Pub Trivia
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It is Tuesday evening and one of my favorite times of the week. Why Tuesday evenings of all times of the week you ask? Well it is my weekly ritual of getting together with some friends at a local bar, indulge in dinner, drinks and some very competitive pub trivia (also known as a pub quiz).
Pub trivia is an exercise of teams pitting their grey cells of knowledge up against each other, competing for bragging rights, some nice prizes (usually gift certificates that get recycled as beer money) and all-around fun. It consists of an MC calling out questions of general knowledge (typically with an American slant to them) and teams scribbling in their answers before the end of a song. Topics vary greatly from geography to politics to music to science to history,etc. Participants weight their submitted answers with points based on their confidence about those submissions. There are certain bonus rounds where teams can score more points to make up for lost ground BUT at a risk of losing more if they are wrong about their answers.
The pub trivia culture has really exploded in the Boston area with just about every bar or pub of worth, offering a night of trivia each week. A few factors contribute to the popularity of this idea that was imported from the UK: a pretty well educated local population (due in part to the proliferation of educational institutions here), a large, young, working population with money to spend and a prevalent bar culture in Boston. From what I understand, pub trivia first took root in the US here in the Boston area but has now spread to other parts of the country. I would expect that places like the San Francisco Bay Area would be have a thriving pub trivia culture. Bar/pub owners are only too happy to bring in crowds for business on typically slow nights like Tuesdays and Wednesdays when people usually would not consider heading to a bar for some drinks. Pub trivia has made a big difference and often makes these nights one of the most crowded nights at these bars during the week.
Part of the fun at the beginning is hearing all the wacky team names that people come up with. During Christmas, one team came up with the name “What do the three wisemen want for Christmas? Ho! Ho! Ho!” Of course after the initial laughter dies down, it is all serious competition. Some places charge teams for entry into the trivia but the place my friends and I frequent, does not.
So if you haven’t tried pub trivia, check out your local watering holes in your city to see if they have this going. Trust me, it is a lot of fun even if you don’t win anything.
A random question (which our team answered correctly) from some time ago:
In the Christmas song “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, how many presents, in total, were received from the singer’s sweetheart?
Enjoy!
Interesting post. I mentioned this to fellow blogger anupcs the other day over drinks that after few drinks most of the brain activity is shut off anyway so why not use the free brain cells to focus. Looks like Pub trivia is an ideal candidate.
anupcs is still recovering from the shock of an individual defeat in ‘Trivial Pursuit’ inflicted on him by yours truly. This happened a couple of years ago when he was visiting and hasn’t been the same man ever since. So the thoughts of mixing alcohol and trivia may elicit ambivalence from him. Ha!
It is a lot of fun but when it is a tight race at the end, it gets a lot more tense. Of course it pays to have a decent team and be competitive. I can’t say that about our performance this evening … we were terrible (the worst effort ever) and missed so many early questions that our impressive late charge was a little too little, a little too late.
Well, good for you. Especially yesterday which is considered the worst day of the year by some British psychologist after doing some “calculations.” (The study was actually done last year and takes into consideration the fact that Jan. 24 fell on a monday.)
Still hanging on to that fantasy, eh, blogger john? My brain failed to register that incident.
Well it is accurate in that we played an absolutely terrible first half of the game and probably the worst ever effort over all by our team. The beer helped dull the pain.
Denial is brutal, eh?!!
Hmm! The other shoe drops. I was given the impression that I was the only one to hand anupcs a sound thumping in Trivial Pursuit - This happened 2 years ago on the eve of my birthday, just before hiking up Half Dome. Now that the cat is out of the bag, I wonder how many other victors will crawl out of the woodwork. It appears that anupcs is not as invincible as is made out to be, eh?
At the very moment of my apparently stunning victory, anupcs looked quietly at the board and then said it was the first time he had ever lost Trivial Pursuit in individual play. Apparently, he had taken some losses by teaming with other losers (heh heh) but never when playing solo. That fact made it stand out in my memory even more. Plus anupcs had the ignominious moment heralded in with his wife asking me the question that spelled his doom: Sports: What is the classic color of a cricket ball?
This would have been around June 2003 when he and wife were visiting Boston and staying with me. So it was actually 2.5 years ago so maybe I beat you to it riyer!
You did. My triumph came in Sept 2003. I recall that moment being very sweet, coming as it did in the paradise that is (was?) Yosemite. I think 2003 must have been a rusty one for anupcs, eh?
Ouch! That must have been the unkindest cut of all
Actually I think more than wife asking, it was the question itself that was the unkindest cut of all, given my passion with all things sports (and that too, cricket).
That’s because the incident john is referring to never happened. I will deny this to my grave.
Shame, shame … you have decided to employ Bush’s tactic of repeating a false statement enough times to try to convince the masses that it is true. Naughty boy.
“Bush’s tactic” is correct. I myself believe that this never happened. It’s easier to convince the masses that way.
No takers for the trivia question in the post? Given the overwhelming responses, maybe we ought to have a trivia section as well. Heh heh. Oh yeah, think wiki.
Trivia answer: 11? I don’t even know the song.
About the wiki: a tad impatient, aren’t we?
No.
Of course you do: “On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a partridge in a pear tree” … etc.
(12 * 13)/2 = 78?
No. I was trying to figure out your logic and came to the conclusion that it was magic instead.
BTW, a partridge in a pear tree is to be considered one gift and not two.
Well, I must admit to not knowing all the words (could do a search for it I suppose), but I thought it would just be the sum of the arithmetic progression 1, 2, ….. 12, which works out to (12 * 13) / 2.
Duh me. I should have realized that.
Nice but no. You don’t need to know the exact gifts in the song, just the numbers involved. Singing the first few lines (days) will give you an idea.
Ok since nobody has bitten, last try - 364. I guess I never really paid that much attention to the words.
Yes, that’s correct. We initially thought along the lines of the AP you had suggested earlier but then it struck us after saying out aloud the first few lines. Of course after that moment of enlightenment, it was a furious scribble to do the math before the end of the song.
There are at least two ways you could do the math in this particular case. Let me riddle you this, oh riddler. What if it was the 2000 Nights of Christmas? What would be the answer then?
On a little reflection, turns out there is a pretty little solution to this for any arbitrary number n. Any number lovers out there willing to give it a shot?
Aah..it’s a very pretty solution indeed. The general solution for any arbitrary number n is n(n+1)(n+2)/6
You …. complete me. Well played.
Went for the Thursday night Booze & Brains at the Night Watchman, a favourite Bangalore watering hole. It was MC’ed by Mark Rego, one of the city’s famous event managers, well known for his cheeky humour.
We didn’t win but we got a free pitcher of beer thanks to GPRS and Google.
So what is a hockey ball made of?
crewcut, over here you would be disqualified for using external help in answering trivia questions.
What is the answer to the hockey ball question?
Cellulose.
I agree, they shouldn’t allow googling of answers.