Dave need to enter the next Rutland Arms quiz as a double act, and see if they cancel each other out.

Perhaps I should notify CERN.

Now that’s a topical quiz.

Quint — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:27:54 +0000

It’s times like these I wish I were still hosting the quiz at the Greystones. Man that current events round would be fierce. Ben Baker, my unofficial research supervisor and contributor to the zine, is keeping it real up in Keighley.

My Nemesis

Quint — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:35:43 +0000

Dave and I met at the Rutland Arms when he very drunkenly hosted the Christmas quiz. He hadn’t written the questions, though, Andy the landlord had. Andy’s questions are spectatularly verbose and impressively obscure, so as the night wore on, Dave had more and more trouble. Having seen him at his worst, I assumed he was harmless and challenged him to try the Greystones quiz. I expected him to do moderately well and declare me a natural born quizmaster. Instead, he complained about the scoring, the quiz sheet, the delivery, and the questions, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t like my face. He and Andy came second. Back at the Rutland, my team came second-to-last. Dave continued to win the Rutland quiz virtually every week, and he often popped up to the Greystones with his Sheffield CAMRA pals.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to bury the hatchet and invited him to be on my team at the Rutland. We won, which meant we had to set a future quiz.

That quiz happened last week, after a surreal writing session on Google Docs. (Half of the quiz appeared to be writing itself on the screen…) It was a lot of fun to host and I really enjoyed hearing Dave’s (much more sober this time) banter with the crowd. Other than an obscure lyric question that broke the geek barrier, I’d say it was a success.

Dave isn’t quite my nemesis anymore. I’m gonna miss calling him that.

The Nemesis quiz will be posted soon at the Rutland Arms quiz question page on their website.

This Tuesday, doors 8:30 pm. The rules. The Theories. The Venns.

Quint — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 11:10:52 +0000

The Pub Quiz: Deconstructed At Long Last.

Quint — Thu, 26 May 2011 22:14:45 +0000

We share a common goal: to prove that there’s more to the average pub quiz than meets the eye. As hosts of the Greystones Quiz, we’ve been testing our theories, with the help of you, the quizgoers. Through charts, graphs, and (our favourite) Venn diagrams, we plan to bring you exciting and unexpected findings from our not-entirely-serious research project.

Fresh from our Shoebox experiment show at the Riverside and our pub quiz feature in Now Then Magazine, we bring you:

Quint and Jow’s Quiz Finale, 9pm in The Backroom at The Greystones, Tuesday, June 7^th

£1 entry gets you food, laughs, lots of extra prizes, quizzing insights, special awards and, of course, the quiz.

We’ve loved seeing you every week. Please come along to our final quiz and laugh, jeer, point, whatever makes you happy, Find out why you ticked ‘yes’ on all those quiz sheets. Doors open at 8:30.

The Venns at the Riverside

Quint — Mon, 02 May 2011 22:55:01 +0000

We’re really excited about the performance lecture we’ve been developing with Signposts for the Shoebox Experiments and hope to see our Sheffield pals at the Riverside this Wednesday evening. You can also grab a hot-off-the-press May issue of Now Then at the show, which includes an extract from the currently out of print first issue of our zine.

Details follow from the event organisers, and you can also ask us about it during our regular quiz at The Greystones tomorrow night at 9.

The Shoebox Experiment (3 x 3)
The Riverside, 1 Mowbray Street, Neepsend, Sheffield, S3

Wednesday 4 May, 7.30pm for 8pm start

“Was brilliant. So different to anything I’ve seen before!”

“Stunning.”

“I enjoyed the atmosphere, mellow attentiveness, intimacy, surprise, voices, passion, stories, HEART, writing!”

Audience Feedback from the First Experiment

Signposts, South Yorkshire brings you the second in a series of performance experiments – three pieces in three different mediums.

Quint and Jow share a common goal: to prove that there’s more to the average pub quiz than meets the eye. Forming a team called The Venns, they spend improbable amounts of time in the pub… testing their theories, of course. Through charts, graphs, and (their favourite) Venn diagrams, Quint and Jow will bring you exciting and unexpected findings from their not-entirely-serious research project. The Venns: A Quest for the Perfect Pub Quiz is created and performed by Chella Quint and Richard Jow.

Underbelly is an award-winning work of digital fiction about a woman sculptor, carving on the site of a former colliery in Yorkshire. As she carves, she is disturbed by a medley of voices, from when women used to work underground mining coal. Created for the web, Underbelly is a playable story with multiple endings determined by choice and chance. Lurking within the dark regions of its map-like narrative terrain, are hidden voices, animated elements and grotesque imagery, which Christine Wilks will unearth in her live performance of the work.

Gogol’s “The Nose” represents one of the pioneering triumphs of the early absurdist movement; transcending satire, narrative and common sense. Locally based storyteller Tim Ralphs transports the Shoebox to St Petersburg’s prospects in this hilarious and enticing re-imagining of the tale as a live performance. A drunkard barber, a womanising Major, a buzz of rumours and the inconceivable disappearance of The Nose! Originally conceived as a series of podcasts, ‘The Nose’ is recomposed for the Shoebox Experiment.

Tickets £4 (£3 concessions) are available at the Shoebox on the night and can be reserved in advance by email. Plus a fully stocked bar to whet your whistle and the company of a warm, welcoming audience ready for something new! Contact naomi.wilds@ntlworld.com or 0775 352 8919 to reserve your space.