Saturday 28 February 2015

Something Different

Given the amount of quizzes I have been to, it is very rare to see a quiz master try something I have not seen before. However, quiz I went to this week for the first time, review to follow, did just that. Upon paying your entry fee you had to select two numbered discs from the bag. Once you selected the numbers the Quizmaster marked them off on your sheet and those 2 questions numbers became your joker questions for the night worth triple points.

Quite a good idea I though :)

Friday 27 February 2015

Two Tribes


Two Tribes returned to our screens recently for a second series. I rather enjoyed the first run through and was glad to see it make a comeback. What are other people's thoughts on the show?

I posted a positive review of the series a while back, so without wanting to repeat myself, I found the short 60 second rounds fun, a nice range of questions (although a tad easy) and not overly long. The second series has the same positives with the addition of a jackpot round towards the end.

Gone are the "voucher" prizes and now Two Tribes is offering a rolling £1,000 per show jackpot. The final round, which I think adds a lot to the show, involves players have to sort answers into "yes" and "no" categories. For instance episode 1 asked the finalist about number 1 hits in 1990s. Four names were given and the player simply had to decide whether "yes" they did or "no" they didn't. I prefer this addition to the format :)


The one downside is the inevitable chit chat but with a 30 minute show you can forgive the odd bits and bos.

All in all I really enjoy Two Tribes and would like to hear other peoples opinions?

New Quiz - South Shields Town Centre

This quiz is literally around the corner from me so I thought I would give it a quick plug as I know I have a few readers in the area.

Anyway, the Life of Riley in South Shields launches its new Quiz Night on Monday 2nd March from 8pm. All I know about the quiz is that is hosted by a chap called James Martin.

I am all for supporting new quizzes in the area so will be down there on Monday checking it out. Hopefully it will take off!


Thursday 26 February 2015

Lack of Quiz Advertising

Anyone who follows the blog will know that recently I moved from Sunderland to South Shields and after building up a steady circuit of quizzes in Sunderland, I have yet to managed to find regular slots in the pubs of South shields to quiz.

The main problem is pubs and the total lack of advertising. The local papers and online directories tend to list out of date information and a few times I have relied on this, turned up and found the quiz isn't on. Trawling through the web I tend to find Facebook pages with no contact information, websites that have details and never reply to comments, wrong phone numbers, information that claims there is a quiz and when you ring you discover its not on.

I must have struck lucky in Sunderland as I found 4-5 good weekly quizzes within the space of a few weeks of moving there, but South Shields is a much tougher nut to crack.

Is this common around the country? Do other quizzers find it hard to discover local venues?

It is very frustrating indeed!

Quiz Britain, the app and website which was launched in the last few years, has a good premise of keeping an up to date log of quizzes in the UK but even then it has not got a wide range of coverage in the North East.

Wednesday 25 February 2015

Redtooth

In the years I have been running The Quiz Addict I have opened a debate on Redtooth several times and the company always seems to split opinion. As far as I can gather the company continues to go from strength to strength and as I continue to try out new quizzes on a regular basis, several tend to be Redtooth based.

The quiz I am referring to throughout this is the "Its Your Round" style they produce whereby you get the pictures, current affairs, connections etc etc. From my experience this is the most popular and common style pubs purchase and it is by far the best Redtooth format.

What are other people's opinions? And for those of you who are dead set against Redtooth, please read on....

In recent years the company has recruited experienced, high ranking and well known quizzers to ensure the questions and quizzes they sell to pubs around the country are of a good quality. And the difference has been very noticeable! From what they used to be the Red Tooth quizzes have improved massively and now, instead of sighing went I walk into a quiz and realise its Red Tooth, I am confident its going to be fun.

Like every quiz the Redtooth sets have their hits and misses, but considering the size of the tasks and considering they have such a large audience to please, they do a stellar job.

I would be very interested to hear the opinions of others on the Redtooth quizzes then and now.

Sunday 22 February 2015

Mastermind Contestant Call

The BBC are once again on the lookout for people for the next series of Mastermind. All the info can be found HERE

Monday 16 February 2015

TriviaBug App


The various app stores on smartphones/tablets these days are littered with hundreds upon hundreds of Quiz and Trivia apps. Whether it be official TV tie ins, niche quizzes or General Knowledge quizzes, there is something for everyone. TriviaBug, recently released on all major platforms, happens to be one of the finest of the bunch.

My main problem with many apps is that they tend to use the multiple choice route or the route of giving you the letters that make up the answers and you just have to re-arrange them. TriviaBug tries a different route. Each answers has three clues starting with the most obscure leading to the most common. 3 points if you guess correctly after 1 clue and 1 point if you need all three.

The thing I really like about this game is that it leaves it up to the player. You don't need to type anything, select an answer or such like. You just hit "Show Answer" when you are ready and then you have to tick or cross whether you got it right or wrong. Simples! There is no point in fabricating answers or correct points as its simply a game against yourself and its a refreshing change in a crowded quiz app market.

The game has fantastic questions and is clearly well written and put together by a team who know about quizzing. The difficulty is pitched just right, the questions are varied and there are plenty of add on packs to buy. TriviaBug is not just an app of 10000's of questions generically and randomly put together, its a well thought out and intelligent app that quizzers will love.

Supporting website: http://www.triviabug.com




Friday 13 February 2015

Next week the quiz will be based on.....

I have been trying all sorts of my quizzes out in 2015 since my move to South Shields and have found some unique and rather odd means of quizzing.

The latest happened last week in a music round. I have mentioned on the blog before that because I tend to quiz in small teams, the audio music round is one in which I tend to suffer. I have improved this by broadening my listening, spotifying and doing several music quizzes on youtube and such like but this is definitely one area its hard to revise.

Anyway, the quiz was going quite last week. An opening round on General Knowledge had boosted us into a nice lead, the picture round was flag-based which was a maximum pointer and following the sports and 1990s TV round we were in a nice lead.

The music round was second from the end (odd placing for it too?) and I was confident that even if we scored 4 or 5 out of 10 we would still win. "Okay Ladies and Gentleman, the next round is the music round and as you may recall from last week, all this weeks songs were featured on the latest episode of Sara Cox's Sounds of the 80s.....here we go".

So basically, every week at this quiz the quizmaster announces that he will be taking the following weeks music round from a particular radio show. So unless I listen to Sounds of the Sixties tomorrow morning my hopes of winning next weeks quiz are dramatically reduced.

What do you make of such an idea? Telling your audience what to revise/listen to for next week...good idea bad idea? My general though is its awful!

First and foremost though...it does increase my chances of winning. The music round will always let me down and with it being such a vital part of this particular quiz, any clues will help meaning that as long as myself and my other half devote some time to listen to the show in question we should improve our chances of winning. But that doesn't detract from the fact that I think its a terrible way to run things.

Not only does it hinder casual players, it gives the quiz a whole "exclusive" feel and means that people who play for fun, as we all do, are then told what they may want to listen to for the next week.

Although the quiz was good, it will massively put me off going unless I was to go every week and the Tuesday Night is a competitive choice for quizzes and little things like this matter!

Thursday 12 February 2015

Only Connect Contestant Call

The Only Connect team are once again on the hunt for new teams. The team are a pleasure to work with and I could not recommend highly enough giving it a go!

The link is HERE

Thursday 5 February 2015

Book Suggestion



Tom Holland is one of my favourite authors and I have just finished perhaps his most known work "Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic". Holland writes good, clear narrative history in an engaging manner, always fact heavy and very useful for quizzing. Perhaps the best book on the period I have read and certainly this, and his other works are worth a look

Monday 2 February 2015

The Link


I was glad to see The Link re-appear on TV recently. I really enjoyed the first run of the show, as a daytime lite-version of Only Connect, but the show has really grown into its own. Inventive question writing, decent contestants and it rattles along at a fair. Certainly suggested viewing if you have never seen it. For those that have, what are your thoughts?

Sunday 1 February 2015

Book Suggestion


Really enjoyed reading Brian Viner's book "Ali, Pele, Lille and Me" which is a tale of Viner's experiences during what he classes as the golden age of sport ....the 1970s. Although it is very much a personal account of Viner's interest and life at the time, it throws in plenty of facts and information about this sporting decade. Viner is also not averse to throwing in the odd "this would make a good trivia question" comment. 

Worth a look!