Addy's Proxy Pub Quiz

Hi everyone, I'm delighted to announce the 2nd edition of what I call, "Addy's Proxy Pub Quiz"!  APPQ is an opportunity to do a British-style written pub quiz, in conditions mirroring those of the actual pub, wherever you are, at a time that suits you. I've done this once before, within the Trivial Warfare Army Facebook group and that was a huge success, so I'm expanding it now to readers of my blog/my Twitter followers! This post is mostly a copy-paste of the announcement thread in the TWA group I admit. The quiz itself is the one I host in Dalbeattie at the Kings Arms - the exact same quiz.

To participate, you just need to provide me an email address that I can send the quiz to. Might be best to do this via Twitter, since you won't want to post your email in the comments here. Or maybe you can contact me directly via Blogger? I'm not sure. Oh well, here's the rules (below the cut):


Date

Next Wednesday to Sunday, 31st January to 4th February. Final submissions required by midnight PST 4th February. I'll get the final scores collated at some point on the Tuesday evening UK time, as I'll be free then. After the initial quizzes are sent out, you can still take part, but I can't guarantee when I'll be able to send them out due to being busy next weekend, so I recommend you ask before Wednesday.

Time required

About 2 hours in total.

Team Size

Strict maximum of 4. You can do it remotely via Skype, as some teams did last time, but you do need to do it at the same time, so no doing it individually and splicing answer sheets together, please!

The Quiz 

This quiz is 6 rounds of 15 questions each, for 90 in total. You have 75 minutes to complete the quiz. You can break that time down however you want, but once you've started a round you must finish it, and you can't go back to previous rounds once you decide you're done. So if you want to spend half an hour meticulously analysing every question in R1, that's fine, but it leaves you with 45 minutes for the remaining 75 questions, so use your own judgement.

You don't have to do this all in one sitting, which is new for this version. If you start a round, please finish it, but you can break it up if you like as long as you stick to the total overal time limit. So if you want to do 2 rounds each over 3 days, 25 minutes each, that's completely fine. It's less authentic but more practical to allow this. 

After the 75 minutes are up or you've completed all 6 rounds, please mark your own sheets. In future I'll probably ask you to submit your answers, but I've no time right now so this time, same as last, you can self-mark. Unlike last time, I'm not including the marking time in the overall time, which is slightly less realistic but more practical. If you want a truly accurate British pub experience, feel free to mark round-by-round within the 75 minutes. But you don't have to.

Then you just need to send me your total score (your score for each round is optional) and that's it! Easy!

Background/Context

This quiz was hosted live last Monday night, and about 9 teams took part. It was in my local area, so South West Scotland, a mostly older, rural-based audience, most of whom have been coming to this quiz for years but don't do others. As such, there's a bit of a British bias to it. At the very least, it's not heavy on Americana.

Results

Like I say, I'll get the results up a day or so after the deadline. I'll post them on here and email them out, as well as posting them in the TWA Facebook group if you're in there.. I'll reveal all scores but only the top 3 placings will be named, so no need to worry about embarassment if you're not so confident.

Rules

No googling, obviously. You can use pen and paper to write stuff down, make notes, make written calculations or whatever, but no external resources of any kind, including looking up answers or asking for help from people not in your team.

I think that's everything, so I'll offer some strategy help:

The time limit (90 questions in 75 minutes) may seem intimidating, but I promise you, it isn't. if the teams needed longer on the night, they'd have gotten it. In practice, you'll know or not know most of the answers in half of that. Treat each round as having a baseline 10 minutes, knowing you can go over that if necessary. I recommend leaving yourself 15 minutes for the last round, if only so you're not rushing at the end. 

The best approach to any of my quizzes is to quickly pick off all the answers you definitely know, then go back to the rest. 15 questions in 10 minutes is one thing - 8 in 8 is something else, and that's what you'll usually be facing, I'd think.

Look for clues in the questions. My questions are very deliberately, precisely written, so if something is there it's for a reason. I do employ trick questions, I do try and catch you out, but there's nothing false in there, and the answer may be more obvious than you think.

I've certainly exceeded the 20 international teams I had last time, and my numbers include participants from the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and Netherlands among potentially others, so I'd love for someone to get involved via this blog/Twitter!