Pub Quiz

Having gone to Buffalo Wild Wings, the idea of a Pub Quiz was not surprising to me. At the aforementioned wings bar (and no, not the bar in Wings), there were TVs asking questions, and you could punch in your answers. All good, unobtrusive fun.

Pub Quizzes here are much different affairs.

I was invited to go to the quiz by Megan, one of the other PhD students, here in her fourth year. Her housemate Rebecca, also an older PhD student, was there as well. We later met up with two of Rebecca's friends from the film studies department and Alisha, an MA in the English department.

Alisha, it should be mentioned, was blind. I didn't know this right away because she wasn't there with everyone else. She was coming over later. After a little while, we all began wonder where she was. It was then, after she was late, that I found out she was blind. She was just going to wander over on her own. Of course, we were upstairs, which made it impossible to find us.
"So, let me get this straight," I asked. "You left your blind housemate to come over here. Alone. And then sat upstairs? Now that she's late, no one has thought to maybe find out where she is."
"That's a good point. I'll send her a text."
I thought that was the meanest thing you could do. Her phone would buzz, and she would try to answer it, getting nothing but silence on the other end. She knows something happened, but can't retrieve the information. Turns out her phone reads the text-messages to her, making the simple act seem less mean. Eventually, it was determined that Alisha was downstairs, and Megan went to retrieve her.

Then the quiz started. Our team name was "My Life is Average," which turned out to be prophetic as we scored the average score. The quiz was done on paper, and each team was given an answer sheet and a set of pictures. We were to identify the pictures, some of which we easy (Gerard Butler, Buddy Holly), some were difficult due to their positioning (Kylie Minogue had her hand in front of her face and looked a lot like Sheryl Crow), and others were distorted to make it impossible (Bruce Willis had his chin made to look like Jay Leno).

Once we finished, we swapped papers with the team next to us, and the bar lady read the correct answers. We did not fare well on that round, scoring a 50%. I was surprised, though, at how it was graded. Being a devious person, and out of sight of the Pub Quiz master, I wondered why we didn't just pretend that we didn't have an answer sheet, or pretend that we had swapped, fill in most of the right answers, and jog down to report our scores. As it turned out, the pride came in knowing the right answers, not just having the highest score. Which is why England never wins at basketball, and loves soccer so much.

Being American turned out to be quite an advantage. One question featured American cities, and we had to identify which states they came from. Another one had phrases ending in sports terminology, and we had to guess the right sport (blitz, quarter, down, etc. = American Football), and one question was about the youngest assassinated US President (JFK).

In the end, though, I felt like calling shenanigans on the whole thing. The team that won had nearly 20 people on it. The sheer number of people on a team is going to increase the chance that someone will know the answer. Why not fill a whole side of the bar, and have them answer the questions collectively. Also, I am fairly certain that one team had a Blackberry and a fast typist.

All in all, though, it was a good time, and my first experience in a bar outside the US. I don't know when I'll go again, but I have started brushing up on my soccer terminology and the names of famous rugby players.