Pub quiz!

“No!” shouted the man in the corner of the bar, angrily, “You said there were over thirty deaths, which means that Istanbul is not correct. There were that many deaths in Ankara, not Istanbul.” This man was yelling out during the marking phase of a quiz, challenging the quizmaster when she said that either Istanbul or Ankara would be acceptable answers for a question on recent events in Turkey. It turns out this man really wanted his team to win. From that point on, I hoped they didn’t. I always find the marking part of quizzes stressful. You hand in your team’s answer sheets, they get redistributed around the room and each team marks each others. Then, as the answers are called out, people start asking ridiculous questions to either discredit the answers they are marking, or to ensure that the people marking theirs give them a tick instead of a cross.

Whilst it can be stressful, it can also be fun watching people get wound up over a pub quiz. Claire and I were joined at a pub quiz in Kigali, Rwanda, by Alex a cool American guy we met earlier that day. The quiz was taking place at Sola Luna, where we also ate some awesome pizza.  We were in the corner watching as a couple of teams insisted on turning a fun night out into a serious evening of trivia and correct answers. “Fine,” replied the visibly jaded woman, “only Ankara counts,” this was met with groans from half the room. We had put Istanbul down.

A bit later on there was a question about Egyptian gods, asking which animal head did the got Anubis have (we put dog). The answer was read out as ‘Jackal’. The team in the corner went mad. “It’s a dog!” they shouted, to which the quizmaster replied that only jackal would be accepted. “But he’s a biologist,” was their response as they pointed at their teammate, the one who had previously gotten angry over a question about terrorist attacks in Turkey. “Not a very good one!” I shouted. Claire told me to ‘shhh’. But it was quite fun lambasting these guys. I’ve never seen such a dedicated and angry quiz team.

“Your question about Nero was wrong!” shouted out another man on the table next to ours as the quizmaster was reading out answers to a later round. The quizmaster stopped mid word and looked at this other man on the table next to us. “Your question about Nero was wrong. He didn’t die in 41, it was Caligula.” He was challenging an answer to a question about Roman Emperors – on which topic there was an entire round. The quizmaster came over. “Nero didn’t die in 41, Caligula did.” Everyone was looking over. “No, I said he died at 41.” Replied the quizmaster. The man with his phone out, put away his internet evidence and slunk down in his chair.

“What if their handwriting is really bad?” asked the Nero guy in response to another question. The team whose paper he was marking piped up, with one woman shouting in a shrill weird voice: “Learn how to read!” It was getting tense.

As we were marking some other team’s answers we came across one answer that left Claire in tears of laughter. It’s rude to laugh at other people’s incorrect answers, but she hid it well. The question was regarding Indian Pale Ale. I think it was something along the lines of ‘what is the main ingredient in Indian Pale Ale?’ To which this team had written ‘Curry’. Curry. Not curry powder, which whilst it would still be dreadfully wrong, would still be more feasible than merely curry. Curry flavoured beer anyone?

In the end the three of us came fifth out of about ten teams, which we were pretty surprised at considering how seriously everyone seemed to be taking it. We had done well on the Disney round – Alex used to work at a zoo in Disney Land – and we did OK in current affairs, despite all three of us having had shaky internet over the past few weeks. We also did ok on the round dedicated to beer as Alex’s college in the States had a beer course that he took. A beer course. I never knew such things existed. However the Roman Emperors round along with the fashion round, were most certainly our week points. We were tempted to put down Julius Cesar for every question in the Roman Emperors round, but decided against it. Still, taking part in a pub quiz in Kigalia was fun. Even if it was billed as ‘the biggest collection of white people in a room in East Africa’.