I have been doing and running a pub quiz for fifteen years, and now run a Quiz pub in Girona, Catalonia, Spain, for Catalan languages at a certain level of English learning, and native speakers. Here are five ways to win, or at least give the team a better chance of winning at the pub quiz.
1. Right Size
The optimal pub quiz team size is four. Whatever anthropological evidence in the pudding dynamics of a good pub quiz team and even a not so good pub quiz team is better with four people. A team of three people does not have the knowledge needed to win, and a team of five people seems more responsible for denying it. Of course, there are a lot of not-so-good pub quiz teams of four who have no knowledge and opinions, but I'll cover it later.
After settling on the Pub Quiz team, we can see four other factors in the good Pub Quiz team.
2. Scattered Knowledge
There needs to be good knowledge scattered in the team if it will work well. Four people who know a lot about football and nothing else will not give the team a good score in public knowledge quizzes, and the pub quiz just about football narrows down the customer base. Of course there will be some specialism within the team members, but widespread knowledge sharing throughout the team is a great starting point for being a competitive team. So why not three, not four? You can have three people that just you will not have as wide a knowledge spread as you do with four.
3. Fourth person
The fourth person often feels they are not contributing to the team. "I never knew the answer to all the questions." they may regularly complain. But this is because they only remember giving three answers out of forty. What matters with the fourth person, the person who contributes little to the answer, not how many questions they answer, but which question they answer. If they answer three questions that no one else in the team can answer, and the team win two points, then their contribution is very important to the team. The donation of this person often corresponds to the character in the daytime television soap, not the number of months Jupiter, but the question was asked in Pub Quiz,
4. Who Gets a Pen
One important decision to do is who the pen is. People with pens must listen to the views of others. They should be able to give clear choices before the team and write down what the team considers to be the answer. This all takes about fifteen seconds, so it would be natural to do so. The person who is least fit to hold a pen is someone who knows everything, and gives a wrong answer before there is any argument about it. Then when the answer given by the quiz master is different, there will be no apology from him, but 'oh yes, I mean that,' the response. They will not learn from experience, and the same thing will happen again if they have a pen. It could be said that this person should not be in the team in the first place, but with proper control of their knowledge base - they may be an electrical engineer or something, could be useful to the team. Anyway, let's remember sometimes it's hard to get four people together into one team and most friends have serious flaws, otherwise why are they friends?
5. The First Answer is the Best Answer
The first answer to pub quiz questions is often the right answer. After writing an answer, it's best not to change unless you know it's the wrong answer, and you've found a better and more appropriate answer, or you're sure you have the right answer. Nothing is more annoying than answering your first answer and entering a successor, only to find that the first answer you gave is correct.
1. Right Size
The optimal pub quiz team size is four. Whatever anthropological evidence in the pudding dynamics of a good pub quiz team and even a not so good pub quiz team is better with four people. A team of three people does not have the knowledge needed to win, and a team of five people seems more responsible for denying it. Of course, there are a lot of not-so-good pub quiz teams of four who have no knowledge and opinions, but I'll cover it later.
After settling on the Pub Quiz team, we can see four other factors in the good Pub Quiz team.
2. Scattered Knowledge
There needs to be good knowledge scattered in the team if it will work well. Four people who know a lot about football and nothing else will not give the team a good score in public knowledge quizzes, and the pub quiz just about football narrows down the customer base. Of course there will be some specialism within the team members, but widespread knowledge sharing throughout the team is a great starting point for being a competitive team. So why not three, not four? You can have three people that just you will not have as wide a knowledge spread as you do with four.
3. Fourth person
The fourth person often feels they are not contributing to the team. "I never knew the answer to all the questions." they may regularly complain. But this is because they only remember giving three answers out of forty. What matters with the fourth person, the person who contributes little to the answer, not how many questions they answer, but which question they answer. If they answer three questions that no one else in the team can answer, and the team win two points, then their contribution is very important to the team. The donation of this person often corresponds to the character in the daytime television soap, not the number of months Jupiter, but the question was asked in Pub Quiz,
4. Who Gets a Pen
One important decision to do is who the pen is. People with pens must listen to the views of others. They should be able to give clear choices before the team and write down what the team considers to be the answer. This all takes about fifteen seconds, so it would be natural to do so. The person who is least fit to hold a pen is someone who knows everything, and gives a wrong answer before there is any argument about it. Then when the answer given by the quiz master is different, there will be no apology from him, but 'oh yes, I mean that,' the response. They will not learn from experience, and the same thing will happen again if they have a pen. It could be said that this person should not be in the team in the first place, but with proper control of their knowledge base - they may be an electrical engineer or something, could be useful to the team. Anyway, let's remember sometimes it's hard to get four people together into one team and most friends have serious flaws, otherwise why are they friends?
5. The First Answer is the Best Answer
The first answer to pub quiz questions is often the right answer. After writing an answer, it's best not to change unless you know it's the wrong answer, and you've found a better and more appropriate answer, or you're sure you have the right answer. Nothing is more annoying than answering your first answer and entering a successor, only to find that the first answer you gave is correct.