Who sang ‘In the Summertime’?
Which product had the strap-line ‘They’re tasty, tasty, very, very tasty’?
Any ideas? Me neither. (*)
We all love a good quiz, especially us Brits. Mastermind and University Challenge have been running for 40 and 50 years a piece and are as British as fish and chips. Even their parodies are classics - Mastermind, University Challenge.
The real quiz national institution though is the pub quiz. You can’t beat a few beers with your mates, the painstaking process of choosing an inappropriate team name, a massive argument over a question and a subsequent inevitable loss by 250 points to 2 old blokes sat at the bar.
This weekly rites of passage is now under major threat though thanks to the smartphone.
Quiz cheating is now unbelievably easy and the temptation of prizes and kudos is often too much for some people. You now don’t have to nip out to the car park to phone your Dad for the right answer, you can just sit at your table and pull answers from Shazam and Google.
So what’s the solution? Some pubs are turning off their wi-fi connection during their quizzes or sending scouts round tables during rounds to check people aren’t using their phones. This turns a normally relaxed atmosphere into what feels like an exam – not something punters want after a long day at work.
The probable answer then, as is the case with a lot of things that are ‘threatened’ by digital, is not to fight it but to embrace it.
There are now digital quiz formats that can be used in pubs and the connectivity offered by the internet could be used to connect pubs nationwide for competitions or to have more interactive rounds like getting teams to set questions for others.
Would this work and get you down the local boozer? How else could digital improve a pub quiz? Let me know your thoughts below…
(*) Who sang ’In the Summertime’? Answer
Which product had the strap-line ’They’re tasty, tasty, very, very tasty’? Answer
