I love pub quizzes. I love anything that will test my knowledge or powers of logic. I even love the pub quizzes when they are aimed at older people and I stand no chance of getting the questions right. I still like being able to try.
I’m a big fan though of the Chambers pub quiz. There are a few reasons for this. One is that on Boxing Day there is an abundance of free alcohol and Christmas hats. This makes it my favourite day of the year.
Another reason is that whilst I don’t know too many of the answers to the quiz itself, there is a background music round and generally Chris who puts the quiz together seems to have a similar taste in music to me so I often score well in that round.
However, since the invention of mobile phones that are able to easily connect to the internet, the pub quiz seems to be dying out. It is no longer a test of intellect but a test of who has the best 3G connection and the best Googling skills.
This annoys me greatly. It effectively renders the whole exercise pointless. I have been known to shout at people in the past for looking up answers and have even insisted that we put the answer down that we originally thought it was, even though they had looked it up and we knew it was wrong.
There’s no point in taking part if you’re going to just cheat your way to victory. You wouldn’t do it any other competition (and I do get very competitive) so why would you do it in a pub quiz? Honesty is a much under utilised trait.
At the Chambers pub quiz last week, there was no conclusive winner. Instead the prize was distributed between the top 4 teams as Chris knew that the winning team had Googled/Shazammed their way to victory. He didn’t simply strip them of their victory but protected their identity to hopefully allow them to learn from the experience.
I hope they do. It’d be a shame if society got into a state where we stopped having pub quizzes because we couldn’t trust one another to act in good faith.
As an aside, I was going to write a blog about Thatcher’s death and why celebrating it is wrong but I felt that the death of a pub quiz was important.
However, in short: today we are in no different a situation to that we were yesterday. Thatcher dying has made no difference to the world but the day she stood down did. That day should have been celebrated, not this day.