A Beautiful Question

Quint’s zine flew off the shelves and Jow’s runtime suggests he flew over Tower Bridge. An excellent weekend was had by all and now we’re back, writing this week’s quiz at the Greystones and next month’s show at the Riverside. (More details after the weekend, but keep an eye on Twitter.)

To get back into the swing of things, a trip to the Rutland Arms quiz was in order.

We didn’t win, but the theme was outstanding. We won’t give it away because the quiz will be posted online next week and we’ll be sure  and link to it. In the meantime, check out this beauty of a question:

“Identify us. W are twins, each weighing 722 kg. Although my sister was launched a fortnight before me, I soon overtook her after she detoured to Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989. I was the first probe to leave the solar system, and in 1990 took a ‘family portrait’ known as the Pale Blue Dot.

“I am travelling at an eye-watering 17km/second. So between NOW and NOW I’d have gone from here to Chesterfield, and NOW be passing Derby. In the time this question’s read out, I’d be over the Channel, and since the quiz started, I’d have gone twice round the world.”

Thanks to all who promoted Quint’s zine and sponsored Jow’s race.

See you next week.

A Real Venn Diagram

When not spending improbable amounts of time in the pub, geeking out over Venn diagrams, or working ridiculously hard at our day jobs, we’ve each got our own side projects that give us a lot of personal satisfaction. In the back of our zine and on this here blog, we’ve mentioned that Quint writes zines and Jow runs marathons.

Anyone who’s come up to the pub quiz at the Greystones knows we love it when we can find connections between the least likely subjects. So we were delighted to discover that we’d both be in London this Sunday for completely different reasons. Jow’s running the London Marathon and Quint’s launching the new issue of her comedy fanzine at the London Zine Symposium. We plan to meet up at mile thirteen, which is the halfway point for Jow and only a few streets away from Quint’s symposium.  26 pages meets 26 miles. We’re sure there’s a quiz question or two in that.

If you’d like, check out Quint’s  new zine  or visit Jow’s sponsorship page. There’s more than enough room inside this Venn diagram for all of you.

Catch ya next week!

-The Venns

Spring has sprung

Hope to see lots of teams – new faces and quiz regulars – at the Greystones this Tuesday at nine for our quiz. We’re getting ready to reprint the zine and start the next issue. Stay tuned.

A pre-recorded quiz? Well I never.

Kevin is @smallblackcat on Twitter and is slowly but surely becoming a Greystones quiz regular. While we were live-tweeting the Rutland quiz the other week, which was packed out because of Colin Drury’s Star shout (the man likes quizzes, and we like him), our very first Twitter fan went to Fagan’s because he couldn’t find a table at the Rutland quiz. So he tweeted stats to me, and I reported on both, and Jow tabulated figures in real time.

It was thrilling.

For me.

Because I like stats and pub quizzes.

For everyone else, I asked Kev to review the quiz at Fagan’s. Here’s his review. If you’d like to review a quiz, get in touch on Twitter @thevenns.

-Quint

‘Welcome to the legendary 25 year old Fagan’s pub quiz!’ shouts landlord Tommy. And with purposely chosen special quiz-pens at the ready, 10 teams or so knuckle down to the Thursday night pub quiz…

Fagan’s is a traditional Sheffield boozer located at the edge of town on Broad Lane. It has wood-panelled walls, two connected main rooms and a snug often occupied by Sheffield talent Richard Hawley of Longpigs, Pulp and solo fame. Moonshine is always on tap with cask Tetley’s and other pub staples available. Food is reasonably priced and generously portioned (the ploughman’s really is quite breath-taking). Friendly staff and the warm welcome of Tommy make Fagan’s an ideal spot for a meal/pint any night.

Quizzes take place Sundays and Thursdays. Your typical Fagan’s quizzer/regular is 40-50+, male, bearded, and a real ale consumer. This is not unusual for me as I, too, am male, bearded and enjoy locally brewed delights. Tonight there was a late influx of patrons made up of students and post-grads at around the half nine mark. Having observed this phenomenon at other quizzes and regularly been found guilty of turning up at the Cobden on a Sunday night at 9 on the dot for the same purpose, I suspect this is the usual starting time for the quiz.

At nearly 10 the quiz started quite late but this we are promised is due to the quizmaster(Les)’s bus being late. All questions are pre-recorded on CD and later in the evening we find the answers are too.

Questions are general knowledge and range from the names of cathedral bells to obscure ‘60s music. At first, the questions proved somewhat perplexing, which we attributed to the age range the quiz was aimed at (our team’s average age was 32), but as the quiz progressed we found some questions more in our comfort zone: Modern Films, Pop Music and Current Affairs. The barman did say the Sunday quiz is a bit easier and more fun but we still managed fairly well.

The format of tonight’s quiz is that the first 10 answers will in some way relate to the second set of 10 answers with a common link. The link (which we didn’t get, but the landlord kindly whispered it to us as he sensed that we were struggling) was pantomimes. One ingenious connection of answers was ‘What is the standard Arabic word for God?’ and ‘ What is a single syllable word for a large amount of noise?’ giving us Alladin (tenuous perhaps, but easier if you guessed the link and deduced the answer to the second question). The usual quiz format is 35 questions in total, but we think Les didn’t have the right photocopied template so decided to shorten the quiz instead.

With the inside information, we didn’t do too badly (11/20) with the winners scoring in the high teens. Ah well. Overall we enjoyed the quiz anyway because of such a great atmosphere, VERY friendly staff, great local ales and traditional environment. Would recommend Fagan’s any night of the week. Incidentally – on Fri/Sat nights, local musicians turn up with their instruments to provide entertainment in the form of acoustic folk music with the locals joining in or taking centre stage. Tommy’s ‘Bring your pints back’ song is something to be witnessed!

-Kevin (6/2/2011)

Tonight

Well we’ve just had a lovely bit of coverage by Colin Drury in the Sheffield Star.  It was great to see our diagrams in print, and we promise to explain the kneeling chair incident further if anyone asks. In the meantime, let’s hear it for Sheffield, pubs, and the Venn diagram therein.

This week, the picture round prize has been donated by Jam Jar Beads in town, where £5 can buy you up to 200 beads, depending on which sort you buy. They also have some lovely craftastic ribbons and supplies, plus ready made pieces by local artists.

We’ve also got feats of strength and spot prizes, including some book tokens, and are collecting stats for our ongoing comedy research as usual.

Hope to see you there.

—The Venns

Quiz is Drama

Russell Brand said during the intros round of Nevermind The Buzzcocks (taped before his BBC ban but only broadcast last week), “We can do this damn quiz. It’s only a quiz isn’t it? Look at the word ‘quiz’. Nothing serious can happen as the result of a quiz. (Panicked voice) ‘There was a quiz earlier and three men died.’ It’s a quiz!” Cue applause. Cue laughter, including our own.
 
Little did we know that launching our pub quiz fanzine at The Rutland Arms in Sheffield last August would lead to an invitation to host a quiz of our own a few months later, and the opportunity to gather stats and research for the comedy show we’ve been working on for the past year and a half. 

But we were pretty sure that with the right team and the right questions, people would get talking, find shared interests, make links and possibly even lifelong connections. We started to notice (during our research, which mainly included taking quizzes and drinking local beer) that the quiz was a microcosm of life. High drama and ridiculous comedy could happen at any time. Sports training montages didn’t begin to cover our preparations one week when we were determined to beat the Saved By The Bell team last year. Site-specific improv became second nature. And now that we’re on the mics it’s a chance to live mix a question round like we’re a couple of crazy quiz djs looking for that unique sound, but for us, it’s the most interconnected Venn question.

Come down to the quiz one night or, better yet, come to our show on the 4th of May at the Riverside.
 
As for us, we’ll never think, ‘It’s only a quiz’ again.

Why The Tick and R2D2 won’t do you any favours…

The Alienation v. Alien Nation Effect:

We noticed as we began setting our own quiz that, every now and again, there’d be a few grumbles that it was too hard, and a few grumbles that it was too easy. After staring at my whiteboard and drinking slightly-too-strong coffee for a little while, I realised what was going wrong.

There seems to be a very subtle boundary between easy and hard, and it’s different for each team. We had kinda young, hip rock and roll nerd types rolling their eyes at our vague stabs at obscure questions, and then sat at tables beside them were lovely older couples who had no idea what we were talking about.

And somehow, no demographic other than us, a guy propping up the bar, and a table of regulars in the corner knew anything remotely like enough about John Hughes films to make the picture round enjoyable.

It had been a less than satisfactory result, hence the whiteboard and the coffee and the puzzled expression.

It all comes down to this: The Alienation v. Alien Nation Effect (or, for Brecht fans out there, the VerfremQuizeffekt?). If you write a simple question in a quite general category, there’s no challenge. If you write a difficult question in an obscure category, you lose most of the crowd.

That’s why nobody enjoyed getting R2D2 right on our robot picture round – everyone knows R2D2. It’s also why no one got the name of the Tick’s sidekick right. He’s a parody superhero created by a comicbook shop employee, and the sidekick is called Arthur. Arthur wears a moth costume, but is not called Mothman. So now you know.

See what I mean? There’s no pleasure in knowing that. It’s not something kinda cool that stirs up the memory of where you learnt it, or an impressive feat of mental strength to wow your mates with.

It’s just a guy in a moth suit.

And R2D2, while awesome, ought to be on the radar of any Sheffielder age 3 and up.

So our questions now generally fit in somewhere just shy of what I like to call the Geek Barrier. An ill-defined, invisible and unpredictable line in the mental sand of the quizzee’s psyche. Too far back, and the quiz is child’s play. Too far beyond it, and you’re no longer quite as cool for knowing the answer.

We’ll test this new theory further and report our findings. Until then, may the force be with you.

-Quint

The Stats and Theories Page will have an archive of this post.

Check out the Quizmastery section to find out who’s just donated a prize to our feats of strength.

-The Venns

The Quizmaster Showdown

New year, new challenge. We have unwittingly cultivated a healthy rivalry with Andy at the Rutland, and, after winning his quiz and coming close a couple of times, have invited him (and a Rutland envoy) to see if they can perform equally well at our quiz.  Follow @thevenns on twitter for updates, and join us for our first quiz of 2011 at The Greystones tomorrow night at 9.

Edited to add: They came, they saw, they nearly conquered, but sadly the Rutland posse (the very congenial Dave, Andy and Laura) only came in joint second. We were quite impressed with the cool stuff they evidently knew, however, and mostly tolerated Dave freaking out when we had all the teams double the picture round.

Not to be outdone, we came in joint second-to-last at their quiz this past Thursday.  To add insult to injury, they did a full ‘new’ themed quiz (we only did one ‘new’ themed round) and we broke our own Rule 3 from the zine TWICE (and the two answers involved Jow’s favourite city which is in my homeland and one of our favourite films).  

And I found myself in the Mate or Partner conundrum.

But despite all that, we had a really good night both times, and recommend the Quizmaster Showdown as a general thing quizmasters should do because it is awesome and fun. Look. You can tell by all our faces.

A View from the (New) Quizmasters

We didn’t know when we wrote the zine that our quest for the perfect pub quiz team might also help us become quiz masters. But then we got invited to host the quiz at the newly-reopened Greystones (formerly the Highcliffe) pub on Greystones Road. The landlord-to-be approached us with a copy our zine in hand and said, ‘You know you’ve also reverse engineered the guide to the perfect pub quiz? Turns out that reading between the lines, you can pick up some good tips.’

We suppose we should pretend we planned it like that, but we were actually really surprised and delighted and only mildly terrified. Since we’d both lived round there at different points in our collective history, we already felt pretty fond of that neighbourhood, and were really looking forward to it. The week over a foot of snow dropped on Sheffield was kinda tricky, but except for that week (when we wrote the quiz and emailed it and have been verbally abused by Team Renderson’s Hellish ever since…) we’ve presented five quizzes and had a great time doing it.

We’re going to keep going, because we’ve also managed to collect some awesome data from the quiz teams, who’ve been very willing to help us test Quint’s Venn Subject Theory and Jow’s Player/Points Ratio Theory. We want to eventually present our findings to the quizgoers. Why? Maybe to give everybody some insight into their hidden awesomeness. Maybe to justify the amount of time spent at the pub. We don’t have the answers yet – but we’ve got lots of questions.

See you at the Christmas quiz, next Tuesday at 9.

The Venns

The Banner Cross Quiz, Sheffield (or, what being a field reporter is all about)

We ask our friends to review quizzes they attend in order to provide useful guidance to others. They usually oblige and we are very, very grateful. However, sometimes they come back with a review of such epic proportions, thank you just is not enough. The following is a review of the quiz from The Banner Cross, written for us by our friend Liz:

 

I struggled up the hill on a very wet, cold and windy night, to the Banner Cross pub on Ecclesall Road South, Sheffield. Possibly looking for glory again, I met the group, hoods up, tired and with that same feeling.

The footy was on and loads of Real Madrid (apparently) fans were in, shouting and swearing, enjoying the cheese sandwiches for sale at £1.50 per pack, with no other filling choices left. Bar-maid Jennie, ventures over about 9.30, “Anybodiee wont t’ dut quiz? Quid a sheet “, we scurry for our purses before they sell out.

Real fans clear the pub, quite a big quiz audience has appeared around the velour seats in the big, bright living room. Excited, nervous, iPhone fully charged and waiting. Most of the pub nip out for a quick smoke, in the freezing tornado-ridden smoking area, some of the outdoor rope lights have gone and the lavender bush and geraniums are dead. The outdoor TV doors are hanging on the hinges.

Quiz started 10.00 pm on the dot, tellies off as only ‘go compare’ advert and pre-lim for Saturdays XFactor was playing to itself.

This is a bingo-style quiz with prizes for all four corners, line, full house – I’m sure you get the gist. The questions were quite good and varied, which kicks out the group of 19, average age 25, students studying higher Rumanian Economics. 30 questions in total, but answers given at the end when the numbers on the bingo card were called.. .you still with me? Lots of trivia, TV, old/new music, geography, history and my favourite – the anagram question! On this occasion it was something like anlerio laltmlcih erplninsantt – and it was a ‘big place to go when you go on holidays?’ No free food. The prize was £11 for first line, 4 free pints (taken within a week) for full house and 2 pints for best quiz team name. The quiz it quite a late finisher at 11.00. Cue lots of arguing, then lights went up.

Rating 3.5/5 – Great, entertaining quiz for a wet night, which makes the brain cells kick in – but finishes a bit late for a school night.

 

Liz, we thank you for your clear dedication to the quiz cause.