The Cascade Room

Long live the king, the king is dead. The Cascade Room stopped running their very popular pub quiz in late 2013. The review will be left up so that we can all remember the good times that were. In the mean time, why don't you find another quiz in Vancouver?

Where: The Cascade Room. Located at 2616 Main Street.

When: 7PM on Mondays. Runs monthly, on the last Monday of each month. Registration is at 6, and it's probably a good idea to be there by then. It fills up.

Web Presence:  What The #!*@? - The ORIGINAL Mount Pleasant Quiz Night on facebook

Registration Fee: $2 per player. which is donated to charity at the end

Team Info: 4 players per team, every player over brings a one point penalty.

Prizes: A pitcher of beer, and 25 dollars off your bill

Format: 3 Rounds,usually including a matching question, a entire themed picture round, and a music round. usually about 30 questions, of varying point totals, worth about 60 points or so.

Food and Drink: The food's good, and the beer's great. Also, if you're a fan of cocktails, you're in luck. 

Full disclosure: This was the first pub quiz I ever went to, and I've consistently gone there for about two and a half years. It is my "Home Quiz," if such a concept exists. So, garnish the rest of this writeup with that in mind. The quiz is run by Karen, who as far as I know has been running it the whole time. She's got the act down pat. She used to run it every week, but for sanity's sake cut it back to every two weeks about a year ago, which is too bad. I've always been a fan of Monday night quizzes, since it gives you something to look forward to immediately after any given weekend. The quiz usually runs between two and two and half hours, and is probably the best organized of any I've seen. Papers are swapped efficiently, marked quickly, without much dead time. Experience. I've always liked brisk quizzes, as opposed to 3, 3 and half hour marathons - they make me feel like the purpose of the quiz is for us to hang out and have fun, and not as a way to get us to buy their drinks over the longest possible period of time. I understand the basics of trivia night economics and all, but I prefer it when I feel as though the night is there for the sake of the quiz itself, and not to keep us there drinking longer.

BUT I digress, from this fine quiz. Lots of fun geography questions, good matching questions, and lots of love for the Royals of Britain. Which makes sense - take a look at the decor. If you like music spanning the disco-rockocene epoch of 1975-1985, you'll do well. About once a year you'll find a bone thrown to the bigger hits of the past year, so paying attention to the radio can't hurt either. It is usually of a fairly average difficulty, with a few "tossups" (multiple choice questions that are pretty hard to figure out without topic knowledge) and "difference makers" sprinkled in. Sometimes it goes a bit overboard on the multiple choice questions, but the strategy tends to keep the same teams from winning consistently. There aren't too many streaks rung up here. The competition is pretty solid, with about 4 or 5 teams of regulars always in contention, and the occasional tourist coming out of left field and kicking everyone's asses before returning to France, or Calgary, or South Africa. It looks like word gets around.

Also, any writeup on the quiz at the Cascade would be incomplete without a mention of the yearly Quiz of Champions. It is as it sounds. Once a year, September or thereabouts, an invite-only quiz is held for all the winners in the previous years. The difficulty gets ratcheted up, "Identify the drink by taste" is introduced, and quiz is longer. At the end, glory, and your name on the official trophy.  If you want a blow-by-blow of the second annual Quiz of Champion, a blog has provided a detailed question by question recounting. There have been 3 so far, each won by a different team.


ANYWAYS,  it's the original Mount Pleasant quiz night, and still the only one I regularly go to. Check it out if you have the chance.