Nobody Suspects A Thing

Canada Day is fast approaching, and what better way to celebrate than with a quiz? I suppose I can think of few, but they all involve extenuating circumstances, so let's just leave those off the table for now. So, as a gift to you, my fellow Canadian residents and transients, I present with two new quizzes! Or rather, two quizzes heretofore unknown to me. Although I am octopus-like in some respects, I can assure that I am a completely normal human being, and thus cannot be everywhere at once. Anyhow.

Vancouver Trivia Party (is now/has been for some time) running two weekly pub quizzes. You'll find one on Tuesdays at The Academic in Kits, and the other on Wednesdays, at the Blarney Stone in the loins of Gastown. Both quizzes advertise a 7:30 start time. I haven't had the chance to attend either yet, but given the name and the locale, it sounds like it will be a riotous occasion indeed.

Will your local quiz be running on Canada Day? Beats me! You may want to check ahead of time just to be sure though. I can tell you for certain that my local Tuesday quiz at Mr Brownstone will not be running Canada Day. If you fear you may suffer from IQ2000 trivia withdrawal, fear not, as Mr IQ2000 will be running a special one-off quiz at Rowan's Roof, in Kitsilano.

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!

New Quiz Announcement(s)

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It is always fun to be able to report on a new pub quiz coming out, and today I get to do it twice.

First off, the second annual North Shore Writers Festival literary trivia quiz is coming up next month on Friday, April 11 from 8:30-10 pm at the North Vancouver City Library (14th and Lonsdale). As someone who likes to look at words on pages, I'm quite excited. I hope to see you there. As an added bonus, it is hosted by none other than CBC's own Grant Lawrence.

Next up, is even better news - a new weekly pub quiz is springing up at Mr Brownstone Bar and Grill on Main Street. The first edition will run Tuesday, April 14th at 7pm, and I'm going to guess that it'll run onTuesdays after that. Good news, since the Mount Pleasant has been without a weekly quiz for a while, and better news, since Vancouver Pub Quiz's own Mike will be running the show! I promise I won't let him write the review for this one. He knows his stuff, and I expect it to be a fun time - I plan to be there.

The only possible downside, is that this new quiz only adds to the embarrassment of quizzes on Tuesday nights - baby makes 9. Hopefully the next few to pop up decide that Monday is also a perfectly good night for a quiz. We've only got 3, making our most quiz-deprived night of the week.

And if you've read this far, you may as well keep reading - the QuizUp app for Android was released a few days ago, and if you like trivia and haven't tried it yet, it's a lot of fun. If you want to play a game, hit me up - my user name is Vancouverpubquiz, appropriately enough. It is an excellent <strike>time waster</strike> study tool.

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

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.

Relish Pub Tuesday Trivia

Where: Relish GastroPub & Bar, 888 Nelson Street

When: 7:30pm every Tuesday

Web presence: A dedicated page on the bar's website

Registration fee: By donation, suggested fee being a very modest $5 per team. Since proceeds go to charity, I suggest you dig a little deeper, especially since you're going to save some money on drinks (see below).

Team info: Five to a team; each additional player incurs a one point penalty per round. 

Prizes: A princely cache of prizes awaits the top three teams: bronze is worth a round of Fireball shots, runner-up earns a pitcher of Whistler Brewing Company suds, and winners take a pitcher plus a $50 gift certificate.

Format: Three question rounds of ten questions apiece, and two name-that-tune rounds with five songs each. There was a picture round as well, but was not identified as such so I'm not sure if it is a regular feature.

Food and drink: is a tale of two cities. As for food, Relish puts forth a cautious menu that will certainly not offend, but probably not excite. Instead, the drinks are the main attraction, with 18-ounce pints of Whisky Jack Ale to be had for only $3. 

If you love "upscale-casual" dining, dim ambient lighting, decor that aspires to the aesthetic of a night club, and the word "gastropub," you could hardly do better than Vancouver. Over the course of the last 10 years, our fair city seems to have been surreptitiously colonized--Pod-Peopled, if you will--by establishments of this kind, and nowhere more so than the downtown core. (Indeed, a certain Group which we will not mortify by citing here has made these sorts of restaurants their very stock-in-trade.)

Relish ticks a lot of the boxes above, but, to their great credit, their quiz is anything but samey. In fact, Tuesday Trivia must be given serious consideration as one of the best quizzes in Vancouver.

Ultimately the strength of a quiz rests on the quality of the questions, and in this regard Tuesday Trivia is second to none. From start to finish, players are treated to a battery of questions that are thought provoking, original, and inventive. As an example, I might mention one of the tougher ones, which asked "What European language's only contribution to English is the word 'sauna'?" There's a lot to like about this question, not least of all being that it gives knowledgeable players a lot of surface area to attack: linguistically, one would be right in surmising that since it only gives one word to English, it might be a very isolated language; and anthropologically, one would likewise be on the right track in guessing that the speakers particularly enjoy hanging out in steam rooms.

That would indeed be a good sample of the quality of the questions. Even better would be the first round opener, which simply asked "What direction does the Nile River flow?" Yes, of course, it's easy; openers are supposed to be. What I like about it is that even though it is a "giveaway," it is composed so that it still requires a little cognition from the players. Did you really know that the Nile flows North, or did you have to, momentarily, consider its directionality and the positioning of it relative to its receiving body of water (and for that matter, what that receiving body of water is)? By comparison, a lesser quiz might have opted for analytic rather than synthetic thinking, and gotten about the same fraction of correct answers by asking what country the Great Pyramids are in. The difference would be that the Nile question gets players thinking and discussing--in other words, engaging--and the Pyramids question does not.

I could go on, but there are other successes to mention. The tempo between questions, between rounds, and during final score tallying, is right on (you'll be done by 10pm, yet things never feel rushed); the overall difficulty is perfectly calibrated to challenge skill levels from dilettante to genius; and $3 pints speak for themselves.

Evidently they speak to a lot of people, because Relish was already near capacity when I arrived at 7:15 and it was only because a teammate had been there at 5:00pm that I was able to get a seat. Make a reservation or get there extra early lest you risk missing out.

Pressed for a criticism, I would have to concede that the quizmaster, Sean, does a fine job of hosting but doesn't radiate quite the same level of personality as do Eric and Shaun at ANZA or Benji at The Park. That that's the unkindest thing I can say about Relish should say something about how excellent this quiz is.

Closing argument: An unreserved recommendation. Relish's Tuesday Trivia is a sparkling example of quizzing done right. Make way on your calendars for this one.

The Manchester

So it appears the Manchester has a new host and format these days. Take this review with a grain of salt, and I'll try and have an updated review up soon - ed.

Where: The Manchester Public Eatery, 1941 W Broadway

When: 8PM Tuesday, Weekly

Web Presence: None that I can find

Registration Fee: This one's free

Team Info: 8 human beings per squad

Prizes: Top team at the halfway point gets a pitcher of beer, and the winners get a 50 dollar gift certificate. They run 12 week long 'leagues,'  and the highest cumulative score gets $500.

Format: Pretty similar to the Pub Stumpers quizzes: 8 rounds, separated into 2 parts. The first part consists of an image, then some general knowledge, then a music round, then True False. Part 2 is GK, more music, GK, and then some 'Bonus' questions.

Food and Drink: Pub food, nothing special. Likewise with the beers.

As previously mentioned, this quiz is similar to the quiz run by Pubstumpers at Donnelly establishments - or at least the way they were run over year and a half ago, since I haven't been to one in some time. The questions are average trivia fare. Nothing significantly harder than average, and a few things a bit easier. The difficulty is raised a bit on the bonus round, and they throw out some tough ones. At least they don't do the horrible "Did you read today's Province?" round.

The music round strikes me as generous, since you get the point if you can name the artist OR the song. I'm a little trained to it being a point for each, I guess.

The atmosphere is nice, the place is pretty cavernous and was not particularly full when I was there - there were probably 10 teams playing, but this place could hold about twice that easily. TVs ring the walls, so chances are that if you are looking for a game to watch, it will be on. I'm not sure what their Canucks game protocol is. If I had to wager, I'd say it falls in favour of the boys in blue. The quiz is marked by the two presenters, and they do an efficient job of it. The whole quiz took a little under two hours, breaks and announcing winners included.

In the end? It is very similar to a quiz at a Donnelly bar, but in a more enjoyable setting.

The Cheshire Cheese

Where: The Cheshire Cheese Inn. Located at 4585 Dunbar Street

When: 8PM Tuesday, Weekly

Web Presence:  None for the quiz itself.

Registration Fee: Nope

Team Info: No team size limit that I could see.But then again, I didn't see any 9 person megateams either, so maybe there is an enforced limit that everyone already knew about and therefore no one even bothered to say it, as it was a deeply ingrained cultural thing.

Prizes: Distributed "key" style, except that instead of keys, you get slices of cheese at the end of each round (3 to 1st for the round, 2 for 2nd, 1 for 3rd). At the end, they draw the slice of cheese, and the winner gets a gift card, redeemable on some other night.

Format: 3 Rounds, 12 questions per round.There was one bonus "lightning round" where you could win extra "slices" of "cheese."

Food and Drink: Pub food, doing their best to keep the English tradition alive. I've never eaten here, so I can't comment beyond what it looked like.

This quiz is all the way out in the barren wastelands near Dunbar and 30th, which really isn't that hard to get to, but also isn't near much of note. You can also take this review with a grain of salt, because I've only been here once. The place is a nice community pub, and seemed to be full of regular patrons. The crowd was significantly older than you'd find at most of the other quiz nights, which suits the area it is located in just fine.

Each round is scored separately, and there is no announcement of which team won it all at the end, but the top scoring teams in each round are always called out. The questions? Well, to put it cordially, they seemed primed to keep everyone within a reasonable score tolerance of one another. There were a lot of incredibly easy non-questions (Detective with a pipe and deerstalker! Tallest mountain on Earth! Your name!), mixed in with multiple choice and true/false questions. There were a lot of questions that fell into the standard trivia categories, like definitions of funny sounding words, and word roots. The bonus round - Name the 7 Big 4 sports teams named after cats - was a lot of fun, though. The quiz finished promptly at around 10 PM.

Yet again, the quizmaster insists on marking all the quizzes himself. Ugh.

The Coles Notes? Fun enough, fairly quick, friendly atmosphere. But pretty easy. If you want a quiz where you are rewarded for knowing tough things as opposed to being punished for missing easy things, this may not be the quiz for you.