Quizzing, Phase Three

As many of you are no doubt aware, BC has entered phase three of the province's restart plan, which means restaurants are open, and with that, some pub quizzes have started back up as well. I'm sure everyone has their own opinions on whether it is a great idea to spend upwards of two hours in a bar or restaurant and trust to them to have your health and hygiene in mind. I myself am probably not going to be going to a restaurant anytime soon. That said, a number of quizzes are running again! Here's a few of the ones that I know of.

• Nice Guys Trivia is running trivia at the Lamplighter, Tuesdays at 7.
• IQ2000 is running trivia out of (at least) Colony Granville, Wednesday at 8.
• Vancouver Trivia Party is running several in the suburbs, and at Hastings Mill Tuesdays at 6:30
• Quizzing With Carin is back at the Junction and Princeton, Mondays and Wednesdays

I'm sure there are others out there too, but I haven't seen them. IQ2000 is running a weekly online quiz on twitch, and Think Again Trivia (aka Hail Mary's) is doing theirs live once a month, on the last Thursday. Also, if quizzing from home is more your style, this google doc collects them from all around the world. Stay safe!

Quiz in the time of lockdown

Hey all! I hope that you and yours are all healthy and safe. A lot of people are probably pretty bored right now, so I thought I'd post some options for online quizzes by Vancouver trivia hosts. It's a bit of a different vibe, but at least you're still getting questions asked of you. Without further ado:

• IQ2000 runs two quizzes a week on Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/iq2k/. Monday and Wednesday at 8. They are attracting a humungous number of teams, so it is a good place to flex your mettle. Answers are submitted via a google form.
• Vancouver Trivia Party posts quizzes online here - https://www.vancouvertriviaparty.com/this-week-s-free-quiz. They also host live quizzes on their facebook page, but I'm not sure of the cadence. 
• Think Again Trivia (of Hail Mary's) continues their monthly trivia night using Zoom, details found on their instagram.
• The Big Fat Query (of The Fountainhead) posts sets of questions and answers every Sunday evening, on their facebook page. It's mostly for fun, not so much for competition.

As always, shout out if you know of more!

Keep Calm And Trivia On at The Locker Room Pub

Well, shit. It looks like this was a short-lived quiz night, and only lasted a few weeks. Hopefully, someone else will carry the torch of sports-oriented quizzing in Vancouver.

Where: The Locker Room, 395 Kingsway (at 12th)

"Where good friends meet"

When: 7pm, Thursdays

Web Presence: As this is another IQ 2000 Trivia quiz, you can find hints, photos, and daily questions on their facebook page.

Team Info: Get some friends and show up! I think the max team size is 7 or 8.

Format: Four rounds of 10 questions each, marking after the second round. As per standard operating procedure, a great slideshow to accompany the questions and answers. Price-is-right style tiebreakers.

Prizes: Myriad. I've seen everything from novelty drinking gloves to PBR hoodies given away for the top prize. Pitchers tend to find their ways to enthusiastic teams. The prizes are continually shifting, so you'll have to show up to find out what is being handed out on any given night.

Food and drink: The food is the kind of food you would expect to find in a sports bar. The beer selection is your standard quiver of megabreweries, with a few craft beers to satisfy the choosy drinker. Once again, Parallel 49 continues to impress me with the establishments I can find them in.


Quizzes pop up in the most unlikely places sometimes. I would not have expected The Locker Room, née Maverick's, to have entered the Vancouver trivia night battleground, but here we are. As far as I can recall, this is the first sports bar in town to host a quiz. Since you are asking me, I'm going to go ahead and say that is interesting. Why? Well, read on. 

Keep Calm and Trivia On is the latest hosting venture for IQ2000 Trivia, who styles himself as the Justin Timberlake of Vancouver pub quiz. I would agree that he is certainly well-dressed, and definitely the most famous member of the boyband that was the UBC trivia club. Once again the questions are well written, the hosting is savvy, and the pace brisk. Given the clientele and target demographic, the questions are shifted a bit away from tech culture compared to other IQ2000 quizzes, which seems like a good decision.

So, with the technology questions largely excised, what will fill in those holes? Current events, history, some Canadiana, and... hmmmmm? Are there hockey games on all the TVs? Is that Kevin Durant I see dunking over there? Are the Indiana Pacers melting down RIGHT NOW? Of course! We're at a sports bar, people, and the operative word here is sports. The quiz comes with a dedicated sports round, which is easily the best ten noodle-scratchers (to borrow a phrase from guest-poster Rob) about the sporting world in town. Mostly hockey-related, but unafraid to foray into baseball, basketball, or either football, the round is a joy for a sports fan like myself. I've never been able to give a rational explanation as to why I want to stand up and yell SPOOOOORRRRTTTTTSSSSSS half of the time, but I've always enjoyed sports quite a bit, and this quiz scratches that itch quite thoroughly.

That said, the quiz is still in its infancy. The uptake is fairly low at the moment - it isn't yet experiencing the frenzied full houses that some other trivia nights are. The main draw of the bar is its impeccable sports programming, but when there isn't a game on, the ambient crowd is a bit low. It's too bad, but I remain hopeful for the future. Don't let this put you off, though. If there is a particularly gripping hockey game going on - Montreal in overtime, Stanley Cup Finals, etc), the quiz will usually accommodate the hockey watchers. For the health of the quizmaster, that's probably the right call.

Greg Adams! Greg Adams!: A well-run quiz that is a bit sparse on attendance at the moment. Hands-down the best sports questions in the city, and good prizes.

Trivia For a Good Cause

Do you ever go to a quiz and wish that your money could go to a good cause, like the entry fee of The Cascade Room's quiz did? Does your thirst in this regard remain unslaked? Do you live in the tri-cities area and look with envy upon the sea's bounty of quizzes Vancouver is treated to? Well, your prayers have been answered, if only for one night, as there will be a fundraising quiz next Friday, May 23rd in Coquitlam!

The details: The quiz is being run to raise money to help rebuild the Mossum Creek Hatchery in Port Moody, which was very unfortunately destroyed by fire on Wednesday, December 11th. The quiz night will be held at Centennial Secondary School, which you can find at 570 Poirier Street in Coquitlam. The quiz runs from 7 PM until 9:30, will feature prize draws, and coffee and cookies. Hopeful Hemingways of the world will be disappointed, alas, since there will be no alcohol this night. As it is a fundraiser - you have been paying attention, yes? - the cost is $20 per individual, and the team limit is 6 per team.

I won't be able this event due to the early outbreak of wedding season, but I'll have to make my way to Coquitlam for a trivia night one of these days. All sorts of one-off quizzes seem to be popping up there. Could it be metro Vancouver's hot new quiz destination?

Also, stay tuned for a guest review (!) of a quiz in Victoria (!!!), and an upcoming review of a brand new quiz night!

Mr Brownstone

Head up: Mr Brownstone is no more, but I'm told the quiz will return at the same location once the new owners open up. 

A quick word: The quiz at Mr Brownstone is run by IQ 2000 Trivia, a quiz company started by my friend Mike. If you were really paying attention, you would also remember when I said that he is the very same Mike who writes reviews for us here. I guess you could call this "Full Disclosure." Set you indignity level accordingly, and let's get started.
 

It's not actually so easy

Where: Mr Brownstone Bar and Grill, 2904 Main Street

When: 7pm, every Tuesday. It has been pretty full the last few weeks, so showing up ahead of time would be a smart idea. 

Web Presence: As mentioned the quiz is run by Mike Whitaker, aka IQ 2000 Trivia. Their (The royal Their) facebook page will keep you reminded of upcoming quizzes, drops subtle hints, and will keep you entertained with quiz questions throughout the week.

Team Info: I think there is a team size limit of seven, but it isn't too strictly enforced. There have been no 12 person mega-teams as of yet, so this rule has kind of been a technicality.

Format: Four rounds of 10 questions each. In practise it is more like 2 rounds of 20 questions each, with teams swapping papers to mark at the intermission after round 2. Slideshow accompaniment as well, which is nice.

Prizes: For a quiz with two official sponsors, the prizes are a pretty pedestrian pitcher of beer for the top two teams. Not that a gift pitcher should be looked in the mouth or... wait... Nope. Crossed my wires on that comparison, so let's move on. Last week 4 passes to the Scotiabank Theater went to the winning team, so it looks like the prize pool could be expanding.

Food and drink: I'd never given much thought to the food and drink at Mr. Brownstone before, but now that I've been there I actually like it quite a bit. Their tap selection is smaller than most craft beer bars, but it is well maintained with local beers and several interesting microbrews from the US. The food is good, and Tuesday is cheap taco night. I haven't had them yet, but all reports I've heard are that it is tasty.


Did you used to quiz a little, and then a little wouldn't do it, so you need to quiz more and more? Do you want to participate in a quiz on Tuesday, but can't be bothered to leave Mount Pleasant? Well, worry no longer - the fine people at Mr Brownstone Bar and Grill have heard the cries of the voiceless, and given us a great quiz to those of us who live South of Broadway and East of the Main.

I was curious to see how Mike (We remember him, right? I don't need to say that he writes for us sometimes again? I already did? Great!) would handle the transition from quizzer to host. Not that I doubted his ability for a second, but I was excited to see how he would synthesize his myriad opinions on quiz into an actual, living, breathing, hosted organism. The good news is that after a long and complicated labour, the result is a quiz that combines the best of most worlds. It is a fast paced, funny, and interesting quiz, accompanied by a multimedia presentation which, while a few steps short of spectacle, just may be the best in the town. It is pretty clear from the start that a lot of care went into the making of this quiz. The answers are often accompanied by short film clips, snazzy pictures, Goldie the singing waitress, and total system restarts from the high quality ASUS laptop running the slideshow.

So that's the show, but what about the questions themselves? You can't put lipstick on a pig, or so I'm told (though Google Image Search disagrees). The questions are quite good, traversing a wide range of topics, and spanning the spectrum of difficulty. The standard quiz topics you are used to make their appearances - Geography, Drinks, Sports and History, but you'll also see more questions that don't commonly get touched on - internet culture, video games, fashion, Canadiana and more detailed questions on TV shows/movies. It's a lot of fun to see people flexing their deep knowledge about Adrian Mole, or show that they were paying attention in between games of Street Fighter II, or recalling old Bob Newhart routines. IQ 2000 is not shy at all about throwing legitimately challenging questions in there, which I love. For the most part the quiz is fair and fun, but there are definitely a few questions that will separate the brains from the super-brains. After all, we can't have tiebreakers every week.

Kick him on down the line: A challenging and broad quiz that will be a lot of fun for everyone, from quiz maniacs to people just looking to have some fun.

But they do get a free pitcher of beer!

Woo Hoo! Classic Simpsons Trivia

Where: SD Galleria + Sushi Lounge, 4316 Main Street

When: 7pm, one Monday a month. As with EXP Bar's video game trivia, I'm not entirely certain of the dates. See their website below for the up to date information.

Web Presence: The official website for the whole continent spanning operation is found here, but the Vancouver-specific twitter account will give you better information regarding upcoming events in town.

Team Info: 6 people per team, but they don't enforce this at all - if you can fit around a table, you're golden. Also, this is one of the rare quizzes that has a fee! the first week was $5 per team, but it has since been upped to $5 per player. Officially the steepest entry fee in town, but check out the prizes!

Format: Half quiz, half Simpsons love-in. 3 rounds of 10-20 questions each, with an intermission after each round where you watch an episode of a certain television show.

Who indeed?

Prizes: Check this out! There's a whole boat of prizes to be won here, mostly through raffles. You can win things such as: Simpsons comic books, autographed by the talented Nina Matsumoto! Simpsons guest star action figures! A one-third obsolete Simpsons day calendar! $25 Gift Certificates to SD Galleria! An impressive display of more or less interesting swag.

But... what about the team that wins the whole thing? What about the Gay Robots From Star Wars, as the kings of trivia mountain were so named? Well, they get a reserved table for next week (see below), a pitcher of beer, and their entire team immortalized in a drawing by Bongo comics illustrator James Lloyd. Best prize in town? Very probably. I guess the only question is, who gets to keep it?

Food and drink: The food is sushi and various other Japanese delicacies that you'll recognize if you've ever been out for sushi before. There is also a bonus menu with Simpson's themed dishes (Million Dollar Birthday Fries!A Galaxy of Prawns!). The drinks are ludicrously cheap, from their $3 Ryes to their $4.25 pints of White Bark. They aren't full pints, but that might help you out in the long run, especially at that price.


I've a friend, who shall remain nameless, even though he has a name. He lives in Toronto now, and has been frothing at every single orifice that one may politely froth over the fact that Toronto has a Classic Simpsons trivia night. It has been running there, and in cities throughout the United States for several years, and last month Vancouver was lucky enough to have Woo Hoo! Classic Simpsons Trivia open up a branch on the west coast. It is even polite enough to put on its show on a Monday, when there are relatively few quizzes to compete with.

The next order of business is an administrative warning. Even though it has only been around for 2 months, it is proving immensely popular. There were few seats remaining at 6:30, let alone 7. The place starts filling up around 6, so I suggest your team shows up early in order to guarantee seats for all. You can send someone down to hold a table, but you'll have a tough time reserving more than 5 chairs, and if you do manage to do so, you're probably an ass. But that's enough judgement for now.

The show goes along swimmingly with able hosts Simon and Leonard enthusiastically sharing MC duties before a captive audience. The enjoyment was widespread, although yr corrsp thinks that it was a little like shooting fish in a particularly crowded barrel, but he is a noted curmudgeon. A question I don't want to answer: Would people have less fun if everyone just gathered in a room and watched 3 episodes of the Simpsons without host or quiz? Somehow I doubt it.

That is not to slander the questions - they were fantastic. First off - it was all "Classic" trivia - i.e. seasons 1-9 i.e. the seasons you watched and loved. Also, the questions were all about on-episode content - gags, characters, plots, etc. Nothing about the creators or episodic ephemera, which means there will be no nasty surprises at their definition of trivia. There were few gimmies, and those were hilarious, so no one minded. A delightfully unique aspect to this evening was the post-question reactions. At most quizzes, a question is read, followed by (a) the muffled sounds of furtive discussions, or (b) stunned silence, based on whether or not a team knew what was up. Here the question would be met with either (a) howls of laughter or (b) the same stunned silence, which was excellent.

The difficulty ranged from easy-medium, to fiendishly hard. If you've only seen a few episodes and think you can remember who Homer's boss is, this is probably not for you, although you will still have a lot of laughs. But if you, like your humble author, grew up watching the Simpsons religiously at their 5:30 and 7:30 time slots, these questions will delight and challenge you. I can sense that you may want a brief taster, so I'll leave you with a sample of the fine work of Woo Hoo! Simpsons Trivia:
- True or False: Riding the monorail gives you mono?
- Name any 2 of Homer's lifelong dreams in the first 9 seasons.
- Troy McClure turned down the role of McBain's sidekick in McBain IV: Fatal Discharge to direct and star in what film?

Play "Taking Care Of Business!": Do you enjoy watching the Simpsons? Come on down.

Yours truly

There Is No Easy Mode @ EXP Restaurant + Bar

Where: EXP Restaurant + Bar, 309 W Pender Street

When: 7pm, one Wednesday a Month. I'm not entirely certain which Wednesday, but it usually appears to be the third or fourth. It usually is a full house, so getting here before 7 is a wise choice. 

Web Presence: West Coast Geeks Vs Nerds, the shadowy Wizard-figures behind this quiz, create Facebook events for each week's quiz

Team Info: 5 per team.

Format: There are two 20 question rounds - "Normal Mode" and "Hard Mode". You thought it was just a cute name? Each round is scored separately, with attendant prizes. The scoring operates on a unique combo system - a correct answer is worth 100 points. If you answer the next question correct, that is worth 200 points. The next question, if answered correctly, would then be worth 300 points for your team. It maxes out there, with 4th, 5th and so on being worth 300 points¹. There are bonus questions worth 50 points attached to some questions, and a Bonus Round at the end of each mode, which can be worth up to 600 points.

Prizes: They are legion, and awarded to the top 3 teams in each mode. They range from swag, to videogames, to XP (loyalty points at the restaurant). I'd tell you more, but I've never won one here.

Food and drink: Most of EXP's notoriety comes from the fact it is themed around videogames, not from its food. It is fairly average bar food, but with delightful themed names. The beers are standard downtown beer prices, with specials on such rare and exotic libations such as "Corona." While $3.75 is not a bad price for a bottle, it wasn't quite enough to entice me, and I stuck with a 6 dollar IPA. There is also an extensive mixed drink list, mostly neon concoctions with cute names

Two common gripes I have with pub quizzes in general are that the questions aren't difficult enough² and they rarely ask questions about video games. Aggravatingly enough, There Is No Easy Mode at EXP Restaurant + Bar solved both these problems at the same time. Hosted by an affable gentleman whose name I did not catch, There Is No Easy Mode is a slick presentation, making good use of the impressive multimedia system at EXP, all the while being the harbinger of doom as far as my video game knowledge ego is concerned.

The questions are great - very few gimmes, and almost no "soft" questions. Rounds are themed ("Zero to Hero", for example), and the questions pull from nearly the entire spectrum of electronic gaming - from Apple II and Jaguar to mobile games and the XBox One, they're all here. Also, they don't fool around. Normal Mode is some questions that a casual gamer may know a few, but Hard Mode is as advertised. You don't know the name of the Frog from Super Mario RPG? Or the theme song to Altered Beast? Well, you may not be extending your combos for very long. The competition is sharp. If you finish in the top 3, you deserve it, as there are some Omega-level teams out there - which I suppose you can expect from a quiz with such a relatively narrow scope.

Any complaints? They don't tend to ask much about sports games, which are totally also games too, right? And maybe they could add a third round, just because we're all having so much fun with the first two. But in general, I think they handle their content with skill and a keen knowledge of their audience. If you like video games, you should come out and enjoy the show, and try and win some swag. If you're reading this, wizened overlords who run WCGvN, keep up the good work. this night's a gem. But ask more questions about MVP Baseball 05, which is a masterpiece.

Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A: If you love video games, you should come to one of these. And then you should realise you like pub quizzes and use your brains at other ones. If you like pub quiz but not video games, then I think this could be a rough night for you.

Beware

---

1 Although I will respectfully point out that most fighting games actually DECREASE the damage you do as the combo goes on, but I'm sure they know that, based on my performances at this quiz.
2 OK, let's see if I can avoid opening a can of worms that will make me sound narcissistic: I'm not saying I know all the answers or even most of them, but I would absolutely love it if more places asked tough questions, instead of (pardon the impending french) stupid shit like what a group of kittens (adorable) or narwhals (pointy) or crows (annoying) is called, or what X-phobia is or whether or not some completely absurd thing is true or false (if it sounds implausible, it is probably true). Surely there is a market for a quiz that will bust us down a notch, right? Okay, I'm done.

Falconetti's Smarty Pints Trivia

THE QUIZ AT FALCONETTI'S IS NO MORE. TO REMINISCE ABOUT HAPPIER QUIZ TIMES, CATCH SMARTY PINTS TRIVIA AT THE FIVE POINT ON MAIN STREET, WEDNESDAYS AT 8.

Where: Falconetti's East Side Grill, 1812 Commercial Drive

When: 8pm every Tuesday

Web Presence:  The Falconetti's facebook page posts reminders about the quiz, albeit somewhat irregularly

Team Info: However many you can fit at your table

Format: About 40 questions plus a name that tune, multiple choice, current events, and a picture round. At halftime all scores are wiped out, so you get a first half winner and a second half winner, but no overall winner

Prizes: Choice of shots or pitcher for top three teams in first and second half, as well as for particularly funny joke answers.

Food and drink: Falconetti's is famed for their tantalizing menu of gourmet sausages; meanwhile, the veg-heads will enjoy the creative poutines on offer.


Falconetti's pub quiz takes place every Tuesday at 8pm, downstairs. Specificity is important in this case because if you go upstairs at the same time, there's stand-up comedy, and if you go on the wrong day, you may find yourself, variously, at either a karaoke night, a Walking Dead screening party, a DJ set, a live rock-country performance, or even a burlesque show.

Appropriately, Falconetti's quiz is the venue in microcosm: a quirky mashup of sundry cultural elements with the common thread throughout being a simple dedication to fun, in all its various forms. And in this regard, Falconetti's is a success.

Tandem emcees Greg and Ryan run the show here and share the hosting and question-writing duties between them. The hosting is good: the two work a kind of deadpan, affectedly-listless Brian-Posehn-slash-mumblecore-cinema angle which may not play to all tastes, but I found entertaining.

The question writing is better: the two have a knack for writing questions that are, as mentioned above, a lot of fun. My team had a great time trying to puzzle out what year Alex Trebek shaved his trademark mustache or what Ontario city was recently anointed Canada's serial killer capital (who'd've thought it was sleepy little college town London? It's always the quiet ones you have to watch out for.) The name that tune round, an eclectic mix of shameless dance-in-your-seat jams ripped from Napoleon Dynamite's iPod, was equally enjoyable, in spite of a minor ID3 snafu which misidentified the artists -- and artists they are -- behind "Whoomp! There It Is."

Between questions, Falconetti's brawny sound system blasts yet more music at you, again, hewing closely to the establishment's holy gospel of party ye all the time. Fun, yes, but so loud as to make intra-team discussion somewhat difficult. Let's by no means lose the music -- that would be nothing less than apostasy -- instead, just ratchet it down from 11 to 10.

(On that note, stick around after the quiz for an outstanding '80s hair metal set by DJ Thunderjunk, a man who it must be said is no less than a connoisseur of the genre, as attested by him playing a Ratt song that wasn't "Round and Round.")

Bottom line, Falconetti's is a lot of fun. Definitely worth a check out.

Beware

The Bottleneck Trivia Night

Where: The Bottleneck, 870 Granville Street, right beneath the Commodore

When: 8pm, Wednesdays. You probably don't need a reservation.

Web Presence: This facebook event will keep you up to date.  Confusingly enough, they just keep changing the date for the event instead of setting up a facebook group or page or whatever.

Team Info: The team limit is 8, but they are kind of lax on enforcing it.

Format: 2 Rounds, 15 questions each. No dedicated picture or music round, but those questions do pop up.

Prizes: Top prize is an almost unfathomably good 4 tickets to a show of your choice at The Commodore - apparently including shows that are sold out at the box office. Some quick math: 4 tickets to see Montreal's own Chromeo will set you back $199, including the ridiculous 50 dollars in extra fees. Right of the bat, this puts The Bottleneck's top prize into some pretty rarefied air. Second place is 2 tickets, and third is 0 show tickets. I think it was "merely" a free pitcher of beer.

Food and Drink: $3 beer special (I think it was 1516 or similar). One of our party got some food, and it looked pretty tasty.


The Bottleneck is one of those places that sprung up in the last year while I was away - except that it has been there for more than 2 years. I guess I've never really paid much attention to what happens on that stretch of Granville. Contrary to my expectations, the bar itself as quite pleasant, appropriately hip without seeming like it was putting on airs. Talking Heads posters? Check. Moon, starring Sam Rockwell, screening in the background? Check. A somewhat idiosyncratic collection of Granville bar stars, groups of college kids, and British Columbia Supreme Court Justices (really!)? Check. The Justices did not stick around for the quiz, alas.

The quiz is a short one, and goes by fairly quickly. The night is ably hosted by Matthew Orr, self-proclaimed trivia wizard, who also writes the questions himself. I prefer it when the host crafts their own questions. Not that larger companies don't write good quizzes, but the personal touches are nice. Of course, you get the bad alongside the good there, but it does make it easier to give them shit if there's anything you don't like. Not that you should, it's uncouth.

The questions were solid, although a large number verged on the "You're probably guessing this one" side. While I won't dispute that the current age of Charlize Theron is indeed a trivial fact, it isn't much fun to try and come up with it at a quiz night. There were quite a few 'Name the Year' questions, which were a little bit more fun to tackle. There was also quite a bit of Vancouver/BC/Canadiana. I had a blast trying to remember my Steve Francis facts (The Franchise!) as well as who was Premier in February, 2011, but people from out of town will find this tough. If you're a local, you'll probably have a lot of fun with these questions. Visiting from the United States/Kingdom? You might find a respectable percentage of the questions functionally impossible.


At the end of the night, top honours went to a team with 21 out of 30, a good 7 points clear of your correspondents. Difficult and cleverly crafted questions second guessed us, crossed us over, and left us with broken ankles. There is room for the quiz to grow, so come on down and take a shot at winning the best prizes a Vancouver Pub Quiz has to offer.

If you just want the short version, it was a good quiz with even better prizes.

Trivia Night At Malone's

Looks like the Malone's quiz is no more. Requiescat in pace, The quiz at Malone's.

Where: Malone's, 608 West Pender Street 

When: 8pm, Tuesdays. Reservations neither required nor needed. 

Web Presence: The events section of their website confirms the dates of the quiz, if you're confused. 

Team Info: The team limit is 8, and some of the tables seem large enough to support such. 

Format: 8 Rounds and a bonus round, just like that at The Manchester. You can also pull up to 5 bonus points for drawing a picture, so bring someone who can draw, I guess. 

Prizes: $25 gift certificate to Malone's, which can't be used until the next week. While a good plan to get people coming back, it might not do much for someone who's just dropping in for a week. 

Food and Drink: Meh. It won't kill you, but neither will it thrill you. They do have drink specials for trivia night - A Steamworks Pilsner for $4.13. You could do a lot worse than that. 

Freshly arrived from vacation, and having no duties relating to employment at all, we decided to spend our Tuesday night catching up with friends, all the while checking out a new pub quiz. I've known about Malone's for awhile, but due to a decent schedule, I never really got around to checking it out. 

The crowd was thin compared to most other quiz nights, with only about 5 tables competing. I think the quizzers were outnumbered by non-quizzers, which was a first for me to see at a quiz in Vancouver. This could be a result of a slow night, a quiz that hasn't quite gained enough traction yet or maybe since Malone's is attached to The Cambie Hostel, and as such functions as a impromptu meeting place/pre-game/common room for travellers, most of whom aren't hanging out at a hostel for pub quiz. The sound system only seemed to work on one side of the bar, and even then it was pretty fuzzy and tough to hear over the ambient music (no, not like Brian Eno). It appears to be a quiz tolerated but perhaps not encouraged by the management, based on the atmosphere. 

The questions themselves were pretty good. A decent mix of pop culture and more eggheaded stuff. They had a pretty fun photo round were you provided silhouettes of fictional characters and you had to identify them. Art, the quizmaster, erred on the side of sanity and accepted "Tom Hanks and Wilson," based (on can infer) on the assumption that the name Chuck Noland never stuck in anyone's head. Everything followed a similar flow to that of the Manchester (I think they are both run by Nice Guys Trivia, who specialize in Donnolly pubs, but I'm not exactly sure), but the music round was orders of magnitude harder. Instead of getting a point for knowing that a song was either done by Guns N Roses, OR that it was titled "Sweet Child 'O Mine", the quiz was instead fastidiously awarding half points for knowing that the song was "Manic Monday," and that the band was Reliant K. While I'm not a fan of arbitrarily difficult questions - I agree with Mike re: The Cove's facebook only questions - I do like deep knowledge questions like that where you have to earn your points. If I was a Reliant K fan, I'd have been very happy to get that. 

Another plus for this quiz is that it goes fast, and that there are a lot of questions. I approve of a "No fucking around" approach to a quiz. It will save us all time in the long run, and we've got a finite supply of that. There's a lot of questions, and you don't manage to feel rushed, or bored due to extensive downtime. The balance is deftly struck. 

The food is borderline average bar stuff, but the drink specials are decent. One suspects they don't have your proper 20oz pints per CAMRA standards, but that's a rare bird indeed.

In conclusion, this felt like a good quiz run in a decent locale that was more or less indifferent to its existence. The amiable and speedy quizmaster runs a tight ship, and I was happily surprised to have as good a time as I did. In a head to head with Relish, I don't think it has quite the atmosphere yet, but the questions were solid, in one reviewer's opinion. We were also told that they will be running the equivalent of a "Quiz of Champions" sometime in the future. I don't have the information on that yet, but one can assume the prizes will be larger, and the competition fiercer. We'll make sure to keep you posted.

The Cove, Redux

Where: The Cove, 3681 West 4th

When: 8pm every Monday

Web Presence:  The facebook group has quiz info and flat out gives away three answers each week, which you'll want to take note of because the corresponding questions are unbelievably difficult.

Registration Fee: Nobody really does these anymore, so from here on assume a quiz is free unless we tell you otherwise

Team Info: No de jure team limit, but the compactness of the venue and corresponding smallness of the furniture will make it tough to get more than six around a single table

Format: Three rounds of 15 questions each

Prizes: Free shots given out for funny answers or creative team names, as adjudged by the host.

No, Hassan, it's poker chips now

The new hosting regime also carries on the "magic keys" prize format, with numbered poker chips substituted for the previous macguffins. After each round, the first, second, and third place teams receive three, two, or one chips, respectively, and the total points winner after all three rounds gets a free pitcher and eight chips. The host then draws a random number, and whichever team holds the chip with that number wins their choice of grand prize: a $50 Cove gift certificate, or the contents of a mystery box.



Food and Drink: Won't thrill you. I also tried a Blood Alley beer which I didn't care for in the least.

This blog reviewed The Cove back in 2012; since then, however, the old Kits watering hole has gone through two changes of hosting duties, so we thought it prudent to give it another go -- especially since Cascade's What the #!*@?'s recent retirement has left a great void on the Monday night quiz calendar.

Reading back over that review, it seems things under the new stewardship are substantially the same as they were then, but there seem to have been a few changes, mostly for the better.

I never tried the Cove quiz under the previous host, but the new emcee tends the helm well. Chris writes the questions himself and his tastes incline somewhat to the geeky; last night we got a point last night for knowing that Peppy's famous exhortation in Star Fox 64 was "Do a barrel roll!" and I'm sure future weeks will have similar such content in store.

As opposed to the previous two freelancers, Chris is an in-house host, doubling as Cove's marketing manager, one especially pleasant consequence of which is that he can give out free drinks essentially whenever he pleases, which is quite often. Come up with a witty joke answer and you've got a very good chance of winning your table a round of shots. And on the subject of complimentary spirits, the night I was there, the quiz was apparently sponsored by Canadian Club who had brought in a pair of Cactus-Club-waitress-types to dole out Dixie-cup-sized samples of their whisky.

As for my nitpicky critique, I'll say this: if you want to hint an answer on facebook, that's OK; give the answer outright, if you must; but something's wrong when the question is so impossible that you could only get it right from being given the answer. For example, who played "Stock Boy" in Home Alone? His subsequent appearance in 1997's Picture Perfect notwithstanding, I'd place Jim Ryan well outside the canon of suitable quiz answers. This goes a bit beyond the pale of rewarding those who follow your social media to additionally punish those who don't. (I also challenge the figure of two-hundred-something total deaths in the Game of Thrones series so far. The Battle on the Blackwater alone claimed several thousand casualties! Did we mean named characters? Please specify next time!)

The more I think about it, the more I like the magic keys prize format. While elite teams are still rewarded for their knowledge, lesser contenders can still compete and have a good chance of taking home the big prize. No more juggernauts running wild week after week. Call it enforced egalitarianism, but this seems like an idea too good to stay confined to one venue -- don't be surprised if every quiz in town is giving out poker chips, keys, ping pong balls, or buttons before long.

Our last reviewer had it about right the last time. This is a strong quiz with a good host, a fun mechanic for giving away the big prize (it was a full-size metal toboggan this week!), and the steady flow of free shots and pitchers are a pleasing addition.

Cascade's What the #!*@? Quiz -- a mainstay of the Vancouver quizzing scene -- coming to an end

Sad tidings indeed from Main Street. Karen, the longtime quizmeister of the Cascade Room, has announced that effective next month, that establishment's venerable quiz will be no more--at least as a regularly-scheduled event. From their official facebook page:

Now for those of you who were not with us last night, an announcement! After more than 5 1/2 years, 165 quizzes and close to $30,000 raised for more than 70 charities, our What the #!*@? Quiz night is coming to an end. Our last quiz will be Monday, November 25th…please come and join us for a fond farewell…I've enjoyed almost every single second of it

I will continue with some special event Quiz Nights as well as Quiz Nights on request so keep in touch! This is not "goodbye"…it's "most likely see you soon". So I'll expect to see lots of familiar faces on the 25th xo k

For those who don't know, Cascade is one of Vancouver's longest-running and greatest pub quizzes. Many Vancouverites first caught the pub trivia bug there, including, I am sure, at least a few individuals who now run quizzes of their own. Yet none of them have ever duplicated the sheer quizzing pleasure of Cascade, which was probably best encapsulated in their famous "what's-in-the-shot" rounds, the likes of which we may never see again.

The continued success of Cascade owes everything to Karen's extraordinary commitment to her craft. Each week (and later, fortnightly, and eventually monthly) she would hammer out a full set of questions, the freshness of which was attested by the habitual inquisitions on the news of the day and other happenings of only a few days' vintage. Her annual Quiz of Champions, an invitational grand prix featuring only winning teams of the past year was yet another (hugely successful) expression of the same--for participants it was nothing less than the Wimbledon of Vancouver quizzery.

True to the progressive ethos of Mount Pleasant, 100 percent of proceeds from the quiz went to a local charity of the players' choosing, a fact which makes abundantly clear that the undertaking was, at bottom, a labour of love and not a mercenary ploy to pump up Tuesday night patronage (though that it certainly did).

After more than a half-decade of unflagging quality, the departure of What the #!*@? is to be sorely lamented. As mentioned above, Cascade's final regular quiz takes place November 25 and is sure to be a night to remember.

Moose's Down Under Trivia

Where: Moose's Down Under, Basement, 830 Pender St. Look for a set of stairs down from street level.

When: 7:00pm Wednesdays. Reservations are required as it fills to capacity

Web presence: Mentions on the restaurant's Facebook page, but no dedicated site

Registration fee: None!

Imagine eating this.

Team info: Strict limit of six to a team

Prizes: The winners receive their choice of Moose's branded swag, or the option to try for a cash jackpot on an ultra-tough final question. 

Format: Four rounds of 10 questions each, with activities between rounds to keep up the energy level. 

Food and drink: is the culinary equivalent of Australian rock.

Britain is usually hailed as the holy land of pub quizzes, but its seems that Australia is no less skilled in the quizzing arts than their former colonial overlords. For proof of this one need look no further than Moose's Down Under, perhaps Vancouver's most thoroughly Australian establishment, whose weekly trivia is also one of the city's most enjoyable.

Held Wednesdays in an ancient lair beneath Pender Street, Moose's quiz packs the catacombs with a suitably callithumpian crowd. So packed is the venue, in fact, that reservations are mandatory; don't make one, don't play.

I recommend you do. For the unbeatable entry fee of zero dollars, you get not only forty big beefy questions, but three intermezzo mini-games, and a customized team nameplate (you make it yourself with house-provided washable markers and 5-by-7 index card).

During my visit, hosting duties went to understudy Rhona, who delivered plenty of energy and humour in the course of what must be one of the greatest all-time understudy fill-ins since Christine Daaé took over for Carlotta at Opéra Garnier. I can't speak to hosting abilities of the usual host, but poor Moose's may have a Luongo-Schneider dilemma on their hands in the near future.

On the subject of music, Moose's forgoes the customary name-that-tune round in favor a straight-ticket of meat-and-potatoes general knowledge questions, which are well conceived, researched, and edited (with one unfortunate exception during my visit; more on that later). They also include two unique house rules that ramp up the excitement levels: first, a majority vote of teams adds four multiple choice options to any question, which boosts scores and encourages comebacks; and second, the winning team has an option to give up their prize for a crack at a cash jackpot on a super-stumper. White knuckle stuff to be sure.

Between rounds, patrons will also enjoy mini-events such as "Porn Star or Pro Wrestler," skittle bowling, and paper airplane contests; the winning team is awarded two extra points and the their choice of a free pitcher or round of shots. This might be a good point to reiterate: there are no entry fees! If the quiz is any indication, Australia must have really bucked that global recession.

Where Moose's falls down a little is speed. The host takes on the burdensome task of marking answer sheets between rounds, which enables a running scoreline but slows things down. As well, the popularity of the quiz creates a snarl in the kitchen that means about half an hour between ordering and food on table. But this is easily mitigated if you check out the menu beforehand and order when you sit down.

Things also went a bit pear-shaped in the final round, which asked players to rank 10 of the 14 largest cities in the world, in order. This proved to be punishingly difficult, with all teams present scoring a collective two points. To her credit, the hostess had the sangfroid to wring some humour out of the fiasco and got a good round of laughs for it.

If you can take transit or otherwise avoid parking, do it. Metered spots around Pender Street go for a usurious $5 per hour, for a total of $15 to park for the duration of the quiz. I found a nearby lot and did a little better, paying $6.50 for overnight, but I sure won't do it again.

So? There is no shortage of quizzes to be found on Wednesday nights, but this one should be your first choice. Solid questions, plenty of entertainment, and a hot crowd hit a triple whammy of excellence that is sure to leave you  thunderstruck.

Samesun Trivia

Where: Samesun Hostel, 1018 Granville Street

When: 9:00pm start time every Thursday. Be careful with parking; a lot of nearby spots become no-stopping taxi zones after 10pm, at which point you will still be quizzing and your car will be towed. 

Web presence: A facebook group with quiz info and a preview of each week's "web question."

Registration fee: Free

Prizes: Each member of the winning team gets two free drink tickets, though they can't be redeemed the same night

Format: Five rounds of 10 questions with no intermission

Food and drink: Fries, burgers, quesadillas, and nachos at prices to fit the backpacker's budget

If your university put on an end-of-semester open air rock concert, you’re already most of the way to experiencing the Samesun quiz: a lopsided and disoriented event packed to the gills with excitable undergrads, best (only?) enjoyed with liberal volumes of alcohol, offering a decent chance of a hookup, and, decidedly, being a less than a cerebral undertaking.

The Samesun Hostel on the Granville strip is the setting for this quiz, which runs every Thursday at 9pm. Given that it takes place in the bar of one of the city’s more popular youth hostels, the crowd is a cosmopolitan melange of young and roisterous backpackers. One benefit of this venue is that even if you can’t find friends to go with you, you can drop in solo and free agent yourself to a table of strangers.

Nevertheless, this one is not for the competitive quizzer. Thunderdome rules apply at all times, permitting oversized teams to compete unpenalized--and often win--and smartphone use to run rampant. The tiebreaker, should two or more teams come in with equal points, is, I kid you not, a boat race. The questions are generally weak, vacillating between bafflingly ambiguous and drop-dead easy. (That said, the waitresses make a circuit of the tables after the first round and will give you a “hint” on one question of your choosing.)

Are there brainy questions? Sure, there are some, though not often, and they have a nasty habit of self-destructing courtesy of the house. One asked what was banned in Mississippi in 1907 and not legalized until 1966. This is pretty good. I myself was mulling several options: interracial marriage and integrated education both, more or less, fit the timeline and locale; so does teaching evolution. Others spring to mind as well. It was here, unfortunately, that the emcee saw fit to neuter the question and declare to the roomful of tippling millennials, “IT’S SOMETHING WE’RE ALL DOING HERE RIGHT NOW.” Oh, well, thanks--points all around then.

That was in round one. The remainder was escalating pandemonium. In round two, the name-that-tune round, six of the ten song clips included the vocalist singing the title of the song. Six. Round three, the “memory round,” featured a raft of questions on an out-of-sync and nigh-inaudible YouTube clip. Round four, the picture round, asked players to identify famous cinematic animals; again, points all around for the giant ape swatting at biplanes from atop the Empire State Building or the extreme close up of the gaping maw of an especially angry looking great white shark.

Rounding things out was the “turbo round,” a ten-pack of true-false questions of doubtful veracity. To give an example: imagine our joy, having three genuine Frenchmen on the team, to be asked whether the average French citizen eats 25 kilograms of snails per year; only a brief tête-à-tête was necessary for them to return an emphatic and unanimous non. Imagine then our surprise to learn that we were “wrong.”

On top of all this, the production is a bit of a mess. The whole thing runs at a sluggish pace, in particular the marking, with about 30 minutes between handing in your answer sheet and the announcing of the scores. Expect to be done no sooner than 11pm, which can be a bit daunting for those with work the next day. The emcee is generally competent, but don’t expect much in the way of amusing badinage or crowd interaction; reading questions aloud is the order of the evening, and even on this there are some stumbles with mispronunciations.

Conclusion: Pub quiz puritans, steer well clear. Head instead to Darby’s quiz, which takes place the same night and is the better product by some distance.

Still, Samesun may have a certain appeal as the head-banging Daytona Beach spring break of the Vancouver quiz scene, and if you can get past the notion that you will probably lose to a visiting cohort of Arizona State sophomores, the cheap drinks and anarchic atmosphere could make for an enjoyable evening.

In fact, the timing makes possible a kind of Thursday night pub quiz golden mile, that might go as follows:

(1) Start at Darby’s at 7pm. For best effect win this quiz and power down your victory pitcher. This usually finishes up about 9pm, at which point...

(2) Pile in a taxi and floor it to Samesun, which begins at 9pm. (If possible, have a confederate be there in advance to snag a table).

(3) Play this one for fun and have lots of drinks.

(4) Ooze out of Samesun around 11pm towards any nearby watering hole to spend the remainder of the evening.

Friday Quiz at the Park at English Bay

Note: the usual blogger is holidaying in Europe. I'm filling in in his absence. So let's kick off with a review of a relative newcomer in the Vancouver quiz scene.

Where: The Park at English Bay, 1755 Davie Street

When: The last Friday of the month, 9:00pm start time, which works out well as it means you beat most of the Davie Street Friday night crowd, and need only pay for an hour at metered spots (of which there should be plenty).

Web presence: A facebook group with quiz info  

Registration fee: $3 per team member—though this is waived for repeat winners (see below)

Prizes: $100 gift certificate to Zulu Records, and a winner’s token (again, see below)

Format: Eight rounds of 5 questions with halftime break after round four

Food and drink: Usual pub fare. Note for vegetarians: the veggie burger is, nominally, the only veg entre on the menu. It’s juicy, plump, and literally oozing with flavor—in other words, a little too good to be vegetarian. Proceed at your own risk.

Downtown’s trendy Davie Village is the setting for one of Vancouver’s newest pub quizzes, the FRIDAY QUIZ at the Park at English Bay. Despite the name, the quiz is actually a once-monthly event (held the last Friday of the month) at the Best Western Sands’ in-house gastropub. The venue is spacious and nicely appointed, though the spatial layout leaves something to be desired, as some tables have no line-of-sight to the quizmaster.

On that note, the evening is expertly emceed by trans-Atlantic transplant Benji Duke. The sideburned Englander boasts over 600 quizzes worth of hosting experience, which is evident in his entertaining stage banter. The production also benefits from the use of a backing soundtrack of quiz-appropriate tunes such as the theme from Countdown and that BBC News music.

As to the quiz itself, the pacing is good and the questions are fun, original, and, like the Cayman Islands, not too taxing. This brings up the FRIDAY QUIZ’s only possible blemish, which one might characterize as the tendency towards “soft” questions. “Soft” here serves double duty, meaning, at various points, either dead easy or not-quite-factual-enough for quiz material.

Of the first kind, there are a few too many questions of the head-slapping, can’t-miss variety, as well as those that can be pretty effectively “meta-gamed” by canny teams. For example, one question asked “what would kill you first: no sleep or no food and water?” and the answer must be sleep because it’s totally counter-intuitive but just crazy enough to be true. The sleep question also illustrates the second type of “soft” question, as it calls upon chain email folk wisdom (see also: a duck’s quack doesn’t echo, and no one knows why or you eat nine spiders in your sleep every year), rather than hard facts, which is probably best avoided when real prizes are on the line.

Paired with an abundance of multiple choice and true-false questions, the upshot of this pattern is a very easy quiz and not much opportunity for anyone to pull away from the pack. When I attended, only five points separated first from last at halftime in a field of a dozen or so teams, and no team scored lower than 15 out of a possible 20. Of course, this improves the chances that any team, from the half-interested barflies and sloshy cougars to the overeducated hipsters, can win any given night, which can hardly be a bad thing.

Speaking of the winning team, FRIDAY QUIZ’s $100 Zulu Records gift card is, on its own, a strong candidate for the richest prize in all of Vancouver quizdom. On top of that, the winning team also receives a nickel-sized pin as a token of their victory; trade in six of them, and your team is exempted from registration fees—for life.

The top and bottom of it: The FRIDAY QUIZ will make a fine addition to any Vancouver trivia fancier’s quiz calendar, thanks to its cool presentation and glittering cache of prizes. It skews a bit on the easy side, but all the better as a warm up for a Friday night out downtown.