Home > Pub quiz

1 The format

Pub quizzes are often weekly or bi-weekly events and will have an advertised start time. This time is only approximate and it may be up to half an hour after it that any quiz-related activity begins.

First of all, one of the bar staff will come around with pens and quiz papers, which may contain questions or may just be blank sheets for writing the answers on. A mixture of both is common, in which case often only the blank sheet is to be handed in. Often the pub expects paper should be split in two - one half to hand in and one half to be kept as a record of the answers.

It is up to the patrons to form teams, which are generally based on tables, though if one table has a large group around it, they may decide to split up. Some pubs insist on a maximum team size (usually between six and ten). The team members decide on a team name, which must be written on all papers handed in.

1.1 Rounds

There can be any number of rounds between one and half a dozen, generally falling into the following categories, given in approximate order of commonness:

• Trivia rounds - these are usually spoken, either over a public address system or just called out. Common topics are:
  • General - a mixture, including those listed below, if they're not a separate round and also topics like history, geography and science. There may well be more than one of these.
  • Sport - comprising the statistics and minutiae of popular, well-known sports and general facts about others.
  • Entertainment - Movies, TV shows and music.
• Picture rounds - these are on photocopied hand-outs and consist of photos of various famous people to be identified. The copies may be poor quality.
• Music rounds - these consist of songs played over the PA system, usually the teams must identify the song and the singer or band.
• Puzzle rounds - generally on a handed-out sheet. Typically these consist of crossword puzzles, anagramAn anagram ( Greek ana "back", and graphein "to write") is the result of permuting the letters of a word or words in such a manner as to produce other words that possess linguistic meaning. The meaning of the new word so created is seen in the context ofs and basic mathsMathematics is commonly defined as the study of patterns of structure, change, and space; more informally, one might say it is the study of "figures and numbers". In the formalist view, it is the investigation of axiomatically defined abstract structures problems.

The questions may be set by the bar staff or landlord, be bought from a specialist trivia company, or be set by volunteers from amongst the contestants. In the latter case, the quiz setter may be remunerated in the form of beer or a small amount of money.

1.2 Marking

In some cases, the papers are marked by the bar staff. Alternatively, teams may have to mark their own answers and the handed-in papers are consulted only to check that prize claimants haven't cheated by altering their answers. Another method is to have teams swap paper before marking, though this can be divisive as there are inevitable disagreements over whether, for example, both names of a person need to be stated in order to get a point. In even the first case, the answers will be read out.