The Black Bull, Peterlee is a chain of the Sizzling range of pubs so its mainly about the food. Its changed hands over the years but seems to be going steady in its current guise. No where inside the pub though, outside or anywhere does it advertise the quiz! In fact the website states quiz night is Monday and Tuesday when in actual fact only after phoning do you find out its Wednesday. I should have known from this things would not go well.
The quiz starts just after 9 and as soon as the answer sheets came round I saw the name Redtooth. Believe it or not in my many years of quizzing this was the first Redtooth quiz I have encountered. At this point I was looking forward to seeing what this brand had to offer.
Round 1 was pictures with 8 famous famous, one face related to guessing a year and an object. I did fairly okay on this as it was a tough call and at this point we were probably in contention. We remained in contention after a tricky current affairs round but started to slip in the Top 5 round after mistakes on pub names and men to walk on the moon. The Trivia round only managed to claw us back 4 points and we scored poorly in connections and the Wipeout round. We were not last by any means but thats related to one of my issues. I did not mind the questions and there were probably 8-10 teams but the whole quiz was not a positive experience.
Now issues with the Black Bull Quiz in Peterlee -
1) Slow Paced - The quizmaster takes longer than is necessary between questions leaving you twiddling your thumbs for a few minutes. This was my main annoyance in the entire quiz, it just seemed to last forever. Why he felt the need to pause so long is beyond me? He had a good delivery of questions but the time in between just drove me to borderline boredom. Never seen anything like that and this of course encourages......
2) Rampant Cheating - Despite a heavy warning at the start cheating was rife on one table, who I gathered were not only the quizmasters friends but also the usual winners. One person would get up to the toilet or to go to the smoking area after every few minutes, come back and whisper to the writer an answer. Not even being shy about it. Phone's were seen all around the table. The layout of the room does not help as with being a food-first based place there are partitions, walls and rails all over meaning cheating could be easily done and you can only ever see another 3-4 teams max at anyone time. Even the quizmaster can only see half of all teams playing. If people want to cheat fair enough, I am at the stage where I am testing my knowledge and playing to raise my experience, but it does sour the occasions
3) Quizmaster and friends - I am going to do a separate entry for this but the large table of cheats also happened to be the quiz masters friends who he helped after every round. All around 25-27 maybe. Clearly he wanted them to win and was shocked when he did not.
4) No placings - You mark your own sheet handing a tear off in, then he simply comes round to find the winner. He doesnt tell you your placing, doesnt remember your score and simply announces the winner. So after sitting through that whole boredom of waiting as he paused for 3 minutes per questions, I did not even have the pleasure of finding out how well I had done. Due to the way the venue is I only heard the table of cheats had a good few points more, I was 3 behind a team of quiz regulars who I see elsewhere and a beat a few teams comfortably. But the whole not known ruined it.
5) Racing through answers - And to top it all off he simply raced through the answers meaning it was hard to soak up any new information learnt.
So all in all the Black Bull, Peterlee (Old Shotton) quiz is poor, with a terrible, annoying slow pace, ample room for cheating and generally if this was the first quiz you went to it may put you off for a very long time.
Such a shame as I am desperate to find a Wednesday Night Quality Quiz!
No comments:
Post a Comment